Just got my copy of Alan Jacobs’ latest book. I’ve listened to Jacobs’ commentary on most things literary via Ken Myers’ Mars Hill Audio Journal. In fact, I’ve listened to him so much — especially Volume 77 and his extended discussion on C.S. Lewis — that I can actually hear his voice in my head as I read. I’ve read Jacobs is a Southerner; in fact I think hear a Miss-Alabama, Delta, sort of accent.

Original Sin is no theological discourse rather as the cover notes, it’s a “cultural history.” Jacobs is particularly gifted in discerning a story worth telling. In fact it’s his story-telling which I enjoy as much as learning what he’s teaching. To think that one could engage one’s culture while bringing to bear the larger questions of humanity and eternity. I always felt somewhat of a misfit as an English major in that I wanted to apply literature personally. I didn’t want to dissect literature, I wanted to digest it — so that it would nourish and change me. Alas and alack, that was too unquantifiable, and I was pushed towards the Freudian. What a waste. As I read Jacobs, I gather he’s of the former, and I think I would’ve enjoyed him immensely as a professor.