“Long Wharf Theatre’s production of Satchmo at the Waldorf has become the biggest hit in the history of the theatre’s Stage II,” the press release states. I’d love to say I know this personally, but I’m confident New York audiences are not wrong about this one. Learn more at playwright Terry Teachout’s blog.

Professor D.G. Myers has been writing for Commentary magazine for many years, and for the past 18 months he has been under contract for their literary blog. Last week, he was told to stop writing for a while. Editor John Podhoretz emailed him after seeing a post on Commentary’s literary blog which Podhoretz did not consider literary. It was policial.

Podhoretz expalins, “I told David that he could write at will on his blog without editorial supervision, as long as he stayed within the confines of the literary. … [With the post, “The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage”] David had decided unilaterally to convert Literary Commentary into a sociopolitical blog without a moment’s consultation. This I considered an uncollegial and insubordinate act,and I’m afraid it was not the first of these.”

Myers says, “I did not conceive of my post as political; it was, to my mind, a literary and philosophical defense of gay marriage, derived from my reading, utterly silent on questions of public policy.” And he praises Podhoretz for being a great editor.

Many Internet voices have reacted to this news, accusing the Commentary editor of being the very old white guy they say Republicans need to shove out of the lifeboat. Podhoretz reminds them that he and other editors had approved a post Myers wrote for their main political blog in support of gay marriage, so the subject of Myers’ post on the literary blog was not the issue. Continue reading Commentary’s Podhoretz, Myers Split →

Mark Binelli has a list of ten novels that have distinctive depictions of cities in them, pushing them beyond the role of setting to something closer to a supporting cast. One example:

Davis has written extensively, and brilliantly, about Los Angeles, but City of Quartz, for my money, is his greatest book about one of my favorite American cities. As simultaneously visionary and paranoid as a Philip K. Dick novel, populated with an eccentric cast of characters ranging from L. Ron Hubbard to Ornette Coleman.

In all the vortex of commentary in the aftermath of the election, one argument in particular seems to me both plausible and troubling. I keep hearing people say, “The Republican Party has to go libertarian. Enough with social conservatism. Nobody wants it anymore. Christian America is dead and gone. We’ve got to promote an ideology of freedom, where the government just keeps its hands off all private matters, whether marriage or abortion or drugs or anything else. That will attract the younger voters.”

It’s conceivable, but I have a lot of trouble with it. Those who promote homosexual marriage have very poor track record of leaving alone the people who refuse to recognize it. They’re awfully prone to use laws to force acquiescence from businesspeople, or even churches, who don’t want to play that game. And I, personally, think that a society needs to privilege man-woman marriage in order to make it worthwhile for men to enter into marriages. Otherwise, men are congenitally inclined to wander away, and then the wife falls into the arms of the welfare state, which grows government, the very thing libertarianism wants to reduce.

I will never donate to a party that promotes abortion. And I consider drugs a societal danger. You may consider Amsterdam a paradise on earth, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

Still, a libertarian regime might be more tolerant of Christians, all in all, than the socialist one we seem to headed to.

In either case, the old republic as we knew it is gone, it would seem.

1. “Hymns” by William Cowper
2. “Lincoln’s Little Girl” by Cecelia Holland, a Kindle non-fiction single
3. Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots by J.C. Ryle

I started thinking up something to write today, but I decided at last that it was too depressing and demoralizing to inflict on you. Judging by my behavior over at Facebook, I’m not fit for company.

Columnist Ruth Dudley Edwards joined a panel discussion on Bram Stoker’s Dracula and was reminded what she hates about the fruitcakes who populate many humanities departments. “Now, it’s not that I don’t know that the wilder fringes of academia are populated by the ignorant, mad or just silly: indeed several of my crime novels are savage about the lunacies of humanities departments. But every time I revisit that world it’s the sheer stupidity and tunnel vision that gets me cross.” (via Books, Inq.)

Now, for something completely different, a feature on six crazy, scary restaurants around the world, like Dinner in the Sky, which hoists its guests 160 feet in the air over Niagara Falls and other places after you sign a $10 million insurance waiver. Closer to the ground, there’s a New York City joint called Dans Le Noir, where diners eat at a long, communal table in total darkness. And in Spain, there’s a place that simulates a 7.8 earthquake every night.

For more frights this weekend, be sure to catch the documentary on Capitol Hill antics called Paranormal Activity. Truly frightening.

Been there and back again, by which I mean my trip to Norway, Michigan for the Leif Erikson festival. I scrounged a ride with my friends Ragnar and Helen once more, not being entirely sanguine about taking Mrs. Hermanson on long trips just now. I got up at 5:00 a.m. on Friday to be ready to be picked up. The weather was beautiful, the state of Wisconsin still retaining some of its autumn glory.

It was obvious from the start that the organizers had learned from their first year experience, and were doing an even better job of organizing their festival. We participated in a “Viking Funeral Feast” in a school gymnasium Friday evening, where we were more or less the guests of honor (in costume, of course).

The funeral was purportedly for some guy name Eldywick (don’t ask me where the name came from; it was new to me). Before the program the planner showed Denny a sheet of Viking riddles she’d like somebody to read, and Denny immediately passed it to me, knowing where the ham was to be found amidst the eggs.

My piece was supposedly a speech by “Tor,” Eldywick’s friend. I was to reminisce on how much he’d enjoyed riddles, and then pose four (most of them real Viking riddles, a la Tolkien) to the assembled diners.

With the instinct of the born show-off, I immediately knew exactly how to do this part. I adopted a serious Scandinavian accent (as opposed to the burlesque accent I use when I tell Ole and Lena jokes), and spoke in sonorous, overdramatic tones with broad gestures. The audience ate it up, and I got a good dose of that crowd feedback that is an actor’s meat and drink. Continue reading Rainy Norway →

In other news, a giant eyeball was found on Pompano Beach, Florida. Experts believe it’s probably from a large fish, not a squid. Here’s a photo.