AdamSmith

I sort of knew Wilde pretty well from my mid-teens, but at age 20, my most beloved instructor Harold Bloom taught me all over again -- and far more deeply certainly than I could possibly have been capable of knowing before -- the absolutely irreplicable value, in every respect, of that writer whom Bloom ever referred to as 'the divine Oscar.'

Indeed! It very seldom comes to you of its own volition.

Yes! Thank you. To be afraid of 'controversy' is to be afraid of frank, honest, committed discourse. 'Controversy' about a given subject matter is not at all the same thing as personal attack.

From seeing my own washer taken apart for some repair, I believe you are correct. On both of your points here.

...In 1939, Feynman received a bachelor's degree,[33] and was named a Putnam Fellow.[34] He attained a perfect score on the graduate school entrance exams to Princeton University in physics—an unprecedented feat—and an outstanding score in mathematics, but did poorly on the history and English portions. The head of the physics department there, Henry D. Smyth, had another concern, writing to Philip M. Morse to ask: "Is Feynman Jewish? We have no definite rule against Jews but have to keep their proportion in our department reasonably small because of the difficulty of placing them."[35] Morse conceded that Feynman was indeed Jewish, but reassured Smyth that Feynman's "physiognomy and manner, however, show no trace of this characteristic".[35] Attendees at Feynman's first seminar, which was on the classical version of the Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory, included Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, and John von Neumann. Pauli made the prescient comment that the theory would be extremely difficult to quantize, and Einstein said that one might try to apply this method to gravity in general relativity,[36] which Sir Fred Hoyle and Jayant Narlikar did much later as the Hoyle–Narlikar theory of gravity.[37][38] Feynman received a Ph.D. from Princeton in 1942; his thesis advisor was John Archibald Wheeler.[39] His doctoral thesis was titled "The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics".[40] Feynman had applied the principle of stationary action to problems of quantum mechanics, inspired by a desire to quantize the Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory of electrodynamics, and laid the groundwork for the path integral formulation and Feynman diagrams.[41] A key insight was that positrons behaved like electrons moving backwards in time.[41] James Gleick wrote:

You must be a (Jewish) Methodist!

They got off easy. One long-ago summer Sunday in our little Southern Baptist church here, the preacher started his sermon at 11:30am, half an hour into the planned one-hour-long service -- but then a great big old thundershower broke out. Raining cats and dogs, and lightning and thundering like unto hell itself had opened up. So, to spare us having to make our way out to our cars in the men's suits & ties & the women's equivalently formal Sunday get-up with no umbrellas, he preached, and preached -- and preached! -- until finally the skies let up at 12:45pm or so. Lord have mercy! He was very good, though. There are no better homiletics teachers than at the Southern Baptist theological seminaries hereabouts. (Which BTW have nought but utter disdain for the intolerant ignorances that have for long now held sway at the Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas [which may lately be changing; but we will withhold judgment until we see a lot more evidence]). One very good such school right up the road from me... https://www.sebts.edu/

Got to take it where you find it.

Well, as a Southern Baptist myself, here onetime only I must disagree. He was sublime!

Bishop Michael Curry's rousing royal wedding sermon – the full text Here is the complete transcript for the Most Rev Michael Curry’s sermon at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Most Rev Michael Curry delivers his sermon The Most Rev Michael Curry Sat 19 May 2018 11.35 EDTLast modified on Sat 19 May 2018 12.37 EDT Shares 4494 Play Video 2:02 US minister Michael Curry captures world's attention with powerful royal wedding sermon - video From the Song of Solomon, in the Bible: Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. Advertisement –– ADVERTISEMENT –– The late Dr Martin Luther King Jr once said, and I quote: “We must discover the power of love, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that, we will be able to make of this old world a new world, for love is the only way.” There’s power in love. Don’t underestimate it. Don’t even oversentimentalise it. There’s power – power in love. If you don’t believe me, think about a time when you first fell in love. The whole world seemed to centre around you and your beloved. Oh, there’s power, power in love. Not just in its romantic forms, but any form, any shape of love. There’s a certain sense in which, when you are loved, and you know it, when someone cares for you, and you know it, when you love and you show it – it actually feels right. There’s something right about it. The dress, the preacher, the kiss: key moments from the royal wedding Read more There is something right about it. And there’s a reason for it. The reason has to do with the source. We were made by a power of love, and our lives were meant – and are meant – to be lived in that love. That’s why we are here. Ultimately, the source of love is God himself: the source of all of our lives. There’s an old medieval poem that says: “Where true love is found, God himself is there.” The New Testament says it this way: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God, and those who love are born of God and know God. Those who do not love do not know God.” Why? “For God is love.” There’s power in love. There’s power in love to help and heal when nothing else can. There’s power in love to lift up and liberate when nothing else will. There’s power in love to show us the way to live. Set me as a seal on your heart … a seal on your arm, for love is as strong as death. But love is not only about a young couple. Now the power of love is demonstrated by the fact that we’re all here. Two young people fell in love, and we all showed up. But it’s not just for and about a young couple, who we rejoice with. It’s more than that. Jesus of Nazareth on one occasion was asked by a lawyer to sum up the essence of the teachings of Moses, and he went back and he reached back into the Hebrew scriptures, to Deuteronomy and Leviticus, and Jesus said: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbour as yourself.” And then in Matthew’s version, he added, he said: “On these two, love of God and love of neighbour, hang all the law, all the prophets, everything that Moses wrote, everything in the holy prophets, everything in the scriptures, everything that God has been trying to tell the world … Love God, love your neighbours, and while you’re at it, love yourself.” Someone once said that Jesus began the most revolutionary movement in human history: a movement grounded in the unconditional love of God for the world – and a movement mandating people to live that love, and in so doing to change not only their lives, but the very life of the world itself. I’m talking about power. Real power. Power to change the world. If you don’t believe me, well, there were some old slaves in America’s Antebellum South who explained the dynamic power of love and why it has the power to transform. They explained it this way. They sang a spiritual, even in the midst of their captivity. It’s one that says, “There’s a balm in Gilead …” a healing balm, something that can make things right. “There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole,” and one of the stanzas actually explains why. They said: “If you cannot preach like Peter, And you cannot pray like Paul, You just tell the love of Jesus, How he died to save us all.” Oh, that’s the balm in Gilead! This way of love, it is the way of life. They got it. He died to save us all. He didn’t die for anything he could get out of it. Jesus did not get an honorary doctorate for dying. He didn’t – he wasn’t getting anything out of it. He gave up his life, he sacrificed his life, for the good of others, for the good of the other, for the wellbeing of the world … for us. That’s what love is. Love is not selfish and self-centred. Love can be sacrificial, and in so doing, becomes redemptive. And that way of unselfish, sacrificial, redemptive love changes lives, and it can change this world. If you don’t believe me, just stop and imagine. Think and imagine a world where love is the way. Imagine our homes and families where love is the way. Imagine our neighbourhoods and communities where love is the way. Imagine our governments and nations where love is the way. Imagine business and commerce where this love is the way. Imagine this tired old world where love is the way. When love is the way – unselfish, sacrificial, redemptive. When love is the way, then no child will go to bed hungry in this world ever again. When love is the way, we will let justice roll down like a mighty stream and righteousness like an ever flowing brook. When love is the way, poverty will become history. When love is the way, the earth will be a sanctuary. When love is the way, we will lay down our swords and shields, down by the riverside, to study war no more. When love is the way, there’s plenty good room – plenty good room – for all of God’s children. Because when love is the way, we actually treat each other, well … like we are actually family. When love is the way, we know that God is the source of us all, and we are brothers and sisters, children of God. My brothers and sisters, that’s a new heaven, a new earth, a new world, a new human family. And let me tell you something, old Solomon was right in the Old Testament: that’s fire. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin – and with this I will sit down, we gotta get y’all married – French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was arguably one of the great minds, great spirits of the 20th century. Jesuit, Roman Catholic priest, a scientist, a scholar, a mystic. In some of his writings, he said, from his scientific background as well as his theological one … in some of his writings he said – as others have – that the discovery, or invention, or harnessing of fire was one of the great scientific and technological discoveries in all of human history. Fire to a great extent made human civilisation possible. Fire made it possible to cook food and to provide sanitary ways of eating, which reduced the spread of disease in its time. Fire made it possible to heat warm environments and thereby made human migration around the world a possibility, even into colder climates. Fire made it possible … There was no Bronze Age without fire, no Iron Age without fire, no Industrial Revolution without fire. The advances of fire and technology are greatly dependent on the human ability and capacity to take fire and use it for human good. Anybody get here in a car today? An automobile? Nod your heads if you did – I know there were some carriages. But those of us who came in cars, fire – controlled, harnessed fire – made that possible. Who is Michael Curry? The minister who told royal wedding 'love is the way' Read more I know that the Bible says – and I believe it – that Jesus walked on the water. But I have to tell you, I did not walk across the Atlantic Ocean to get here. Controlled fire in that plane makes it possible. Fire makes it possible for us to text and tweet and email and Instagram and Facebook and socially be dysfunctional with each other. Fire makes all of that possible, and De Chardin said fire was one of the greatest discoveries in all of human history. And he then went on to say that if humanity ever harnesses the energy of fire again, if humanity ever captures the energy of love – it will be the second time in history that we have discovered fire. Dr King was right: we must discover love – the redemptive power of love. And when we do that, we will make of this old world, a new world. My brother, my sister, God love you, God bless you, and may God hold us all in those almighty hands of love. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/may/19/bishop-michael-currys-rousing-royal-wedding-sermon-the-full-text

Very nice... Romancing the rails on Amtrak's Crescent https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/amtrak-crescent-new-orleans/index.html

Remember they were talking about shoes!

But look. QEII loathes the racist & colonialist shit in her own country's history that she inherited. It clearly pleased her no end to accept Michelle's formally forbidden shoulder/back pat, first time they were together.

But going in to win a war we should not have been part of the first place? ...then, as today now.

Yes, parents today are AWOL. But to suggest that better control of guns getting into the hands of lunies is no part of the solution is just not realistic. Why did the father of this latest shooter not have his firearms locked away beyond his crazy son's easy reach?

The mass protests by outraged schoolchildren will, I'm convinced, force some serious societal evolution here. It happened -- after a huge amount of time and effort, given, but it did eventually happen -- with the Vietnam Warn college protesters. Give this time. Those beautiful children will shame some very positive change onto our society. I have faith.

Butter...

Most. Insane. Soap. Ever.

A nineteenth-century engraving of Roman graffiti Ancient vandalism? When Pompeii was rediscovered in the eighteenth century, no one was particularly interested in the rash of graffiti scratched on its walls. Excavators at the time were too busy carting away bulky and aesthetically pleasing works of art as trophies for the Bourbon kings. It was not until the mid-nineteenth century, and the advent of “romantic” archaeology, that one open-minded director, Francesco Maria Avellino, had the foresight to start conserving these fragile, less prestigious relics, thousands of which still survive, either in situ or detached with their original plaster. Other early enthusiasts included Chateaubriand and Bishop Wordsworth, both of whom recognized the “primitive” appeal of the insignificant-looking scrawls and their power to safeguard the noisy, if sometimes indecorous, opinions of Pompeii’s dramatically silenced inhabitants: the trials of school (“If Cicero pains you, you’ll get a flogging”), the pangs of love (“Rufus loves Cornelia”), threats (“Beware of shitting here”), electioneering (“Cuspius for aedile”) and insults (“Narcissus is a giant cocksucker”). Cont. ... https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/ancient-vandalism/

Rex Tillerson just majorly trolled Donald Trump (CNN) Rex Tillerson may be gone, but he hasn't forgotten. Speaking to soon-to-be graduates of the Virginia Military Institute on Wednesday, Tillerson dropped this truth bomb: "If our leaders seek to conceal the truth, or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom." Woof. Double woof. You may remember that Tillerson was removed as Secretary of State by President Donald Trumpafter a remarkably tempestuous year in office -- a period of time during which relations between the two men grew badly strained. Things were never really the same after reports surfaced last fall that Tillerson had called Trump a "moron" in a Pentagon meeting in the summer of 2017. Tillerson didn't deny using that word, although he sought to shame the press for even covering it. Which means, of course, that he said it. Then there was the time when Tillerson directly refused to provide Trump cover following the President's "both sides" comments about the white nationalist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. "The President speaks for himself," Tillerson remarked at the time. You may also remember that President Trump said more than 3,000 things that were either misleading or totally false during his first year in office -- a rate of more than six mistruths a day, according to the Washington Post. Or that Trump administration senior counselor Kellyanne Conway famously/infamously coined the phrase "alternative facts" to explain away Trump's false claims about the size of his inauguration crowd. Now. Tillerson and his people will helpfully note that he never mentioned Trump's name in the speech, and that the address was meant as a broad call to fight for truth rather than a narrowly cast shot at the President of the United States. Don't believe them. Tillerson is no dummy. He knew what he was doing. The use of the phrase "alternative realities" is no accident. Neither are these lines from the Tillerson speech: "A responsibility of every American citizen to each other is to preserve and protect our freedom by recognizing what truth is and is not, what a fact is and is not and begin by holding ourselves accountable to truthfulness and demand our pursuit of America's future be fact-based -- not based on wishful thinking, not hoped-for outcomes made in shallow promises, but with a clear-eyed view of the facts as they are, and guided by the truth that will set us free to seek solutions to our most daunting challenges." It is impossible to read that paragraph and not have the image of Donald Trump conjured up in your mind. Im-possible. That's just want Tillerson wanted -- and yet more proof that revenge is a dish best served cold. https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/16/politics/tillerson-trump-truth/

Patriarchs among the poets: Harold Bloom's case for the Bible as high literature ByHal Boyd Published: September 23, 2011 12:00 amUpdated: Sept. 23, 2011 12:49 a.m. 42 Comments 1 of 2 View 2 Items Associated Press Professor Harold Bloom speaks to an audience gathered along with Denmark's Royal couple, seated in the front row, after Crown Prince Frederik presented Bloom with the Odense city Hans Christian Andersen Award for 2005, Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2005, at the New York Pulbic Library. NEW HAVEN, Conn. — The title of Harold Bloom's new book, "The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible," could easily describe Bloom himself. Now 81, he is by all accounts a great rock among literary critics. His immense shadow spans over 50 years and includes 40 some-odd books translated into nearly the same amount of languages. Though wildly successful, his career hasn't been easy — indeed, Bloom's expansiveness never quite fit inside the ivy walls of the academy. As a Yale professor he spent many lonely years defending the western canon, worshiping William Shakespeare and even praising Joseph Smith, albeit in his own gnostic-judeo-bardolic way. He still calls the prophet of the Mormons a "religious genius" and says matter-of-factly, "Had I been a nineteenth-century American and not Jewish I would probably have become a Mormon . . . " Amidst the typically-secular world of the academy, where few outside divinity schools defend the merits of the Bible (let alone Joseph Smith), Bloom's new book says the King James Bible is an "inexplicable wonder," standing atop the "sublime summit of literature in English," only shared by the works of William Shakespeare. A prophet of Bloom "For more than 40 years I have been playing the prophet Jeremiah," Bloom says, sitting comfortably in his parlor, surrounded by books. "That's a horrible task, I don't even like Jeremiah." Like a voice crying in the wind, Bloom has become a self-described literary prophet of doom — a transition made shortly after publishing his seminal text on literary theory, "The Anxiety of Influence" (1973). "I made a vow from 1976 on that I would never write for the academy again and I haven't. I have pitched myself to the widest possible general audience," he says, lifting a thin index finger to emphasize his point. "I've warned them that if one studies garbage based on ethnicity, skin pigmentation, sexual orientation, politics rather than shear cognitive and aesthetic value you destroy the subject and today they have indeed destroyed the subject. All over the world now people don't want to study literature because of it." Whether the relationship is causal is hard to say, but statistics show that the amount of liberal arts colleges has dropped substantially from 212 in 1990 to 136 in 2009, according to research by Roger Baldwin, an education professor at Michigan State University. Additionally, over the past three decades the portion of university students majoring in fields like English, philosophy and history has fallen by 13 percent, according to the U.S Department of Education. For Bloom, it's another sign of the academy's decline. Yet, those who disagree have replied in kind, accusing him of "racism," "sexism" and "bardolatry" (the worship of Shakespeare). Despite the academy's critics, Bloom has produced best-seller upon best-seller; "The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages" and "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human" are his most noted texts, defending the aesthetic and cognitive importance of the western canon — a canon which is overshadowed by contemporary reading lists filled with "the Harry Potter tripe," and the Stephen King "swinishness." Implicitly, Bloom's new book once again hints at the fact that "Great Books," especially the Bible, are not read as much as they used to be. "What can an education be in the Western world if it doesn't include Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Tolstoy" and, of course "the Bible?" he asks. "These are the constituents of our mind and spirit." His book, "The Shadow of a Great Rock," tries to show the permanent aesthetic import and value of the King James Bible and how the text informs the entire tradition of literature in England and America. Bloom's own appreciation for the King James and the Hebrew Bible began as a young orthodox Jew and has stuck with him ever since. Adolescence and career Born on July 11, 1930, in the old east Bronx, Bloom's family spoke only Yiddish — his father was born in Odessa, Russia, and his mother in a little village on the Russia-Poland border. The youngest of five, Harold read and memorized the Hebrew Bible and taught himself English through reading, among other things, the King James Bible. By the time of his bar mitzvah, Bloom was far from orthodox. Quibbling with the rabbis surrounding him, he felt like a natural-born "gnostic heretic." An omnifarious reader with an incredible memory, Bloom went to Cornell at age 16 to study the classics, learn Greek, Latin and the Romance languages. "He was a prodigy, beyond anything I'd ever seen — and there was never anyone since who came close," said Bloom's adviser at Cornell, M. H. Abrams, according to a New York Times profile. "We insisted that he go to another university for graduate school. We couldn't teach him anything more." After a stint at the University of Cambridge in England, Bloom went to Yale where he found his future-wife Jeanne — four months of dating and they were married. "I have increasingly come to understand that nothing else finally matters except for marriage," says Bloom, "that's what has sustained me all these years." Of course, professionally speaking, his incredible memory, Yale doctorate and unique genius propelled him to the lofty echelons of the academy's literary cabal; a place where he all-too-frequently had to play the gadfly. Nonetheless, the very skills that helped him rise to prominence, began as a boy reading the Bible — the same book he has returned to as an old man in "The Shadow of a Great Rock." New book on old book It's a book Bloom has been writing his whole life, he says. "Even as a child in the Hebrew, I heard the beating cadence in my ears, and when I first read the King James I responded to that as much as to anything." Much of the text is taken up in comparing the relative aesthetic merits of the King James against its predecessors, including the Tyndale translation, the Geneva Bible and the Hebrew Tanakh. Yet, the greatest strength of Bloom's volume comes in helping the reader navigate to, and through, the finest literary passages of the Bible; explaining how the ancient verses have influenced the past four centuries of Western literature. While Bloom insists that the book is not theological in nature — it's mostly meant to help nonbelievers appreciate the literary value of the Bible — the text nonetheless subtly reveals Bloom's own theological idiosyncrasies. All of which fit uniquely into his own form of Jewish Gnosticism: a non-dogmatic flux of beliefs, integrating a love of Shakespeare, the works of various religious mystics, philosophers, poets and surprisingly, 19th-century Mormons. On the Mormons "Joseph Smith was a great religious genius and perhaps the only one this country has ever produced," he says. "Not even Jonathan Edwards, not even my hero Ralph Waldo Emerson has had such an original and prophetic a discourse as (Joseph Smith's) King Follett Sermon. An amazing person; I always feel that if we had gotten to know each other we would have gotten along splendidly— Joseph Smith hovers in me. There cannot be too many Mormons who are as imbued with him as I am in my own odd way." Bloom also praises the "fascinating" Parley P. Pratt (a 19th-century LDS apostle) and the "heroic" John Taylor (the third president of LDS Church); stating quite firmly, "the great affinity between Judaism and 19th-century Mormonism is that each is the phenomenon not of a people becoming a religion but of a religion becoming a people." He praises Joseph Smith's "fierce insistence upon education," calling him "a furious autodidact who read everything and absorbed it." Of course, once again, Bloom could be describing himself. "I translate the Hebrew brucha (the blessing) to mean more life and indeed more life on into a time without boundaries — I think Joseph Smith found that blessing for himself; and it's an astonishing breakthrough on his part." A breakthrough that Bloom finds equally throughout the Bible, 19th-century Mormonism and in places as disparate as Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself," a poem he feels is one of the many literary works basking in the shadow of a great rock. In his very next breath he turns to me and bellows out Whitman's Bible-infused cadence as a strong defense for the Bible's prominent place within the canon: "Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth, And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothers and the women my sisters ... And that a kelson of the creation is love." https://www.deseretnews.com/article/700181653/Patriarchs-among-the-poets-Harold-Blooms-case-for-the-Bible-as-high-literature.html

The Shadow of a Great Rock A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible by Harold Bloom The King James Bible stands at "the sublime summit of literature in English," sharing the honor only with Shakespeare, Harold Bloom contends in the opening pages of this illuminating literary tour. Distilling the insights acquired from a significant portion of his career as a brilliant critic and teacher, he offers readers at last the book he has been writing "all my long life," a magisterial and intimately perceptive reading of the King James Bible as a literary masterpiece. Bloom calls it an "inexplicable wonder" that a rather undistinguished group of writers could bring forth such a magnificent work of literature, and he credits William Tyndale as their fountainhead. Reading the King James Bible alongside Tyndale's Bible, the Geneva Bible, and the original Hebrew and Greek texts, Bloom highlights how the translators and editors improved upon—or, in some cases, diminished—the earlier versions. He invites readers to hear the baroque inventiveness in such sublime books as the Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and Job, and alerts us to the echoes of the King James Bible in works from the Romantic period to the present day. Throughout, Bloom makes an impassioned and convincing case for reading the King James Bible as literature, free from dogma and with an appreciation of its enduring aesthetic value. Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University. He lives in New Haven, CT. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300187946/shadow-great-rock

HAROLD BLOOM Angus Fletcher was my close friend from September 1951 until his recent death. When I consider my own work as a critic, I realize again how much he goes on teaching me. His major books include Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode; The Prophetic Moment, a study of Edmund Spenser; and The Transcendental Masque, on Milton’s Comus. Fletcher went beyond these extraordinary achievements in Colors of the Mind, essentially an analysis of poetic thinking. Greater work followed in A New Theory for American Poetry, centering upon Walt Whitman and John Ashbery. In his final phase, Fletcher turned to Shakespeare, in two books exploring the affinities between the greatest of poets and the scientific imagination. Angus Fletcher was an authentic Renaissance magus, akin to Bruno, and to Vico in a later age. Like them, he was a curious universal scholar, endlessly breaking the new road for literary criticism. I learned from Fletcher how to apprehend the daemonic element in poetic imagination. For a lifetime, I have been a student of the Western Sublime, consciously in Fletcher’s wake. When I read and teach Milton, Angus is always by my side. I think of Fletcher as the true theorist of all Western poetry. He is a burning fountain and will not go out. His pure spirit, like Shelley’s, scatters sparks from the unextinguished hearth of his thinking. Ultimately what Angus taught me was that the poetic imagination is a holy fire. When I read, in Fletcher’s ongoing spirit, I channel him, and gather again the vision of transcendence. Harold Bloom’s most recent books include The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible and The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime. He is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University.