Saturday Good Reads

Mariella Guzzoni at Literary Hub writes about the authors whom artist Vincent Van Gogh loved: Harriet Beecher Stowe, History of the French Revolution (in nine volumes!) by Jules Michelet, Guy de Maupassant, Emile Zola, and the Christmas books of Charles Dickens. Some of these books were even painted in his pictures. If you’re really interested, Guzzoni has a new book on the subject. 

It was a famous encounter on Key West – poet Wallace Stevens punched Ernest Hemingway in the face. Olivia Rutigliano at CrimeReads. Stevens, in addition to writing poetry, was a vice president of what eventually became known as The Hartford Insurance Company. Stevens was also known to make disparaging remarks by Hemingway as a writer, and Hemingway had had enough. In the confrontation, Stevens through a punch, hitting Hemingway squarely in the jaw and ending the fight. But guess who got hurt?

It is something of a myth that only one civilian died during the Battle of Gettysburg in the Civil War – a woman baking bread was hit by a stray bullet. But it is exactly that – a myth. Another group of civilians were hunted down and taken prisoner by Confederate forces – African Americans, many of whom had been born in Pennsylvania. Not much is known about what happened to them, but Cooper Wingert at Emerging Civil War has the story.

Poet Mischa Willett, author of Phases and The Elegy Beta, has some suggestions for five contemporary poets every Christian should read, including Scott Cairns, Luci Shaw, and Christian Wiman.

More Good Reads

Writing and Literature

4 Classic Novels That Are Also Classic Murder-Mysteries - David Kern at FORMA Journal.

Why Are the Classics Necessary? – Louise Cowan at The Imaginative Conservative.

Wendell Berry and Zoom – Jeffrey Bilbro at Front Porch Republic.

Anyone for Peter De Vries? On the career of the largely forgotten novelist – Jonathan Leaf at New Criterion.

Life and Culture

Inside the Early Days of China’s Coronavirus Coverup – Shaun Yuan at Wired.

Masks And Malignant Meritocracy: A Dissent – Rod Dreher at The American Conservative.

News Media

In search of news coverage of China's moral responsibility for coronavirus pandemic – Ira Rifkin at GetReligion. 

Faith

The Brave Stunt That Brought Down Slavery – John Piper at Desiring God.

Overview of the Church in the Twentieth Century – S. Donald Fortson III at Tabletalk.

When You Just Can’t Take It Any Longer – Michele D. Morin at Living Our Days.

Leading with Hope in a Hopeless World – Dr. Andrew Spencer at The Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics.

Poetry

Dog Dreams – Daniel Leach at The Chained Muse.

On Oxford University’s Classics Department Proposing to Drop Homer and Virgil – Ted Hayes at Society of Classical Poets.

Nature’s Melody – Joy Lenton at Poetry Joy.

Three Poems – Adedayo Adeyemi Agarau at IceFloe Press.

Tennyson – Don Shook at Society of Classical Poets.

I’ll Fly Away – HeeHaw, 1973

Painting: A Woman Reading, oil on canvas (1922) by Felix Vallotton (1865-1925).