Lee Oser @radical__middle Twitter profile

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 month

NEW REVIEW-ESSAY

Inklings on the Move – Lee Oser

New scholarship deepens our appreciation of the magnitude of Tolkien's and Lewis's contributions to English literature.

lawliberty.org

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

3 years

HOPING YOU LIKE THE COVER! DUE OUT SPRING '22 W/ CUA PRESS

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

FORMAL PATTERN AND FREE VERSE "But only a bad poet would welcome free verse as a liberation from form. It was a revolt against dead form, and a preparation for new form or for the renewal of the old...." -T. S. Eliot, "The Music of Poetry" (1942)

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

THOSE IRRELEVANT WORKS OF GREAT LITERATURE! "What we see in Satan is the horrible co-existence of a subtle and incessant intellectual activity with an incapacity to understand anything." - C. S. Lewis, A Preface to PARADISE LOST

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

from "EAST COKER" The dripping blood our only drink, The bloody flesh our only food: In spite of which we like to think That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood-- Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

STILL UNDERRATED IN THIS COUNTRY

James Henderson

@jamesh543

1 year

Erasmus was born on this day in 1466.

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

9 months

MY TOP TEN C. S. LEWIS BOOKS 1. Surprised by Joy 2. Screwtape Letters 3. Till We Have Faces 4. Abolition of Man 5. Discarded Image 6. Preface to Paradise Lost 7. Perelandra 8. Dark Tower 9. Pilgrim's Regress 10. That Hideous Strength

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

BEST BOOK OF POETRY CRITICISM IN THE 20TH C.

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

HOT OFF THE PRESS I was mowing the lawn (first cut of the year!) when the first copy arrived, with a kind note from Trevor Lipscombe, editor at CUA Press @CUAPress . Cat fans will notice the bowls on the floor behind me. Hopper fans will notice the calendar art.

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

THE LIFE OF A TRUE INTELLECTUAL Working on a new scholarly book (T. S. Eliot and C. S. Lewis), slowly making progress, not shaving, unkind to my wife, irritable as a baby....

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

My younger daughter's boyfriend on Valentine's Day...

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

7 months

Recipients of Harvard honorary degrees, June 5, 1947. Front row from left: Oppenheimer; Ernest Cadman Colwell; General George C. Marshall, Harvard President James B. Conant; General Omar N. Bradley; T. S. Eliot.

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

7 months

DOROTHY SAYERS "What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person."

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

A PROUD DAD! (This is our daughter's first article...I promise not to tweet every one😁) Portland's perpetual homelessness crisis

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

MY SUMMER ARRIVED TODAY

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

The wives of Henry VIII if they hadn't married him.

Capitán Swing

@Capitan_Swing

2 years

Las mujeres de Henry VIII si no se hubieran casado con Henry VIII. 🤣🤣🤣🤣

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

6 months

NEW POEM IN COMMONWEAL Dedicated to my stepfather, David Kleinbard, who died at age 89 on 12/24/23, and to my mother, who died in 2016. It's about our visiting their old apartment at 610 W. 110th Street. We'll inter their ashes in New Paltz on Saturday.

Poem | Arrivals and Departures

"Arrivals and departures on the board, / Traveling days linked with lilacs / Whose redolence derails our sense of time."

www.commonwealmagazine.org

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

SENEX LIBROS VENDIT

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

SMART ANALYSIS (image: the 1950s Yale English faculty with my beloved mentor Marie Borroff and her great legs[!] beneath the towering, arms-folded figure of W. K. Wimsatt) The Real Reasons Why the English Department Died

The Real Reasons Why the English Department Died

Most professors would rather watch it die than reform.

quillette.com

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

11 months

WATCHING A GREAT ONE TONIGHT ABOUT A "WHITE SETTLER SOCIETY"

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

THE WELL-TRAINED PROFESSOR

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

"But the artist can always console himself for his errors in his old age by considering that if he had not fought nothing would have been accomplished." - TSE, 1917

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

"SOCIALISTS OF THE WORLD, DESTROY THE HUMANITIES AND THEN BLAME THE CAPITALISTS!"

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

CLASSICS, ANYONE? DeSantis’s Revolutionary Defense of the Classics by @CornelWest and @JeremyTate41 via @WSJopinion

Opinion | DeSantis’s Revolutionary Defense of the Classics

Promoting the Western canon shouldn’t only be a Republican talking point.

www.wsj.com

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

JOHN KENNEDY TOOLE AND THE NEW YORKER Got turned onto this, just as I was finishing the novel for the 4th time. An essay so antiseptically, self-consciously, and provincially New Yorker, it's like a bespoke suit tailored for a man allergic to cloth.

The Uneasy Afterlife of “A Confederacy of Dunces”

The book has long been considered a classic. But, forty years after its publication, its virtues seem inextricable from its flaws.

www.newyorker.com

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

A TUNE OF MINE FROM C. 1980 (the weird thing is we have a real record coming out at ). LIFE IS UNERRINGLY STRANGE.

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

"MY HUSBAND WOULD OFTEN QUOTE PASSAGES OF DICKENS TO ME FROM MEMORY, ESPECIALLY WHEN HE WAS HAPPY." - Valerie Eliot to Barbara Hardy, June 30, 1977

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

YOU KNOW YOU'VE RAISED A GOOD KID WHEN YOUR FIRST TEXT MESSAGE OF THE DAY READS HAPPY FEAST OF ST. JOSEPH!!! Saying a rosary for you this morning❤️

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

LARKIN, WONDERFUL

Mark W.

@DurhamWASP

2 years

"One doesn’t really choose the poetry one writes, one writes the kind of poetry one has to write, or one can write." Philip Larkin, with Sir John Betjeman #WorldPoetryDay

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

3 years

This is the one to own, folks.

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

MY NEW ARTICLE: "WAS C. S. LEWIS A CHRISTIAN HUMANIST?"

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

@AidanBricks 11:30 last night. Waiting for the S train at Times Square after the opera (Magic Flute). On the subway platform, a gang of very young black kids (12-13?) assaulted a couple Latino kids. A young girl was videoing the action on her phone. No cops in sight. It was insane.

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

C. S. LEWIS ON HAROLD BLOOM (1963) "Sometimes the difficulty is that Mr Bloom seems to be saying what is simply untrue about matters of fact which he must know perfectly well."

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

NEWLY ARRIVED FROM ST. AUGUSTINE'S PRESS

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

A BRILLIANT BLUE BOOK "I find it hard to believe that an experiment done to 100 people in a controlled environment can tell us more about human motivation, desire, purpose, pain, or existence than the intimate knowledge of the character of Pip can." -L. C.

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

WORKING HARD ON THIS ONE

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

IMPORTANT TO NOTE! "And again it is important to note that this transcendence is secular and literary, and not Catholic." - Harold Bloom on DON QUIXOTE Why is this malarky? Because transcendence doesn't grow on trees. Just think about it. "Secular transcendence"? Tell it to AI!

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

NEW ESSAY Reading for Change

Reading for Change – Lee Oser

Martin Puchner wants to recast all of world literature as environmentalist propaganda.

lawliberty.org

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

VIVIEN LEIGH AS TITANIA (Courtesy of D.H.)

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

THINKING OF YOU, GREAT TOM. HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

CSL and TSE "You know I never liked Eliot's poetry, or even his prose. But when we met this time I loved him." - Lewis, circa 1959

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

REMEMBERING MY OLD FRIEND TIM MCNALLY, WHO DIED OF ALS IN 2017, HEROIC SPIRIT AND A GREAT ATHLETE

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

A. E. HOUSMAN'S WICKED LIGHT VERSE Amelia mixed the mustard, She mixed it good and thick; She put it in the custard And made her mother sick; And showing satisfaction By many a loud huzza "Observe," said she "the action Of mustard on mamma."

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

MY DIALOGUE WITH JESSICA HOOTEN WILSON

What Is The Relationship Between Books And A Healthy Culture? | Disputed Questions

www.realclearpolitics.com

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

There is a reality outside the world, that is to say, outside space and time, outside man's mental universe, outside any sphere whatsoever that is accessible to human faculties. Corresponding to this reality, at the centre of the human heart, is the longing for an absolute good.

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

8 months

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Lee Oser

@radical__middle

9 months

MY NEW ESSAY ON DON QUIXOTE AND THE CATHOLIC NOVEL

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

MY OLD BAND THE RIFLEBIRDS IN CASH BOX (1988)

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

ORIGINS OF THE CATHOLIC NOVEL "The great achievement is to lose one's reason for no reason." - The Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

11 months

IT'S COME TO THIS.

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

IGNATIUS J. REILLY, PROTO-INTEGRALIST "The United States needs some theology and geometry, some taste and decency. I suspect we are teetering on the edge of the abyss."

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

PROFESSOR MICHAEL SCOTT (BLACKFRIARS, OXFORD) REVIEWS MY NEW BOOK CHRISTIAN HUMANISM IN SHAKESPEARE ( @CUAPRESS ) IN THE HEYTHROP JOURNAL

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

MY LIFE AS A PROF Lee Oser on the State of the Humanities and the Collapse of Higher Educa... via @YouTube

Lee Oser on the State of the Humanities and the Collapse of Higher...

Check out Michael's Patreon and Substack: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=98486320https://substack.com/@druidstaresback

www.youtube.com

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

9 months

MY NEW ESSAY ON DON QUIXOTE AND THE CATHOLIC NOVEL

Swashbucklers All: Don Quixote and the Catholic Novel

No authentic portrait of the author of Don Quixote exists. Studying this gargantuan figure and his omnivorous relish for life, we are led to wonder what canvas could contain him. He takes us far from...

www.acton.org

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

9 months

YES, I'M WORKING ON ANOTHER NOVEL

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

4 months

NEW REVIEW OF MY SHAKESPEARE BOOK! Lee Oser, <i>Christian Humanism in Shakespeare: A Study in Religion and Literature</i> | Ben Jonson Journal

Lee Oser, Christian Humanism in Shakespeare: A Study in Religion and Literature | Ben Jonson Journal

www.euppublishing.com

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

THERE ARE CERTAIN POETS, CRITICS, EDITORS, WHO SO EARNESTLY EMBODY THE DEATH OF CULTURE THAT YOU WANT TO DRINK YOURSELF TO DEATH 🎸

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

PARDON MY IRONY When Boys Were Boys

When Boys Were Boys – Lee Oser

This is a novel about things boys used to do, like surviving in the wilderness, fighting for a good cause, meeting girls, and becoming men.

lawliberty.org

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

MARY BLESSING THE HARBOR FLEET (she is just to the right of the US flag), OUR LADY OF GOOD VOYAGE, GLOUCESTER, MA, THIS MORNING AFTER MASS (the bells are stunning)

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

5 months

INTELLIGENCE WINS OUT MIT to Remove Diversity Statements for Faculty Hires

MIT Dumps Diversity Dogma | National Review

May other schools join in and do away with the diversity statements’ affront to merit.

www.nationalreview.com

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

HOLY CROSS CLASS OF '71 A Victory for Clarence Thomas

A Victory for Clarence Thomas | National Review

At long last, Thomas has been able to make his case against affirmative action as part of a successful majority.

www.nationalreview.com

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

OF COURSE I AGREE WITH YOU

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

CLOSING REMARKS AT THE ALSCW, YALE U, 10/22/22

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

MEDIOCRITY (fr. L. mediocris, lit. halfway up the mountain) "Where mediocrity is the norm, it is not long before mediocrity becomes the ideal." - A. N. Wilson

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

"ALSO, IN POSTWAR OXFORD, CHRISTIANITY WAS HATED, AND LEWIS WAS REALLY A MARTYR FOR HIS FAITH, MUCH TO OXFORD'S SHAME." - A.N. WILSON

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

LOW IQ, TREMENDOUS SOCIAL SKILLS

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

9 months

from WAGNER'S RING Soul-sick am I Of seeing myself In all I ever created. (Wotan, The Valkyrie)

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

WHY SOCIOLOGY IS HELL "What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person." - DOROTHY L. SAYERS

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

7 months

POETS We like them, if at all, when they are dead. Not that we're envious shits. No, no! Instead, Think of us as giving prizes when we're not Giving alms, going broke, or getting shot.

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

W. K. WIMSATT & BUSTS OF ALEXANDER POPE

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

INTERESTING LIST The 100 Best Catholic Novels I Know

The 100 Best Catholic Novels I Know

Deal W. Hudson June 14, 2016 In offering this list, I’m not making an attempt to define the “Catholic novel,” which would be a very foolish enterprise. There are many reasons why a novel can, and …

dealhudson.blog

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

A NOTE ON "TILL WE HAVE FACES" Just occurred to me (as I finished Ch. VII) that Lewis takes his title from 1 Corinthians: "For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face."

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

SHELLEY All but the sacred few who could not tame Their spirits to the Conqueror, but as soon As they had touched the world with living flame Fled back like eagles to their native noon...

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

6 months

WISDOM FROM A FAMILY FRIEND, NOVELIST LESLIE EPSTEIN

Pamela Sund

@SundPamela

6 months

It is not a bad idea to keep a nightly appointment with a noble mind; it has the power to purify even the most wasted day. Leslie Epstein

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

THE IDEA OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY "And what is worst of all is to advocate Christianity, not because it is true, but because it might be beneficial."

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

DICKENS ON CHILDHOOD AND TERROR "Since that time, which is far enough away now, I have often thought that few people know what secrecy there is in the young, under terror. No matter how unreasonable the terror, so that it be terror." - Great Expectations

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

IF SHAKESPEARE WERE BORN If Shakespeare were born In Twenty-eleven He'd know much about porn. On Hell and Heaven He'd waste no breath. He'd show no interest In Hamlet or Yorick Or Lady Macbeth, Or ancient-historic! Or Nature or Death! He would be a pre-teen And gender dysphoric.

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

3 years

METHOD? "There is no method but to be very intelligent." -T. S. Eliot

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

10 months

AT HOME WITH A FANTASTIC NEW ISSUE OF THE FENWICK REVIEW, "THE INDEPENDENT JOURNAL OF OPINION AT HOLY CROSS"

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

LITTLE KNOWN FACTS ABOUT I.A. RICHARDS "He was a highly skilled mountaineer, and once had his hair set on fire by lightning during a climb. He also forced a bear in the Canadian Rockies to back off by urinating on it from a balcony." - Terry Eagleton, CRITICAL REVOLUTIONARIES

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

LONG REVIEW-ESSAY BY PROFESSOR YVONNE BRUCE OF JOHN CARROLL U (YES, SHE IS TO MY POLITICAL LEFT - A GOOD TYPE BUT IT IS LATER THAN SHE THINKS)

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

IN DEFENSE OF LITERATURE "If literary scholarship and critIcism are regarded as activities ancillary to literature, then their sole function is to multiply, prolong, and safeguard experiences of good reading." - CSL, AN EXPERIMENT IN CRITICISM (1961)

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

THE PRICE OF WISDOM "We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey which no one else can make for us, and no one can spare us." - Marcel Proust (qtd. by Joseph Epstein)

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

3 years

A GREAT SENTENCE The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walls and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. -GATSBY

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

O FLATTERY, how powerful you are, how far you extend, how widespread the boundaries of your pleasant domain! - Cervantes, Don Quixote, Second Part, Chapter XVIII

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

COVER AND TYPOGRAPHY BY EDWARD GOREY

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

THANK YOU, ANDY

Andy Martin

@Dollarlogic

1 year

Happy birthday Wm Shakespeare. One of the few writers who really was as good as everyone says. Everyone wants to own Shakespeare, but the ones who get owned by Shakespeare are relativists who try to cancel his Christian theology. Read this instead by @radical__middle

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

FATHER'S DAY AT OUR HOUSE

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

BECKETT ALLUSION, FRONT PAGE, WSJ

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

3 years

DRYDEN ON SHAKESPEARE Let us therefore admire the beauties and the heights of Shakspeare, without falling after him into a carelessness, and, as I may call it, a lethargy of thought, for whole scenes together.

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

THE REAL CULTURE WAR "The legitimate contention is not of one age or school of literary art against another, but of all substantive schools alike, against the stupidity which is dead to the substance, and the vulgarity which is dead to the form." - Walter Pater

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

2 years

LONG DAY WORKING ON A REVIEW Prep has included rereading THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH, a good dive into UNSETTLED by Steven E. Koonin, three cups of coffee, and a massive chunk of dark chocolate.

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

11 months

CSL AND KINGSLEY AMIS IN CONVERSATION Lewis's rooms in Magdalene College, Cambridge. 1962. LEWIS: Are you looking for an ashtray? Use the carpet. AMIS: I was looking for the Scotch, actually.

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

(GOLLUM FOR PREZ '24) VERY SHORT TRANSCRIPTION FRAGMENT Q. Are you someone who can be corrupted by power? A. No. I don't think so. Absolutely not. Why do you ask?

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

1 year

HYPERBOLIC HAROLD "I would rather be Falstaff or Sancho than a version of Hamlet of Don Quixote, because growing old and ill teaches me that being matters more than knowing." Looking closer, we discover Bloom was spouting nonsense. He might just as well have said the opposite.

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

3 years

THE GREATEST EDITORIAL MISTAKE IN AMERICAN POETRY The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, The woods are lovely, dark and deep, The problem is the serial comma after "dark." But actually, the mistake is an argument for the usage of serial commas, if you know how to use them!

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

3 years

Jason Blakely is a good guy. But has he read Troilus and Criseyde? The Faerie Queene? Does he know his way around Shakespeare? I suppose this is what happens when the discipline of English declines: it no longer counts as "intellectual." And btw, Screwtape is prodigious satire.

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Lee Oser

@radical__middle

7 months

CONSERVATIVE OPINION AT HOLY CROSS