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The Neuhaus I Knew

From the November 2015 Print Edition

Richard John Neuhaus: A Life in the Public Square by randy boyagoda image, 459 pages, $30 The Richard Neuhaus I knew first appears on page 179 of Randy Boyagoda’s biography of the founder and ­perpetual genius loci of First Things. It is then, anno Domini 1975, that RJN embarks on that process . . . . Continue Reading »

The End of Art

From the June/July 2008 Print Edition

Nearly everyone cares—or says he cares—about art. After all, art ennobles the spirit, ­elevates the mind, and educates the emotions. Or does it? In fact, tremendous irony attends our culture’s continuing investment—emotional, financial, and social—in art. We behave as if . . . . Continue Reading »

Barometer Falling

From the April 1999 Print Edition

Some books are like barometers: interesting chiefly for what they tell us about the prevailing climate. Lawrence Rainey’s Institutions of Modernism is a case in point. Readers who care about literary modernism will find little to detain them in this book. The names of James Joyce, Ezra Pound, . . . . Continue Reading »