“I think cartooning gets at, and re-creates on the page, some sixth sense ... in a way no other medium can.”

There are few uncooler-sounding words than “eighteenth-century marble portraiture.” But the work of Jean-Antoine Houdon can be extraordinarily strange.

  J. D. McClatchy, one of America’s foremost men of letters, died in his home Tuesday at the age of seventy-two. He was the author of eight volumes of poetry and a string of acclaimed opera librettos. He also was a prolific editor, anthologist…