Okay.
January 23, 2018 by at 4:06 pm
So The Shape of Water (my review, for what it’s worth, is here) got a whole bunch of Oscar nominations. I’m gonna use that as my spur for writing Volume Two of Lives of Famous Catholics. See if I can get it done in time for the ceremony in early March. No title yet, but my subject is director Guillermo Del Toro. I know, I know — another film director? But I can’t help myself. For what it’s worth, I still hope to finish Gaga Confidential, perhaps pegged to the release of A Star is Born later this year. I have plans for the other four entries that will make up the eventual seven-story book, but there’s no sense in getting ahead of myself. Let’s see if I can do one.
Wow.
January 18, 2018 by at 11:06 am
I almost think the opening scene of Nocturnal Animals is there to scare the moralists away via aesthetic assault. (It also serves a narrative/thematic function, sure, but…) Because after that, it plays out with the blunt trauma moral force of a Flannery O’Connor story, only without the promise of grace. Maybe it was the tequila watching, but I liked it a lot.
Dreams
January 16, 2018 by at 12:21 pm
It is, of course, common internet knowledge that bitches love mixtapes.
But dudes like mixtapes too. I know, because The Wife made one for me early on in the whole “she loves me/she loves me not” stage of things. Side A was titled “From love’s first fever…”; Side B, “…to her flame.” (A nice tweak on Dylan Thomas.) First song on Side B was “Dreams” by The Cranberries. (This was before it got used in every film trailer ever.) It was enough to give a young swain hope that he was not a swain in vain.
Anyway, it’s part of our history, and I was sad to hear of lead singer Dolores O’Riordan’s death.
Everybody Knows
January 6, 2018 by at 10:57 am
Everybody knows the devil is a liar
Until he starts in calling out your tune
Everybody knows there’s danger in desire
Until you’re caught beneath that laughing moon
You never see the mine until it blows
Cuz you don’t know what everybody knows
Everybody knows forever is a daydream
And love’s a ghost who’s only passing through
A man just like a deer caught in the highbeam
A woman waiting on the words “I do”
He asks and she says yes and so it goes
Cuz they don’t know what everybody knows
But someone told the truth and shamed the devil
And someone bound love with a band of gold
And to answer any charge you’d care to level
They’ll repeat the sweetest story ever told
This world holds more beauty than it shows
And no one knows what everybody knows
Spinning along the highway in this bright little beetle…
January 3, 2018 by at 8:30 am
“My little red MG, however, is an exception to the rule. It is a miserable vehicle actually, with not a single virtue save one: it is immune to the malaise.”
— Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
Sign of the Times (Gone By)
December 31, 2017 by at 8:33 am
Ripe fruit left hanging on a tree: a sure sign that your children are not spending as much time at home as they used to.
Is Pope Francis a Heretic?
December 30, 2017 by at 9:31 am
Hey, I’m just asking a question. Kidding! Actually, it’s Marist priest Fr. James L. Heft, head of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern California, who is asking — and presumably answering — that question as part of the Institute’s Condon Lecture series. Friends of Korrektiv will no doubt recall the mini-Summit – JOB, Angelico, yours truly — held at the Institute’s conference on the Future of the Catholic Literary Imagination a couple of years back, when Wiseblood’s Joshua “Feather Pen” Hren stood up in the middle of Tobias Wolff’s talk and said, “Me. I’m the future of the Catholic literary imagination.” Notice was, as they say, served.*
Anyway, I’m guessing Fr. Heft’s answer is going to be firmly in the negative, but I did thrill to see the word “heretic” in such a rarefied setting.
Dept. of Rejected New Yorker Cartoons, New Editor Edition
December 27, 2017 by at 10:31 am
Well, The New Yorker got a new cartoon editor, so to celebrate, I sent a new cartoon.
Elsewhere
December 26, 2017 by at 10:55 am
Korrektiv is gearing up for a great and productive 2018. (It’s good to let publishing start-ups lie fallow every few years, planting only word-fixing crops like JOB’s poetry to replenish the creative urge.) In the meantime, Friend of Korrektiv and Wiseblood wizard Joshua “Word Bird” Hren has a new poem up over at First Things. Read it, and then raise your hand if you had to look up “numinous” to make sure you had it right. Now raise your hand if you had to look up “logikēn latreian.” Søren says, Raise your hand.
Variations on a theme
November 18, 2017 by at 1:29 pm
He who hesitates is lost
He who masticates is flossed
He who vegetates is mossed
He who masturbates is tossed
He who capitulates is bossed
He who gesticulates is crossed
He who intoxicates is sauced
Rally, Korrektiv, rally!
August 22, 2017 by at 10:04 pm
Take up our struggle to print books;
To you, from failing press we look.
Some cash? It’s yours, so spend it well.
If ye break fifteen grand, that’s swell!
We shall rejoice. By hook or crook
Shall Wiseblood last.
Everyone’s a…
July 12, 2017 by at 5:21 pm
How does a comedian know there’s no God?
Because it’s funnier that way.
Birthday poem: “Son of a Gun”
July 3, 2017 by at 9:55 am
When I was young, my verse was true
My derringer shot derring-do
I livened up the “I love you”
And so I wed at .22
Time passed, my love made bold to state
“You’re like a slug that’s put on weight
But there’s still hope you will be great
Despite your age of .38”
Now when I talk of love – amor
I hear my love begin to snore
I have become a larger bore
Here at the gauge of .44
Gerasene ’17: Pic, so maybe it really did happen
June 27, 2017 by at 10:51 am
Lickona, presenting on DFW and Walker Percy and even F. Scott Fitzgerald a little bit, while JOB prepares to anoint DFW as Percy’s successor in more ways than previously imagined (language!), and Hren prepares to anoint Quin as DFW’s successor. Photo taken by the good Bishop of Brownsville, who attended the first Gerasene way back in ’09.
Google Alert: Catholic Arts Today
The good people at the Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music and Divine Worship could not help but cast a curious eye on the strange and shadowy world of Catholic art, and for whatever reason, they saw fit to take note of my little poem “Leaving.” I’m tickled pink.