Art critic Holland Cotter in today’s New York Times on the work of a contemporary artist:

“Although much of this art is intuitive in origin, an on-the-spot
response to materials, little of it can be described as whimsical. Some
of it is uninnocently weird: several of the dozens of small,
labor-intensive pieces seem to be invaded by a creeping mold, or
stained with organic substances, including blood.

Indeed, like Mozart’s opera, the work as a whole eludes conventional
categories. Is ‘The Magic Flute’ a musical comedy, a redemptive pageant
or a moral tract? Is it darling or dark? Is Mr. Tuttle doing drawing,
collage, painting or sculpture? Process Art or Conceptual Art? Or
something else? Are the results art about art, or art about everything,
including art?”

Yesterday was the Feast of All Saints. Today is the Feast of All Souls.

Those of us who are not saints may profit from the writings of both the saintly Thomas Wolfe and the more secular Tom Wolfe.

From Log24.net on the Feast of St. Ignatius Loyola, a quotation from St. Thomas Wolfe:

See also a Wolfe quotation from the Feast of St. Gerard Manley Hopkins in 2003. 

For the Feast of St. Thomas Wolfe himself, see the Log24 entries of Sept. 15 (the date of Wolfe’s death).

Readings more suited to today, All Souls’ Day, than to yesterday, All Saints’:

Bright Young Things,
Andrew at St. Andrews,
and, of course,
Under the Volcano.

Andrew at St. Andrews recommends the remarks, in The Guardian, of Tom Wolfe on today’s election.

The fact that the protagonist of Tom Wolfe’s new novel is a virgin from
the hill country of North Carolina, combined with the above entry on
Nell from the Feast of St. Ignatius, brings us back to the earlier
Wolfe…  For the later, secular Wolfe on the earlier, saintly
Wolfe, see