Stratofanatic's Emporium

Over at his blog, Douglas A. Anderson posted a list of Tolkien scholars who've written fantasy novels. Some quite surprising names there, and I'll check them out if I ever get the opportunity. The blog post can be found here .

As I'm nearing the end of my dissertation, I've begun reflecting on why Leo Strauss attracts me as a thinker. I've noticed a certain reluctance on my part to come and explain why to people, mostly because of the anti-egalitarian implications of his thought (see #A and #B), so I thought about simply writing about it.  The major ideas are these: 1. Strauss's concern with "virtue." This requires a vision of human nature where the "ends" of a human being can be uncovered through reason. 2. His concept of the "regime" and the "what is said." 3. I also appreciate Strauss's sense of the conflict between "ancient and modern," the very different sorts of questions and answers that either period is likely to ask and give. This may be the most personally illuminating aspect of Strauss's thought. When I was reading The Closing of the American Mind, there's an episode where a college-aged Allan Bloom asks his profes...

Surprised and a little saddened that  Tzvetan Todorov , the literary theorist, passed away yesterday. In terms of fantasy criticism, he's obviously most widely known for The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre , a foundational work on the subject (even if it's cited more often than it's employed). I always admired Todorov for the clarity of his style at a time when many literary theorists seemingly delighted in being obscure. No idea he was still around, although apparently he was only 77, which is a ripe old age but not that ripe of an old age. Anyway, shame to see him go.

The Chronicle of Higher Education keeps posting articles related to Trump's ban of Muslims. This surprises me, not because his executive order doesn't have wide implications for education, but because it's a bit odd that the Chronicle is coming out with such a clear left-leaning orientation -- although, granted, a strong majority of academia tends to be left-leaning. Anyway, the whole situation is a mess. My current department actually has a good many Middle Eastern students. Most of them are Saudi, so are safe from the ban, but we also have a Kurdish Syrian refugee who now can't risk leaving the US for any reason. One reason the ban is idiotic as well as mean-spirited is that this particular Syrian refugee is also a Fulbright Scholarship recipient. So it's likely that, even beyond the gratuitous level of spite that led to the exclusion of valid visa-holders, this ban is also keeping out truly productive individuals that any country would be glad to have . . . all...