When it comes to blogging, 2018 was not a prolific year around these parts. Work on a new nonfiction book, big professional and civic commitments, and the nine-month search for a new home out here in the woods all kept me away from my favorite forum for writing stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else.
That said, what I did write here was substantive, if I do say so myself. Have a look:
During last year’s interminable winter, I revisited a translation of a eighth-century poem, and spared the reverence.
Did you know that F. Scott Fitzgerald published stories about a medieval warlord modeled on Ernest Hemingway? I tracked down the original Redbook issues and followed Fitzgerald’s pulp-flecked path: “In the Darkest Hour” (1934), “The Count of Darkness” (1935), “The Kingdom in the Dark” (1935), and “Gods of Darkness” (1941).
Like John Denver at the PMRC hearings, I griped about the current crop of aspiring censors: different politics, same old finger-wagging prudes.
It took eleven years, but I finally posted a transcript of a 2007 speech outlining what modern writing teachers can learn from Carolingian monks.
If you’re still with me after this fallow year, thank you! Please check back in 2019; there’s always more to say.
Quid Plura? 
We are glad you are still here Jeff! Don’t worry about real life or paid work getting in the way of blogging, extended essays are not the kind of thing you can bang out while waiting for the bus.
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Thanks, Sean! The year is ending on a fine note, with a new roof over our heads, professional projects under control, and personal/creative projects in good shape for me to dive back into them in 2019. Here’s to a prosperous, prolific new year!
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I’ve been off the blogging game myself, but yours is one I do check in with. My comment-failure owes to slowness in reading the Fitzgerald stories, but don’t count on it lasting forever.
Checking back, of course. Happy new year!
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Happy new year, Diane! If you’re feeling like a “Philippe, Count of Darkness” completist, I can send you a copy of the one major scholarly article about those stories—just let me know.
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Those were all interesting enterprises, and wildly different from one another. I call that a good year.
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