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In Books and Culture, Richard W. Etulain notes the centennial of one of my favorite writers: Wallace Stegner. (more…)

Friends, we have a date:

On February 16, 2010, you’ll find out what’s happened to the ale boy. You’ll follow Cal-raven as he risks some dangerous trespassing in the lair of the Seers. You’ll learn what Jordam the beastman has been doing behind the scenes. And the Keeper may make an appearance before it’s over.

Raven’s Ladder – the Gold Strand of The Auralia Thread – will be in stores.

You can pre-order now at Amazon and other sites.

The U2 rehearsal lists that are going around have given me an idea.

I want to hear from you. Post your dream concert in the Comments below.

• Pick an artist. U2, Springsteen, Over the Rhine, Emmylou Harris, David Bazan, Iron & Wine… anybody.
• Pick 20 songs from their catalog that you’d like to hear them play.
• List them in the order they should perform them.
• Set off 3 of those 20 songs as encores.
• If you want, make one of those songs a cover of someone else’s song… just to spice things up.

If I get three responses to this invitation, I’ll go ahead and post a dream show or two for my favorite artists…

The Browser: News & links to raise your eyebrows & furrow your brow. New headlines may be added as the day goes on. Stay tuned.

Hi ho, Jeffrey the Blogger here. (more…)

Okay, I finally got around to putting M. Ward’s Hold Time in the car stereo yesterday and it joins the very short list of albums I’ve played straight through three times.
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Last month, I had no idea that I was celebrating the five-year anniversary of this blog.

But it’s true. The Looking Closer Journal made its debut on May 11, 2004. The first post was a welcome. The second noted that Tilda Swinton just might be cast as the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

We’ve come a long way, baby.

Thanks so much for making the journey with me. We’ve discussed so many great films, albums, and stories, and I’ve enjoyed your company as dreams like Through a Screen Darkly and Auralia’s Colors and Cyndere’s Midnight came true.

It’s hard to imagine what the next five years might hold. Well, besides the last two chapters of The Auralia Thread: Raven’s Ladder and the as-yet-untitled closing chapter.

I hope you’ll hang around.

There’s nothing I’d rather do in September than join the gang at Image journal for this tour of breathtaking beauty.

Maybe you can go in my place. If you do, write about it, and I’ll share your story here.

In the late summer of 2009, a small group of inquirers will gather in Florence and Rome to explore the life and achievements of the sculptor, painter, architect, and poet, Michelangelo Buonarroti.

A towering figure whose life spanned the period from the heyday of Florentine humanism to the stormy Reformation and Counter Reformation eras, Michelangelo stood at a turning point in Western history.

In his works we see the dignity of humanity and its fall, the emergence of the individual and the dangers of individualism, and a fierce struggle to harmonize beauty with goodness and truth. Yet for all the conflict and tension in his work, Michelangelo left us with exquisite images of how God’s grace can transform human experience.

Throughout our week together we will reflect on how Michelangelo’s incarnational vision of art inspired by faith can inform our own efforts to bring about cultural transformation today.

We will undertake this journey in the two cities that laid claim to Michelangelo—Florence, the birthplace of Renaissance Christian Humanism, and the “Eternal City” of Rome.

Faculty and Program
Our week in Italy will begin with a couple days in Rome, where we will visit the Vatican and other sites associated with Michelangelo. The remainder of the week will be spent in Florence, where we will visit the great churches and museums featuring the artist and enjoy exquisite meals at restaurants in the city and the surrounding area.

Thanks to this weekend’s Facebook offer of new, personal addresses, you can now find me on Facebook at http://facebook.com/jeffreyoverstreet

I’ve been following Laura Bramon Good’s writing since she spent some time at SPU as the year’s Milton Fellow, leading the Milton Center writers’ group. She’s an excellent writer with a big heart, and I love her contributions to the Good Letters blog at Image.

This week, she’s written on the new Soderbergh film, The Girlfriend Experience. Here’s an excerpt:

I’ve seen The Girlfriend Experience twice: once, under the guise of professional development for my anti-human trafficking day-job, and again, because I was eager to show Ben something that I thought had real worth in the larger conversation about the economy of sex.
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HD here.

Looks like quite a change of pace for Scorsese this time around. I’m so distracted by the progress on his adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s Silence that I haven’t been paying much attention to this project. And frankly, the trailer doesn’t really change that for me. Has anyone here read the book that inspired this? Should I be more excited about this?