Alan Jacobs

I wrote about Jean-Luc Godard, whose ideas I think simplistic and silly but whose boldness I admire, even when it leads to bad movies. But the piece is more generally about revolutionary thinkers and artists.

C. S. Lewis, from “Lilies that Fester” (1955):

The [student] will not get good marks (which means, in the long run, that he will not get into the Managerial Class) unless he produces the kind of responses, and the kind of analytic method, which commend themselves to his teacher. This means at best that he is trained to the precocious anticipation of responses, and of a method, inappropriate to his years. At worst it means that he is trained in the (not very difficult) art of simulating the orthodox responses….

Thus to say that, under the nascent régime, education alone will get you into the ruling class, may not mean simply that the failure to acquire certain knowledge and to reach a certain level of intellectual competence will exclude you. That would be reasonable enough. But it may come to mean, perhaps means already, something more. It means that you cannot get in without becoming, or without making your masters believe that you have become, a very specific kind of person, one who makes the right responses to the right authors.

I know from long experience that it’s the hope that kills you, but I’m gonna go way out on a limb here and say it: I don’t believe Arsenal will be relegated this season.

It’s Sunday morning in northeastern Alabama and there sure are a lot of guys around here wearing camo. (I’m having some pretty overwhelming Proustian memories of my grandfather taking me quail hunting, even though we didn’t wear camo.)