"Nature is a language." writer: The Dispatch, Real Clear Books, The Critic, First Things sambuntz.substack.com
Joined August 2011
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Boschian Belle pops into the Buntzcast to discuss Thomas Mann’s epochal novel of ideas, The Magic Mountain.
We follow Hans Castorp as he experiences “the intoxication of ideas and the lure of eros.” (Some spoilers in 2nd half). You don’t want to miss this one. Link below 👇
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No image has ever better captured our sense of cultural exhaustion, our sense that it's all been done before, than this one:
1980 - you climbed mount everest? you must be a pioneer.
2026 - you climbed mount everest? you must be an asshole!
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I don't think I can name an artist who painted his dogs with as much profound reverance as David Hockney did.
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It might well be one of the 100 best (anglophone) novels of the century so far.
Jun 11
One of the best books of the 21st century? Seriously? I'm two thirds through this book and it does nothing to me. Those who have read it, what do you think?
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Jun 12
Ignatius J Reilly crawled so that today's Twitter Trads could walk.
I’m 60 pages into “A Confederacy of Dunces” and it is easily the funniest book I’ve ever read. I already get the feeling that it may end up being one of my favorite novels I’ve read so far.
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Wrong. What's striking about the OG Indiana Jones movies is that they portray Judaism, Hinduism, and Christianity as all being real. There's a clear pluralism and perennialism to Spielberg. And Spielberg isn't "agnostic," he believes in God and has discussed this many times.
Jun 12
The original Indiana Jones trilogy is a religious saga.
The chronology of the movies maps the emergence of religions in the Western world.
Temple of Doom is set in 1935 and is about ancient demon-worshipping paganism.
Raiders is set in 1936 and is about Judaism - the whole point of the movie is that the God of Israel is real and his holy Ark is a weapon.
Last Crusade, set in 1938, is obviously Christian. The Holy Grail, the crusades, the leap of faith, immortality through sharing in the cup of Christ (Eucharistic imagery).
So you have Indy discovering ancent paganism - the religions that prevailed before Moses. Then you have Israel and the Ark. Then finally the revelation of Christ.
I don't know if Spielberg - an agnostic Jew - intended this. But that is the chronology.
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I smile when I remember that Obama blurbed "Sapiens." His book choices are always perfectly triangulated. Davos mindset. You could imagine him blurbing the latest from a cold technocrat like Yuval Noah Harari, but not, say, Dominion by Tom Holland. The optics wouldn't quite fit.
This is one of the least informed tweets I’ve ever seen from such a smug account. I’ve spoken with Marilynne Robinson about her years-long correspondence with Obama and his deep engagement with her work.
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Jun 11
The number of insane things believed and freely expressed by supposedly respectable people has gotten disturbing.
Will the Pope owe an apology to AI? Slaves were self-evidently human, yet the church got it wrong. All the more reason for humility now, writes Cameron Berg
on.wsj.com/4xngaY3
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I mean, in "The End of the Affair" there's a miracle performed from beyond the grave by a saint. And "The Power and the Glory" is about a priest who sacrifices his life in order to keep serving the eucharist under Mexico's anti-clerical regime in the 1930s.
Forgive for being uncultured …but I’ve sometimes heard Graham Greene described as a “Catholic novelist”; I enjoy his books but …wat is? What am I supposed to see as Catholic in content or sensibility in these novels
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Jun 10
When he said that he had cowritten the fantastic mr fox everyone cheered. Then he said he cowrote the life aquatic and only I cheered. We exchanged pained smiles when I walked.
Jun 10
Noah Baumbach - somberly - giving the commencent at Vassar graduation in the rain lol
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Jun 9
actually, claude dropped mythos in 1951-1982
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Jun 9
I’m convinced there was a 1800s Don Draper who came up with the idea to say absinthe makes you trip balls so they could sell an intensely mid liquor
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Jun 8
“Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you, because it is, at least in my experience, the most healing of pleasures. It returns you to otherness, whether in yourself or in friends, or in those who may become friends. Imaginative literature is otherness, and as such alleviates loneliness.”
—Harold Bloom, How to Read and Why
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"Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" was definitely not the best Indiana Jones movie, but this is a bonkers interpretation. It wasn't denying religion. It was about how a group of Soviet scientists' Faustian search for knowledge led to their doom. Implications were very trad.
Jun 9
Don’t forget what Steven Spielberg did to the destroy the original message of Indiana Jones.
The originals invited the audience to be “re-enchanted.”
Scientism can’t explain it all.
The God of the scriptures might still be working in history today.
There are real powers of demonic darkness that motivate evil political regimes.
But then in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, he said, “All of that stuff was really just aliens.”
I’m expecting Disclosure Day to be primarily a messaging vehicle for the same message.
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It's crazy but not surprising that a clip of Spielberg (who believes in God) saying that his movie deals with religious questions has launched a flood of antisemitic sewage from people who didn't even watch the 30 second clip.
Jun 8
> Be Steven Spielberg
> Be a practicing jew
> Make a movie about aliens
> It’s actually about subverting Christianity
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