HeyJaredPersonal Canon Formation
A newsletter about how we read and listen to enrich our lives
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 10
- Latest publication
- Sep 8, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 13, 2026
Latest issues
What Is the Body-Not-Body? (opens the original)
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<img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="1080" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kXb-!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbf3c7e78-e2e3-4116-8782-0d6de8a732f6_1080x1080.
There and Back Again, for a While (opens the original)
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He drew a deep breath. “Well, I’m back,” he said.Sam gets the last words in The Lord of the Rings, and they clearly echo the subtitle of The Hobbit: “There and Back Again.” This is the way of most journeys, though of course not all, that we return to where we started. The place to which we return, however, is, as Sam himself has discovered, never exactly the place that we left when we embarked. Ecology is not static, nor are our own bodies; we cannot, as Heraclitus says, “step in the same river
Tolkien’s Vision of Ecological Catastrophe and Restoration (opens the original)
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Surprised by Freshmen . . . (opens the original)
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<img alt="empty chairs in theater" class="sizing-normal" height="4480" src="https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1519452575417-564c1401ecc0?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3wzMDAzMzh8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHwxN3x8Y29sbGVnZXxl
Heroic Language in *The Lord of the Rings* (opens the original)
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Here is a link to my first essay on Tolkienian style, in case you missed it. Warning: today’s piece includes a disturbing picture of the aftermath of a firebombing.<a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!X2FN!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F20a300a3-9aa1-4c24-8590-21a00c625dba_4032x3024.jpeg" target="_bla
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