literature

It’s brilliant and effective, yes, but it’s ultimately just the story of how two vile egoists (even Capote’s powers cannot make them into sympathetic characters) butchered a decent family. It’s more interesting as a cultural artifact than as a piece of literature per se. For instance, Capote provides a portrait of the rural Bible Belt culture that influenced my own childhood context. The Clutters are teetotalers, gravely serious about religion, the closest thing to aristocrats in a community neither academic or urbane yet practically intelligent and fiercely concerned with honor and virtue. [Read More]

Reynolds’ Discourses are like a Westminster Confession of Faith for classical Western art – a formal expression of received ideas offered at the final moments of those ideas’ influence. The introduction to my edition called Reynolds’ theories a “coda” to an age of art about to give way to Romantic individualism. That seems about right. Some thoughts on the passing pages… Reynolds agrees with Johnson that studying by inclination is best. [Read More]