Just some links, as ever.  Things are busy these days!

Good review of McGurl’s new book:

“While McGurl’s perspective is presumptively anti-capitalist, he asks us to stand in awe—as if before a great, problematic work of art—at the fruits of Amazon’s ambition: “Honestly, to not be impressed with what Amazon has accomplished, as distinct from approving of it, could only betray a willful ignorance of the facts on the ground.””

People like Stephen Pinker make me realize that the writings of Reinhold Niebuhr won’t be rendered useless anytime soon.

Cool interview with a friend of mine, Rob MacSwain, on saints and his new book on saints and theology--check it out!

Wonderful essay by Edward Hirsch on John Ashbery, and in particular his poem “Soonest Mended”:

“I admire people who seem to have read everything in order, but I was never one of them. My own sense of Ashbery’s work is influenced by the fact that I was immersed in Wordsworth’s Prelude at the time when I was puzzling over the method of The Double Dream of Spring and Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, which established him as a poet of meditative self-consciousness.”

Ashbery was, indeed, always afraid to say more than he meant.  But, like night, the reserved, the reticent, he gives more than he takes.

Interesting article about new firefights in the 1619 Project controversy.

And, on that: A really nice overview of the 1619 Project from within the NYTimes, placing it within the larger shape of American historiography.

Stay well, everyone.  I'm not high on how dark it's getting so soon right now, but I do enjoy the chance to have the sun come up earlier in the morning.  Hopefully you're getting enough sunlight too, these days.