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An Apostle of Literature

From the April 2022 Print Edition

In the fall of 2021, a student at the University of Dallas asked me to give a tribute to Dr. Louise ­Cowan, one of the most famous faculty members at the university, as part of an event centered on remembering the dead for All Saints and All Souls. I had had no occasion to ­commemorate her when . . . . Continue Reading »

The Poem Remembers

From the April 2015 Print Edition

Why Homer Matters 
by adam nicolson
 henry holt and co., 
320 pages, $30

 Homer on the Gods and Human Virtue: Creating the Foundations of Classical Civilization by peter j. ahrensdorf
 cambridge, 278 pages, $45 The question of Homer’s existence is a little like the question of . . . . Continue Reading »

Search Me, O God

From the June/July 2013 Print Edition

What is most alarming about popular young adult novelist Cory Doctorow’s vision is the understanding of God that he proffers. Feeling the indifference of the universe does not plunge him into an abyss of meaninglessness, as one might think: It liberates him from this inner Big Brother. . . . . Continue Reading »

Pieties and Pixels

From Web Exclusives

Last May and June, our daughter Therese and two friends, all a year out of college, walked for over six hundred miles on the millennium-old pilgrimage route from southern France across the Pyrenees and the breadth of northern Spain to St. James Compostela. Therese did not take a single picture. When . . . . Continue Reading »