Prufrock

28/07/2022

The disappearance of secondhand bookshops (and other secondhand stores) changes the character of a city:

Also: A 12-year-old Cormac McCarthy, a new self-portrait of Van Gogh, and more.

17/07/2022

I said I wouldn't start a Substack:

I said I wouldn’t start a Substack.

31/08/2018

Prufrock's Amazon Page

Looking for a good book? We now have an Amazon page with book lists by month from our email newsletter. Three months have been set up so far. More to come. Check it out:

Shop recommended products from Prufrock on Amazon.com. Learn more about Prufrock's favorite products.

20/03/2018

Russell Kirk at 100

Russell Kirk at 100: “Even among the odd, Russell Amos Kirk was unusual. Perhaps only in America could such an eccentric and anti-individualist individual have arisen. And arise he did.”

In an age of crass politics, remembering the man who laid American conservatism's roots.

20/03/2018

Reine Photo by Sergey Lukankin — National Geographic Your Shot

Photo of the day:

Winter morning in Reine. Lofoten, Norway

14/03/2018

Forensic anthropologists may have solved the Amelia Earhart mystery

Has Amelia Earhart been found after all?

Looks like we finally know some answers that they didn't in 1940.

13/03/2018

The University Bookman: Who Is Blackford Oakes?

Over a casual lunch in 1974, the editor of Doubleday suggested that William F. Buckley, Jr., his lunchmate, write a novel. A contract arrived the next day. Eleven novels followed:

The University Bookman is a review focused on books that build culture. It was founded in 1960 by Russell Kirk and is now edited by Gerald Russello.

13/03/2018

He Stands Apart | Mark Bauerlein

The enduring wisdom of Ross Macdonald: "Murderers can feel all the things that the rest of us feel, and still be murderers."

The Ross Macdonald Collection: 11 Classic Lew Archer Novelsby ross macdonaldedited by tom . . . .

13/03/2018

The Flowers that Make Chanel No. 5

How many flowers does it take to make one ounce of Chanel No. 5? 1,012:

On fifty acres in France, seventy pickers harvest the flowers that go into the popular perfume.

09/03/2018

Boomerang Effect

The "history of American Protestant missions, like the history of the world, like the history of any single human life, is a tangled affair":

David Hollinger’s new book, Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America, is a comedy of unintended consequences, the thesis of which is a joke—a serious joke, a very intellectual joke, but funny, with a sting. It goes like this: “The Protestant foreign mi...

07/03/2018

A Sinuous Melody Photo by Alessandro Taborri — National Geographic Your Shot

Tuscany:

I shot this photo during the exploration of this amazing place situated the heart of Tuscany, where the hills' shapes and the morning's colours create some awesome contrast with pastel tones.

07/03/2018

Associations of Thought

How to best explain the work of Jane Austen? It is like a “patchwork coverlet she made with her sister Cassandra and her mother: a pleasantly geometrical array of differently patterned chintz diamonds within sashes of a neutral fabric surround a central diamond-shaped medallion.” Alexandra Mullen surveys the multifaceted Austen:

Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken. —Emma We are conscious of many frailties. Be thou merciful, Oh Heavenly Father! to Creatures so formed & situated. —from one of Jane Auste...

06/03/2018

Frivolous, Empty, and Perfectly Delightful

In praise of the very unserious P. G. Wodehouse:

P.G. Wodehouse's world.

05/03/2018

A Window on Europe

"When Raskolnikov, the antihero of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, meditates on the brutal murders he has committed, he wonders whether the city in which he lives, St. Petersburg, was somehow responsible."

How a tsar turned a fetid bog into an imperial capital

01/03/2018

Brands Are Using Poetry to Cut Through the Noise and Grab Viewers' Attention

Companies are turning to (bad) poetry to sell things. Why? Because “viewers are wise to conventional advertising and are bombarded by it, so ​they ​have developed ways to filter it out." Nothing says Under Armor like “The systemic structure built to keep me in place / is the stage I dance on,” amiright?

A+E, Coca-Cola, Microsoft and Under Armour are using poetry in their marketing messages.

01/03/2018

Whose University Is It Anyway? - Los Angeles Review of Books

With all the books and articles these days decrying the administrative take-over of the university, you might think that this is a new development about which something might be done, a battle that might still be won. But you’d be wrong:

Can higher education be saved from the all-administrative university?

01/03/2018

Snow in Rome | National Review

Snow in Rome:

Snow in Rome disrupts transport, shuts down schools and prompts authorities to call in the army to help clear the streets.

08/11/2016

Prufrock: Bond's Name, Audubon's Highs and Lows, and a History of American Cake

Your must-reads for this very important day: James Bond, cake, and the Bulletin Board System:

Reviews and News: How James Bond got his name. * * Zadie Smith's Swing Time is a novel that showcases its author's formidable talents in only half its pages, while bogging down the rest of the time in formulaic and predictable storytelling. * * Kyle Smith reviews Underground Railroad Game: Your defi...

12/10/2016

Prufrock: The Learning Style Myth, the Morality of Literature, and the End of 'Books & Culture'

One thing won't die and another dies too soon:

Reviews and News: The learning style myth: Teaching someone to memorize something according to their preferred learning style, for example, does not result in a significant improvement in their ability to recall that information later. Still, much to the annoyance of psychologists like Christian Jar...

13/08/2016

Prufrock: Calvinism's Forgotten Philosopher, Depression Food, and More

Can't keep up with Prufrock during the week? Read the Saturday edition, which has links to four of the most interesting pieces from earlier in the week and four new pieces. Plus a podcast or interview and a classic essay. Check out today's edition!

Reviews and News: A look at American democracy from the outside: In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville strikingly observed that Americans live in 'perpetual adoration' of themselves and that 'only foreigners or experience can make certain truths reach their ears.' These remarks, quoted at t...

10/08/2016

Prufrock: The Spirit of Robespierre at Yale, the Art of the Dura House Church, and Degas's Lost Portrait

Today: Roger Kimball on renaming Yale, the art of the Dura house church, John McWhorter on Scott Joplin, and more.

Reviews and News: Roger Kimball says that if Yale is serious about removing names of slaveholders from residential colleges, it should be consistent and change the university's name as well: In the great racism sweepstakes, John Calhoun was an amateur. Far more egregious was Elihu Yale, the philanth...

08/08/2016

Prufrock: Poetry and E. Coli, the Joys of Medieval Manuscripts, and a History of the Hawaiian Shirt

We're back with some great books and arts links. Check them out: http://www.weeklystandard.com/prufrock-poetry-and-e.-coli-the-joys-of-medieval-manuscripts-and-a-history-of-the-hawaiian-shirt/article/2003721

Reviews and News: A. M. Juster on the boring and possibly dangerous conceptual poet Christian Bök: Bök has spent 15 years and at least $150,000 of public money trying to encode his poetry into the genome of a nearly indestructible bacterium called an extremophile. That hasn't worked so far, but he c...

21/07/2016

Fact-checking Marianne Moore, vicious Elizabeth, the long shadow of 1968, and more in this morning's Prufrock: http://www.weeklystandard.com/prufrock-another-elizabeth-i-martin-amis-on-donald-trump-and-forever-1968/article/2003413

07/07/2016

Prufrock: Dante's Factional 'Divine Comedy', Mystical Modern Music, and the Irish Enlightenment

Ain't no party like the Commedia party 'cause the Commedia party don't stop:

Reviews and News: Jonah Lehrer's insolently unoriginal book on love: Jonah Lehrer has had time to work on A Book About Love. His schedule no longer teems with lucrative speaking engagements. He no longer writes for The New Yorker or contributes to 'Radiolab' on NPR. With this project — his shot at r...

28/06/2016

Prufrock: The Gender Binary, the Future of the University, and the Relevance of 'Show Boat'

No, gender is not a spectrum, and other news that stays news:

Reviews and News: Gender is not a spectrum. Once we assert that the problem with gender is that we currently recognise only two of them, the obvious question to ask is: how many genders would we have to recognise in order not to be oppressive? Just how many possible gender identities are there? The…

24/06/2016

Prufrock: The Making of the Rose Garden, the Future of Work, and Louis Untermeyer's Longfellow

Get your Longfellow and 19th-century anti-positivist fix!

Reviews and News: How the Rose Garden became the Rose Garden: Before it became the Rose Garden, the area between the West Wing and mansion proper was a plain and tired lawn. 'It is driving the President crazy,' said Mrs. Kennedy, and its inadequacy was reinforced when the Kennedys visited Europe and...

23/06/2016

Prufrock: Madison's Notes, Cynthia Ozick's Crusade, and the Bitcoin Saga

Religious liberty and s*x, that time Cynthia Ozick slammed Harold Bloom, and more in this morning's Prufrock:

Reviews and News: Cynthia Ozick's long crusade: In 1978, she argued that Harold Bloom's conception of poetry as a self-enclosed system that referred to nothing but itself…was a form of idolatry. The very idea of belatedness, so central to Bloom's theory, was, in Ozick's view, anathema to the Jewish…

22/06/2016

Screenshot of our first email, sent to 5 subscribers 3 years ago:

22/06/2016

Prufrock: The Harm of Smarm, Pulp Fiction’s Mummies, and a Defense of the Soul

Mummies and metaphysics and smarm. Oh my.

Reviews and News: The harm of smarm: Broadly speaking, smarm is a form of extremely ingratiating behavior—unctuous attempts to curry favor while remaining insistently 'positive.' It's always been around in mild form (mainly in the world of advertising), but in recent years it's been on the rise in p...

08/06/2016

Prufrock: Musée Girodet Floods, Harry Potter Play Surprises, Simon De Pury Embarrasses

In today's Prufrock: Matthew Walther attends Reason, De Pury embarrasses, Potter surprises, and more:

Reviews and News: Benjamin Riley reviews Simon De Pury's unintentionally revealing The Auctioneer: Adventures in the Art: The trouble starts on the first page of Simon de Pury's memoir, The Auctioneer. What could one expect of a book that begins with the sentence: 'If anybody needed a rebound, it wa...