A selection of posts on books and ideas

Soon to be linked to permanently over in the gutter:

”Are YOU a serial killer??”

A rambling discourse on discourse; or, Free-floating signifiers indeed

No time to be sentimenterin’: Huckleberry Finn and thinking

Further talk about Huckleberry Finn

One more post apropos of Huckleberry Finn

”Landscape and Narrative,” Kalahari Bushmen . . . and Wal-Mart in Mexico (again)

A couple of observations about religion and politics

A meditation on mockery, Part I

A meditation on mockery, Part II

Public space

Ellison and American public space

Public space and religion

Public space and religion, Part III

The Marrow of Tradition redux

Harold Bloom as literary criticism’s 800-lb. gorilla

”The evil that men do” and public space

Some early comments on Show Boat

The subject was Wal-Mart: Stripping PotterMania! of the !

Books that have changed my life, #2 [Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian]

What are the prerequisites for a “national literature”?: An initial response

BTK and the inadequacy of language

”The test of time”: a response

On humility

Pieter de Hooch, The Linen Closet, and Danielewski, House of Leaves: Negotiations of space

Some comments on The Fathers

Arc d’X

More on Arc d’X

On justice and (bitter, bitter) irony

The Metaphysics of the Clothes Care Center. Part I: Reading the Sign

The Metaphysics of the Clothes Care Center. Part IIa: In the world? Of the world?

The Metaphysics of the Clothes Care Center. Part IIb: Time's Topography

Odysseus in Kabul: The death of epic?

On today’s card: Tyler Durden vs. The Misfit

Diversity makes us safe?

A stretch of river XV: The Ninety-Nine Percent Doctrine

A stretch of river XXI: Resisting Thoreau

Rendering unto Christianism what is Christianism’s

Only Revolutions: America and History

Angus MacGyver explains it all for you

”Constructed of breath”: An incomplete reading of The Road

"Collage students" Part I: Time-sensitive; or, Writing like we're talking

"Collage students," Part II: Curiosity and caring; or, Wheat from chaff

Lost in translation: Two language-related links, and two not-

"Collage students," Part III: The Case for determining What Matters

"Collage students," Part IV: Playing Bach for Africans

A Kansas troglodyte ponders the death of the movies

The troglodyte takes a tangent: "You had to have been there"

The Metaphysics of the Clothes Care Center. Part III: A coming apostasy?

The "Following Jesus" Manifesto
"Collage Students," Part V: Two models, and a solicitation

"Ora et labora": Quantifying "Aesthetic Response"

"Looking at etchings" meets Darwinism: more on quantifying aesthetics

Some thoughts about "advantage"

In which the Meridian hopes he has come early to a party

"There are more things in heaven and earth . . . "

Barack Obama's post-race politics, Part I

Barack Obama's post-race politics, Part II

Oprah and Cormac, sittin', drinkin' tea/R-E-A-D-I-N-G

On justice and bitter, bitter irony, Part II

A stretch of river XXXIV: An unstopped stopwatch

In which the Meridian loathes Kinkade and gets religion without knowing it

Eclecticism as an American aesthetic: A lion's preliminary throat-clearing

American aesthetics I: Bingham's lion

Off-the-cuff musing: A culture of savants?

The Known World: A review

A stretch of river XXXIX: Updating the wildlife census, and some thoughts on this blog's epigraph

Rewriting the "One-Drop Rule": The nexus of Christianism and Nativism

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"

Pacheco, his famous pupil, and some comments on "influence"

Trying to read subtexts while book-browsing

"You are a different kind of author"

Further gazing at "The Venus Effect": Some questions

Denial on the Mississippi?: The strange career of the narrator in Show Boat

"Capturing transience"

Home by Dark: A speculative reading

Denial on the Mississippi?: Part II--the river as engine of nostalgia in Show Boat

"Blankness": On unselfconsciousness in narrative

"Signature Event Context" and the Deathly Hallows

John Henry as American archetype

"Why read something made up?": On unknowableness in fiction

The ousia of whales

Going to Hell: Some speculation regarding Huck Finn and slave-holding culture

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is: A ramble through the "natural world"

Elvis and reading

"Consider the source": The idea of the Universe as a virtual reality

The electronic lever and fulcrum