I frequently wondered what happened to Jody Bottum. I hear he was forced out of First Things after Fr. Neuhaus died. Wikipedia says it was an argument over funding and the direction of the journal. I've liked to speculate it's because he wrote a surprising piece about the compatibility of Catholicism and postmodernism. It was one of the first essays I turned to when I started exploring Derrida and Foucault and wondering why their theories were so opposed by Catholics when, from what I can tell, they criticized modernity, not Catholicism. Moreover, I thought, because modernity tore down Catholicism, the postmodernists might be allies, albeit of a queer sort. Bottum corroborated my hunch.
In any event, the man is back in his home state of South Dakota, teaching classics and apparently writing great stuff. The most recent publication: a collection of his poetry. I haven't read it, but in light of my ongoing counter-culture conduct of promoting right-hemispheric propensities like localism and poetry, as well as essays from outlets like University Bookman, here's an essay about it.
