Frank Kermode provoked me to think in fresh ways about the Bible.

Frank Kermode, who rose from humble origins to become one of England’s most respected and influential critics, died Tuesday [August 17, 2010] at his home in Cambridge, England. He was 90.

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...in his best-known book, “The Sense of an Ending,” Mr. Kermode analyzed the fictions we invent to bring meaning and order to a world that often seems chaotic and hurtling toward catastrophe. Between the tick and the tock of the clock, as he put it, we want a connection as well as the suggestion of an arrow shooting eschatologically toward some final judgment.

via NYTimes.com.