“Down in a Hole”

Alice in Chains – 1992

 

“Every student should listen to ‘Down in a Hole,’ the MTV live unplugged version. Self-knowledge and compassion for your fellow man lie therein. What you have to ask yourself is how far is my success and virtue a result of my own effort and diligence, and how far is it the mingling of grace, chance, and the transformative compassion of love? This song is the sound of contrition without reconciliation, of the human as separated from God — mired in vice, but groaning with desire for the divine. Come for the gorgeously unsettling harmonies, stay for the embodiment of Seattle sound, and come back for the Platonic wing references.”

 

“The Education of Henry Adams”

Henry Brooks Adams – 1907

 

“It is a gorgeous, somber, strange work of history, politics, philosophy, sociology, theology, and America. The book could be seen as a flight of aristocratic eccentricity, written as it is by a son of America’s most famous founding family: a man of influence, wealth, and great privilege. I cannot deny Henry’s aristocratic sensibilities; but his eccentricity is his strength. This is not your average luddite. His apocalyptic vision of modernity is powerful precisely because it is not a reaction, but a clear-sighted genealogy of philosophy, religion, and politics as they intersect with the tectonic shift of the industrial revolution at the turn of the 20th century. The key to understanding him surfaces when you inevitably find yourself reading the preceding, and tantalizingly connected, work ‘Mont Saint Michel’ and ‘Chartres.’ He is, in the end, a poet.”

 

“Predator” – 1987

 

“Every student should watch ‘Predator’ because apparently many of you haven’t, and you are unjustly hampering your professors’ reference capacity. Look, this recommendation stems from the wrath I felt at a student having seen all of James Bond while having no knowledge of 1980s action staples. Is this a good movie? No, not really. It’s insanely violent, the humor is sketchy, and the language is a wreckage of basic observations drifting in a sea of expletives. On the other hand, you can do — as in I have done, on occasion — a pretty compelling critical feminist reading of the cinematography and screenplay, so if James Bond gets to count as some kind of classic cinema experience, so does ‘Predator.’”