Saturday Good Reads

The coronavirus pandemic is bringing serious questions to the forefront, like how did China end up manufacturing so much of the production of pharmaceuticals and personal protection equipment? Not to mention just about everything else. The answer lies in the last 30 years of official U.S. and European government policy and the corporate appetite for globalization. J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy, writes that the virus may just be bringing about the end of the globalization gravy train. 

David Mason at The Hudson Review writes about two literary critics of poetry – Clive James and John Burnside – who were also poets themselves. He said that “literary criticism ought to entertain as well as illuminate. That puts most literary critics out of business on two fronts.” Not so for James and Burnside.

The (unnamed) writer at A London Inheritance usually focuses on what can be seen on various walking tours of London and how the city has changed so dramatically over the past 40-50 years. But then the writer took a break, and went to Ely, near Cambridge, and penned a fascinating account of Ely Cathedral and Oliver Cromwell.

More Good Reads

Life and Culture

When Everything Is Not Obvious – Kevin DeYoung at The Gospel Coalition.

Coming Home, COVID-19 Style: A Moment to Reconsider the Natural Family – Josh Pauling at Front Porch Republic.

The Plight of the Conservative Artist in a Liberal World – Kay Clarity at The Imaginative Conservative. 

British Stuff

Coronavirus silences last remaining major bell foundry in UK – Maev Kennedy at The Art Newspaper. 

Survey of London: Oxford Street review – a bravura history, but also an obituary? – Gillian Darley at The Guardian.

Poetry

Eyes Right – David Whippman at Society of Classical Poets.

The Last Hymn at Kilometre Zero – Race MoChirdhe at The Imaginative Conservative.

Poems After Dickinson – Paul Gallagher at The Chained Muse.

Cashiers – Mary Harwell Sayler at Interlitq.

Flicker – Kathleen Everett at The Course of Our Seasons.

Three Poems – Maggie Smith at A New Decameron.

Tedium – Dana Gioia at New Crieterion.

Faith

Friendship: A New Sacrament – Kelsey Miller at The Rabbit Room.

How Ecclesiastes Will Help Us Emerge from Quarantine – Michael Kelley at Forward Progress.

Writing and Literature

Majority of authors 'hear' their characters speak, finds study – Alison Flood at The Guardian (Hat Tip: Danielle Beck Oser).

On Invitation and Wendell Berry's 'The Memory of Old Jack' – Sara Beth West.

On Isolation and Literature – Ed Simon at The Millions.

American Stuff

Questions of Secession (Part 1) – Doug Crenshaw at Emerging Civil War.

The Bizarre Newspaper Hoax That Nearly Ruined Lizzie Borden – Dean Jobb at CrimeReads.

How Presidential Debates Transformed Over Time – Wall Street Journal

Photograph pf man reading by Viktor Forgacs via Unsplash. Used with permission.