Convivium

Ann has asked me to write a bit about why I will be taking part in La Belle Epoque trip to Paris this September, given that I have been to Paris more times than I can count and that I took part in an earlier Classical Pursuits trip there in 2004. I guess it comes [...]

There are many, many books that seek to communicate the complex philosophical ideas of great thinkers by presenting them in language that the authors feel is easier to understand than the original works. Some of these books are very successful in doing so – the original works are sometimes written in language that requires a [...]

Henry James took novels seriously. He believed that a good novel gave us unique access to depths of experience, and enabled us to explore how individuals work out their destinies in specific times and places. This seriousness of purpose has irritated more than one reader of James’ work. Most famously, H.G. Wells said that reading [...]

“Like a pair of binoculars with no right or wrong end, the camera makes exotic things near, intimate, and familiar things small, abstract, strange, much farther away.” –Susan Sontag In Susan Sontag’s essay collection On Photography, every sentence is a zinger, and almost every idea a game-changer. Written in a take-no-prisoners manner (one imagines Sontag [...]

Just back from the capitol of the Confederate States of America, where we all deepened our understanding of this defining event. We had an extraordinary time approaching this ever-fascinating and perplexing war that still occasionally erupts in skirmishes. Rosemary Gould was our fantastic discussion leader. What striking cultural contrasts we experienced – as well as [...]

Here are Five of the Many Reasons Why You Should Take My Seminar on Lucretius and the Rediscovery of his Masterpiece, On the Nature of Things, as described in Greenblatt’s The SWERVE  -  How the World Became Modern: 1. Stephen Greenblatt is a very talented writer/storyteller and a courageous scholar who takes interesting risks. You [...]

You sorta hadta be there to get all the references, but y’all can see what a fine poet Jimmye Hillman is (no matter what his daughter says). I TAKE RICHMOND* Not as a British frigate’s cargo: freedom’s heirs Stuck at James River’s falls in royal pause, Not as some conquering Yankee brigade unawares Of Virginia [...]

“Once you’ve come to be part of this particular patch, you’ll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real.” ― Nelson Algren, Chicago: City on the Make “I must confess a shameful secret:  I love Chicago best in the cold.” [...]

We are fairly familiar with the concept of “the golden thread*,” the ongoing conversation that winds its way from the Ancient Greeks and Hebrew scribes through centuries of Western civilization, right up to the present. Indeed, pop culture is reliant on common references to the Bible and Shakespeare, even if we do not always recognize [...]

In scope, detail, and humanity, Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks is a classic of modem literature and continues to be a model for family sagas, a genre of literature which follows generations of a family through a period of history. (Think Downton Abbey, The Forsythe Saga, The Thornbirds.) Buddenbrooks was Mann’s first and is his most enduringly [...]