Stefan Kanfer has warmed my heart with an affectionate article on the cartoonist Walt Kelly, and his comic strip, Pogo, over at City Journal. I share Mr. Kanfer’s enthusiasm. Although Kelly was generally known as a lefty (though not an admirer of the Soviet Union, as Kanfer points out), the charm and sheer achievement of Pogo transcended politics. When I was a kid, vaguely hoping to grow up to be a cartoonist, I pored over his daily strips, and despaired of ever achieving anything like…
By Mike Gray Voyage of the Mind Carriers — By Gary Wolf — iUniverse — 2011 — Philosophical science fiction novel — Trade paperback: xv + map + 189 pages — ISBN: 978-1-4620-0433-1. Gary Wolf doesn’t write conventional fiction, and more so for his science fiction. He may occasionally use a common SF trope, but you can bet he’ll put his own unique spin on it. You almost never know where his stories will go. Wolf’s science fiction trenchantly explores the same territory that many…
By Mike Gray For now, of course, we all live under a suffocating blanket of materialism. Many fight to breathe fresh air. Others seem strangely content and smug about being able to endure it and even urge us to give up the struggle and join those brave New Atheists as they revel in the foul, close atmosphere, boasting of its superiority to any alternative. This condition of our culture probably explains the pervasive ugliness of modern media life . . . . — David Klinghoffer…
The battle for Lord Stanley’s Cup looks like it will go for 7 games. Two periods into Game 6 and the Boston Bruins lead the Vancouver Canucks by the score of 4 to 0. In the midst of this classic battle between the Canucks and Bruins, one man stands in the goal crease wearing some very pro-American artwork. Boston Bruins goalie, Tim Thomas’ mask is emblazoned with images that would inspire any Tea Party Patriot. The mask’s back-piece includes the stars and stripes sporting the…
By Daniel P. Crandall G.K. Chesterton wrote, “If anybody chooses to say that I have founded all my social philosophy on the antics of a baby, I am quite satisfied to bow and smile.” The God Dog Connection is Marti Healy’s “bow and smile” as she shares numerous tales about how her pets’ antics enrich her life and deepen her faith. I met Marti Healy one afternoon while exploring downtown Aiken, a town near the Savannah River in South Carolina. I happened upon the Aiken…
This week’s issue begins and ends with G.K. Chesterton. Up first, the “Prophet of Common Sense” on Art, Literature and accepting the status quo: “The beautification of the world is not a work of nature, but a work of art, then it involves an artist.” – Illustrated London News, 9-18-09 “By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.” – On Detective…
By Warren Moore Steve DeQuattro is a fifth-year drawing major at New York’s Pratt Institute, an institution that takes considerable (and historically deserved) pride in its century-plus of training artists in a variety of media. However, The New Criterion reports that DeQuattro’s work has been excluded from the school’s show of the works of graduating students. In fact, although his faculty advisor supports him, Pratt’s work was removed from the show following the protests of his peers—the classmates who would be sharing show space with…
Dennis Dutton, an American author and philosopher who moved to New Zealand and served as a professor of philosophy, has died. Dutton was the founder of the excellent website Arts and Letters Daily. Story here.
By Bruce Edward Walker Review of Literature & the Economics of Liberty: Spontaneous Order in Culture, ed. Paul Cantor and Stephen Cox (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2010). In recent decades, literary criticism has championed several schools that disavow common-sense economics in favor of more private and personal agendas. The “personal is political” formulation long ago crept into English Departments, at the expense of more traditional understandings of the warp and weave of Western Civilization. Beginning in the mid- to late-twentieth century, students were…
“Here is the conclusion of the matter: Wagner, other artists and history have taught us that an immoral person can create good art. Indeed, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but if that eye is jaded or opaque, then is it good art that the critic sees, or a perversion? If God is the creator of every beautiful thing (including creating man to create good art), then isn’t it true that the degree man is loyal to God is the degree any genius…
By Daniel Crandall I’m sure you’ve picked up a book or magazine article, started reading, and thought, ‘Wow, this guy gets it.’ I had that experience while reading Angelo Codevilla’s American Spectator article, “America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution,” which he’s subsequently expanded into a book, The Ruling Class, and which S.T. Karnick insightfully explored at American Thinker. Recently, I had the pleasure of attending the Catholic Medical Association’s Education Conference, “Restoring the Integrity of Medicine: The Imperative for a Christian Anthropology,”…
by Mike Gray In an article on Pajamas Media, Ed Driscoll discusses special effects (FX) that really were special. A commonly employed camera trick he discusses is the “matte painting,” a small image superimposed over a background containing a set and the actors. The undisputed master of the matte shot was Albert Whitlock. It was a money-saving device commonly used in Hollywood until the late 1970s, when George Lucas and his crew almost single-handedly reinvented movie FX by coupling the camera to a computer. Unfortunately,…
Even where one might think it to be popular, patriotism is not an easy sell. In Georgia, some folks just aren’t that into the ‘Spirit of ’76′, if the fate of the National Museum of Patriotism tells us anything. [T]he National Museum of Patriotism in Atlanta closes this week. … [T]he institution, whose jaunty slogan is “Come for a memory, leave with a mission”, is the latest victim of the economic downturn. “Therefore, The National Museum of Patriotism had to answer the call of the…
2009 was the centenary year of the birth of a great American artist and writer. At his peak he had some 60 million fans who regularly followed his work. Author John Steinbeck once declared this individual should have received a Nobel Prize in Literature. His admirers ranged from Charlie Chaplin and Harpo Marx to John Kenneth Galbraith and Queen Elizabeth II. So why did the 100th year since his birth go by with nary a peep from major media outlets and the cultural influence professional…
It began with an eye opening. It ended with an eye closing. In “The End,” love conquered all. It’s a cliche, of course, but a time-honored one and it worked to brilliant effect in the series finale of “Lost,” which aired Sunday night on ABC. (This isn’t a recap, but spoilers will follow…) Millions of us followed these characters, led by Jack Shepherd (Matthew Fox), for six seasons as they struggled first to leave, and then to return, to the mysterious island where Oceanic 815…
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