Not Drowning, Just Waving

Hard at work writing and incubating my presentations on Mark’s Gospel for next week. I’m working out the series as a supplementary response to Frank Kermode’s landmark The Genesis of Secrecy, framing Kermode’s interpretation from the standpoint afforded by my differential hermeneutics of signifying practices (though I won’t pelt the diocesan clergy with all that jargon). After I sketch my response to Kermode, I’ll demonstrate how the way of reading that I commend would pertain to a Markan ecclesiology.
 
Ryan pointed me to this article about written English by the late David Foster Wallace; Wallace hits a number of extremely well-balanced points, and I commend it highly. (Unfortunately, the PDF is very hard to read on-screen; you’ll want to print it out.)
 
Hey, how about the economy? If I were going to be choosing a year in which to become unemployed, this wouldn’t have been my top pick; I’m a little antsy about the whole “find a job by the end of the year” project. Ron points to the impact that the Wall Street convulsions are having on his street.
 
Sue Garrett pointed me to this “Pearls Before Swine” comic as a conversation-starter about hermeneutics.
 
I may not have mentioned recently how proud I am of my wife and daughter (and, longer-distance, my sons).
 
I do like my fountain pens. They provide a marvelous distraction from other matters to which I really, really ought to be paying more attention. On the other hand (“on the other hand, I have inkstains!”), I write more productively when I hand-write my brainstorming and first drafts. I broke out my No Nonsense Pen this morning for writing, and was startled at how beautifully that inexpensive, somewhat homely instrument writes. If only they had invested just a shade more elegance in the design, and were still producing the classic version of the NNP (not this rubberized-grip, long-section parvenue)!

2 thoughts on “Not Drowning, Just Waving

  1. how did I miss that David Foster Wallace had died, and apparently by suicide? I always loved reading his writing, especially when he turned his focus to central Illinois, an area I know well. His observations of the Illinois State Fair in Springfield were dead-on and funny.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *