Yesterday the Powerline blog—a politically conservative blog out of the Twin Cities—linked to my essay on Mario Puzo’s novel The Godfather. Over a thousand first-time readers descended upon A Commonplace Blog, although few lingered long enough to poke around in the remains of my literary thought. One who did was the photographer and printmaker William Porter, who had been a classics scholar in another life. From 1979 to 1982, he had held a Mellon postdoctoral fellowship in Renaissance s...
