On Cocktail Time

by | May 18, 2015

In 1958, P. G. Wodehouse published Cocktail Time, one of his “Uncle Fred books.” Bertram Wilberforce Wooster does not appear in this book, nor does Jeeves, but Bertie’s friend “Pongo” Twistleton does, as well as a butler by the name of Albert Peasemarch. Pongo’s Uncle...

On Merriment

by | Feb 22, 2015

On Saturday, 26 May 1759, Samuel Johnson wrote an untitled essay in The Idler. It begins: “Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought.” This reminded me of hearing a joke for the second time, one told by someone else, but one you knew by heart. It is true that...

On Looking for What We Have Been Given

by | Jan 12, 2015

“Giving one Catholicism, God deprives one of the pleasure of looking for it, but here again He has shown His mercy for such a one as myself … who, if it had not been given, would not have looked.” —Flannery O’Connor, September 24, 1947. A former student of mine from...

“The World’s Last Night”

by | Nov 9, 2014

Provocative titles are meant to, well, provoke. I have always considered C. S. Lewis’s little 1952 book of essays entitled The World’s Last Night (Harcourt) to be one difficult to forget. It takes its title from the last essay in the book, itself redolent of Christian...

On Incomprehensibles

by | Apr 21, 2014

The literary form of Pascal’s Pensées is something of a puzzle. Is it a series of jottings, aphorisms, short essays, even conversational letters, or all of the above? Whatever it is, it is a remarkable work bordering on the inexhaustible. Not unlike Boswell’s Life of...