A great daily pleasure to rank with that first cup of a.m. java is Prufrock, a thoughtful daily arts-and-culture newsletter sent out free by Micah Mattix for the past eight years. Micah announced in today’s epistle that he is stepping down. Not unreasonably, he pleads overwork: He is juggling two books, plus he teaches full-time and does some editing on the side. He is also the literary editor of The American Conservative, but is leaving that post as well. For a couple of years the newsletter was linked to the (late, lamented) Weekly Standard.

Micah has done a superb job combing through the papers and journals and magazines, some of them obscure, to bring to light about four or five delectable cultural pieces every day, notably sifting out the shrill identity-politics-focused culture writing that seized control of the arts pages of the New York Times and many other journalistic outlets in recent years. He says he may restart the newsletter in a few months or issue newsletters intermittently but, for the time being at least, he’s taking a break. It would be wonderful if someone with the same sensibility could take the reins while he’s working on other things. If not, the weekly Arts & Letters Daily is another solid newsletter that covers similar terrain. I thank Micah Mattix for the service he provided his readers on one hand and the culture on the other.