The critic Lee Siegel has just begun a culture blog at the New Republic’s website that may soon become a must-visit simply on grounds of pretentious hilarity. Here’s Siegel on the character Vito on The Sopranos, who’s fled to New Hampshire after his homosexuality becomes public knowledge among his fellow made men: “As I watch him run from the former Mafia colleagues who want to kill him because they’ve discovered that he’s gay, he reminds me of Walter Benjamin fleeing with his heavy cumbersome suitcase across the Pyrennees.” Walter Benjamin was the Marxist social and literary critic who ran from the Nazis and died in Spain in 1940.

I mean, come on, Lee.