Alan Jacobs

One of my favorite writers these days (besides the aforementioned James Wood) is Alan Jacobs, a professor of English at Wheaton College. He has begun a new column over at Books and Culture Online entitled "Rumors of Glory," which is from a 1980 song by Bruce Cockburn. This is Jacobs describing the inspiration he received from the track, and hinting at what the column will involve in the future:

"In the song, perhaps his best (which is saying a lot), Cockburn sees the "tension" between what we were made to be and what we in fact are; he sees that human culture is produced by that tension, which generates "energy surging like a storm." At once attracted and repelled by that energy, "you plunge your hand in; you draw it back, scorched." And the hand that has been plunged truly into the human world is always marked by that plunging: it's "scorched", yes, but beneath the wound "something is shining like gold—but better." The truth of who we are, given the extremes of divine image and savage depravity, is hard to discern; perhaps we can only achieve it in brief moments; perhaps we only catch rumors of the glory that is, and is to be. But even those rumors can sustain us as we walk the pilgrim path."