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The Haunting of Russell Kirk

Russell Kirk was haunted by the past. Ghosts prowled his house, peering through windows, moving furniture, startling guests. Far from resenting these presences, Kirk welcomed them. For he regarded society as “a spiritual union of the dead, the living, and those yet unborn.” He propounded this . . . . Continue Reading »

The Road to Stella Maris

When Cormac McCarthy died in June at age eighty-nine, the news touched off grief and adulation such as contemporary literary authors rarely inspire. Musicians, scientists, conservatives, Catholics, all have claimed him. One man circulated and posted the notes he’d taken after a series of phone . . . . Continue Reading »

Devils in the Mind

Aldous Huxley was in certain respects a modern disenchanted intellectual, and he had no use for actual demons; but there are persons as serious and sane as he was who can state with authority that demons and demonic possession are real. Continue Reading »

Job’s Children

In S. Y. Agnon’s 1939 novel A Guest for the Night, one of the protagonists, Daniel Bach, recounts his loss of faith. Throughout World War I, as a soldier in the trenches, he had been meticulous about donning his tefillin to recite his daily prayers. Until one morning, the tefillin . . . . Continue Reading »

Virtuous Evildoers

At the end of Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, Brutus and ­Cassius, the conspirators who had assassinated Caesar, are themselves dead. Brutus has, in fact, fallen upon his sword rather than face capture by the armies of Octavius and Mark Antony. Brutus was bad enough to betray and murder a . . . . Continue Reading »

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