The Dream-Child's Progress and Other Essays

c o n t e n t s

Introduction 1
Prelude: A Holiday Reading List (Books from a Vanished Library) 5
The Dream-Child’s Progress 15
Upward and Onward 31
The Music of Eternity 37
Origin of the Specious 43
Obama and the Lama 53
The Dawkins Evolution 57
Haiti’s Devils 63
Six Years in Tibet 67
Believe It or Not: On the Very Disappointing Literature of the New Atheis 73
Hypatia Reassembled 91
Taking Liberties: Orlando Furioso Dissacrato 97
Mysteries of Consciousness 105
The Greatest Nation on Earth 109
Charity and Patriotism: Further Reflections 113
Aprés moi le deluge 119
The Mysterious Stranger 125
New Year’s Titanic Gods 133
Golf and the Metaphysics of Morals 137
“Whooshing” Through Life 143
A Modest Proposal 151
Polite Discourtesy 157
A Person You Flee at Parties 163
Farewell to a Mountain 169
The Desire of the Nations 173
Patrick Leigh Fermor, RIP 179
Le Mot Juste 183
Saith the Prescriptivist, Nothing New is Transpired Under the Sun 189
Luminous Wisdom 195
The Needle’s Eye 201
The Inertia of Reputation 205
A Dream for Our Political Season 211
In Praise of Good Bad Books 217
Brilliant Bad Books 221
Therapeutic Superstition 227
The Long March 233
Japan’s Epic 239
These Fragments Have I Shored 245
The Nietzsche of Recanati 251
Reason’s Faith 257
Vinculum Magnum Entis 263
Traditio Deformis 269
Romans 8:19–22 275
Saint Origen 281
Habetis Papam 287
A Dialogue Upon the Island 293
Fie Upon Phi 297
The Scholar and the Nymph 303
Mammon Ascendant 309
Our Atheism is Different 321
Getting to Larisa 327
Christ’s Rabble: The First Christians Were Not Like Us (and a Coda) 335