Houellebecq and the Death of Europe
by John WatersMichel Houellebecq books are documents of an internal forensics of human decline that happen to take the form of stories. Continue Reading »
Spirituality of the Suburbs
by Julia YostObituaries for Toni Morrison, who died on August 5, remember her as a Nobel Prize–winning novelist, a black woman novelist, and the last great American novelist—never a Catholic novelist. Morrison converted to Catholicism at age twelve but stood aloof from the Church for years. Despite a few . . . . Continue Reading »
Of Cigarettes and Grace
by Joshua HrenF. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “Thank You for the Light” captures how Christ transfigures the mundane. Continue Reading »
The Bleak World of Téa Obreht
by Peter J. LeithartTéa Obreht's second novel, Inland, brings the Balkans and the Arizona desert together. Continue Reading »
Letters
by VariousImmigration Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christian realism, which was lately set forth in Matthew Schmitz’s “Immigration Idealism” (May), famously relegates Jesus’s social teaching to the realm of the ideal rather than the possible. Schmitz’s endorsement of this realism makes a mistake that . . . . Continue Reading »
Chaucer’s Divine Seriousness
by John V. FlemingChaucer: A European Life marion turner princeton, 624 pages, $39.95 Chaucer has not lacked for biographies, but Marion Turner’s is of a rare ambition and competence. Its method is geographical, even topographical, approaching the poet’s life by way of the extraordinarily disparate places . . . . Continue Reading »
Alice McDermott’s Dying Breed
by Shalom CarmyWe often blame the unfavorable treatment of traditional religion in contemporary art on animus or ignorance. Sometimes that’s an accurate assessment. But we underestimate how devilishly difficult it is to depict devout, God-centered characters convincingly, without making them plastic saints or . . . . Continue Reading »
Singer's Stories
by John WilsonJohn Wilson recommends the writings of Isaac Bashevis Singer.
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Herman Wouk, Storyteller
by George WeigelA devout Jewish writer faced the horrors of war in his work. Continue Reading »
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