So this is what it's like around here: we're just sitting on the sofa and something comes flying at us. Something named Angus.
But in calmer moments, I'm getting some good research done on my forthcoming biography of Dorothy L. Sayers. What a fascinating person she was, and so outrageously energetic and dynamic. Not everyone could cope: the writer and BBC producer J. R. Ackerley lamented "the terrific vitality, bullying and bounce of that dreadful woman Dorothy L. Sayers." For her friends, that energy was delightful: C. S. Lewis said after her death, "I liked her, originally, because she liked me; later, for the extraordinary zest and edge of her conversation — as I like a high wind." But even they could not help but laugh: her friend Anthony Berkeley, in his novel Before the Fact, fictionalizes Sayers as a mystery writer named Isobel Sedbusk, and one character who likes her very much nevertheless "wished that Isobel was fitted with a volume control, like the wireless."
Later this summer I'll be visiting my home of many years, Wheaton, Illinois, to see the Sayers materials at the Wade Center — and those materials are extensive indeed. I'll emerge with my head swimming, for sure.
Beyond that, I am blogging a lot and enjoying it — as I always do. Really, if I had a big enough audience to make it financially possible, I do believe my only writing would be blogging. I love the way you can try out ideas, revisit them later, correct yourself, resume and develop points you thought you were done with, etc. Blogging is the best tool for thinking I have yet discovered. Well, that and walking. Solvitur ambulando.
Lately I've been writing about the book of Genesis, and that has led me into the Pentateuch as a whole, and who knows where I'll go from there. Posts so far:
Who knows how many more will come? At some point, if I keep going, this may well converge with the series of posts I wrote last year about Babylon. (Now that's a topic that deserves revisiting.)
Beyond that, dear readers, to adapt Robert Louis Stevenson, my blog is so full of a number of things, I think you should all be as happy as kings. Well, except that some topics are not so pleasant. There's nothing less interesting to me than developments in AI, but they are already having an effect on my work as a teacher and that effect will only increase. Here's a recent post — there will be more forthcoming. And of course I continue to post images, short videos, and links (including links to almost all my blog posts) at my micro.blog page.
Once more: Many thanks to those of you who have supported this writing. Your support encourages me to continue trying to make my blog a place of thought and a work of art. I'll get back to writing now ... but wait a sec ... something wicked this way comes:
