Titans

Flannery O’Connor didn’t live a flashy life – “from Georgia, liked birds, died of lupus” – says Jamelah Earle, who might not recommend Brad Gooch’s biography to you, unless you want to know how somebody comes up with a story about a bible salesman who steals a girl’s prosthetic leg …
In his critique of a [...]

The Two Languages of Unrest

For a couple of months I’ve been trying to get a handle on a wispy problem that seems to be clouding debates about the current economic crisis.  Something feels deeply wrong about how these discussions function as discussions, and I’ve been trying to pinpoint the shadowy rhetorical origin of this disquiet, if it exists.
I think [...]

C Notes

So this is my 100th post, folks. Huzzah!
Writing duckanddrakes has been a rewarding pastime over the last year.  During the next few weeks, I’ll be giving some thought to this blog and its future.
For the time being, here’s an index to a few posts that exhibit what I’ve been trying to do here.
The mission of [...]

Through The Cracks

From argle-bargle to snollygoster: are these the 100 funniest words in English?
On this day in 1970, James Dickey published Deliverance.  His son Christopher recalls: “it seemed to me then and for a long time afterward that forces of self-indulgence and self-destruction, which were always there in my father but held in check, were now cut [...]

Churston Ferrers

More handwriting: a gracious note from novelist Agatha Christie to filmmaker Billy Wilder.

Christie praises Wilder’s successful adaptation of Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution, probably the strongest film version of her work that we’ll ever see.
You can buy the letter at this bookstore, if you’re in Baltimore and can spare $6,000.

Crystal Clear

You can find a new article extolling the value of the humanities just about every day of the week.  Scroll down on this very site, stranger, and you’ll find a pile of links to such articles, many of which I’ve discussed during the year (!) that I’ve maintained this blog.
The preponderance of such articles is [...]

Application

At Inside Higher Ed, Chad Aldeman explains that academic institutions just don’t have the resources to identify the most worthy student applications from within the colossal  piles that they receive.
“The myth of a meritocracy, on which the selective admissions system is built,” Aldeman confesses  “is substantially a lie.”
So how about a lottery?  Here’s how it [...]

Claptrap

You!  Drop what you’re doing and read Chris Mooney’s critique of George Will’s hissy little column on “global cooling.”  Mooney’s article is everything that op-ed writing ought to be: polite, well-reasoned, utterly devastating.  I wish that all writers cared so much about explaining the problems of reliable knowledge that subtend superficial and overheated policy disputes.
Cleopatra [...]

The Silence of the Boo

Wall Street Journal theater critic Terry Teachout observes:
I can’t recall ever hearing a single boo at a Broadway show, a classical concert, a dance performance or a nightclub gig.
Teachout’s onto something about the way we live now – the silence of the Boo speaks volumes because it contradicts the value that we otherwise place on [...]