The Homebound Symphony
The Homebound Symphony
Alan Jacobs
I am — let me take a deep breath — the Jim and Sharon Harrod Endowed Chair of Christian Thought and Distinguished Professor of the Humanities in the Honors Program of Baylor University. I’ve been at Baylor for eleven years and before that taught for three decades at Wheaton College in Illinois. I was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. I’ve been married for forty-four years and have a grown-up son. I am an Anglican Christian.
Latest Posts
I am indifferent to the debate about what LLMs can or cannot do. I only know what interests me: writing good English and reading the well-considered words of other human beings. (Human beings have certain shared experiences on which I...
There’s not a strict correlation between the presence of a figure in my writing and his or her presence in my mind. Among the thinkers thus underrepresented in my writing are Mikhail Bakhtin, Ivan Illich, Iris Murdoch, Lesslie Newbigin,...
John Crowley has died, one of the finest and most distinctive American writers of our time and the author of Little, Big, the best fantasy novel this side of Tolkien. In fact, if I were not a Christian I would probably think that Little,...
Now, I do not know whether Auden is to be considered as an English or as an American poet: his career has been useful to me in providing me with an answer to the same question when asked about myself, for I can say: “whichever Auden is,...
SID: So Joseph has done – well, just a whole lot of good work for us in the past. Whenever we’ve needed a witness or a third party for, I don’t know – a petition of grievance or alienation of affection — DEEANNA: And he’s reliable? JOE:...
Alan: Let’s establish some guidelines and guardrails, shall we? I understand that most users of Claude enjoy the fiction that Claude is a human, or very human-like, personal assistant, and in that context it seems natural for Claude to...
I just finished the Complete Ghost Stories of M. R. James — the first time, I think, I’ve read them all in one go, though over the years I’ve read most of them several times. James calls them “ghost stories,” though as far as I can tell...
Steven Spielberg’s Munich (2005), we’re told, is “based on real events” but that should probably read “very loosely based on real events.” That was relatively clear when the movie was released but has become incontrovertible as time has...
Four Big Books is the title of a course I’ll be teaching this coming term — my last as a university professor! What follows is an outline of what I’ll be saying to my student on the first day of class. • • • • • Back in 1982, at the...
MINISTER: Who plays Christ? EDDIE: A kid we’re all very excited about, Todd Hocheiser, wonderful young actor we found in Akron, Ohio, in a nationwide talent hunt. But Hocheiser is seen only fleetingly, and with extreme taste…. We saw in...
By way of follow-up to this post: I’ve been able to publish so widely because I am always attentive to the character of the publishing house or periodical I hope to write for. What kinds of books and authors do they publish? What is...
In writing and publishing, I’ve been everywhere. I’ve been edited by men and women, by the non-binary and the trans; by the old, the young, the middle-aged; by liberal Catholics and trad Catholics, by mainline Protestants, by...
That is Vida Chenoweth; the picture was taken when she was in the second of her three careers. Her first career was as a pioneer of the marimba as an instrument for classical music. Chenoweth may have been the first person to play the...
EDDIE MANNIX: It’s a swell story – a story told before, yes, but we like to flatter ourselves that it’s never been told with this kind of distinction and panache. EASTERN ORTHODOX PATRIARCH: Perhaps, sir, you forget its telling in the...
BAIRD WHITLOCK AS AUTOLOCHUS: This Hebrew is son of the one God, the God of this far-flung tribe. And why shouldn’t God’s anointed appear here, among these strange people, in this strange place? Here, Gracchus, in this sundrenched land....