Cathy asks what the inner city kids in Philadelphia are being taught–all I can say is that if they’re at all like my bottom-remedial students, the answer is:  nothing. Conservatives who complain that inner city students are being denied the classics because they’re being fed a diet of “grievance literature” are missing the point. Grievance…

So–John says there’s “no longer an adult canon” and Michael asks if most people knew Shakespeare’s references anyway… So let’s start there. First, there is still definitely an adult canon.  A canon isn’t just a set of books everybody decides they want to know, or even that a bunch of people in power decide everyone…

I was, interestingly enough, thinking just what Mique was–that the people who were actually here during the election have a far different take on the Palin situation than the people who weren’t.  I’ll just leave it at this–I think it’s probably not a good idea to take the ramblings of the more infuriating members of…

That’s actually a term in Roman Catholic theology.  It refers to the state of someone who, no matter how determined to know Christ, cannot do so–originally, because he was living in a place the Gospel had not been brought to and so had never heard of it, but later also applied to people who have…

Back during the election, before I started writing this blog, I was contributing on a regular basis to a Usenet newsgroup I still contribute to on and off, and I was keeping my mouth shut on at least one point.  I know, I’m n ot all that good at keeping my mouth shut.  But in…

So,  I was thinking about yesterday’s post, and I want to clarify a few things. First is that I never suggested that writers should add references deliberately for the sake of adding references. In fact,  I thought I was stressing, over and over again, that the writer should write in the way that is natural to…

Before I get down to the actual discussion, I’d like to point out something. This is the way I write this blog:  I get up in the morning, work on my fiction while drinking vast amounts of very strongly brewed tea and then, when I’m done, I access the WordPad page. Then I sit down…

Ack. I still don’t know how to say this. Let me try to start here. First, all art functions–all of it.  That doesn’t mant that art is its function in any particular society at any particular time.  Medieval church art functioned as catechism, as a teaching tool for a populace that could not read, but…

I’d like to start by pointing out that nobody asked me who I thought was “a great writer.”  The term of choice was “admired as a writer.”  If you’d asked me who I thought was a great writer, the answers would be significantly different.  But if I’m asked who I admire as a writer, I’m…

So–where to start. Lymaree says I should meet more contemporary artists.  But I wasn’t thinking about contemporary artists.  I was thinking about the historical record, and how many great painters, poets and composers have been distinctly Bohemian–think of Paris in the twenties, San Francisco in the Fifties, the New England Transcendentalists, the circles of Byron,…