In his masterwork, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche’s mythic hero carries a message—“God is dead!”—throughout the earth, in a parody of the Gospels, calling it his “gift” to mankind. The book begins with an encounter between Zarathustra and a holy man who lives . . . . Continue Reading »
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 »
We all seem to be desperately searching for roots. From the fussy private pastime of Ancestry.com, to the loud public toppling of statues and debunking of old pedigrees of valor, we thirst for a history that will justify our passions. Frantic as this archaeology of desire’s genesis may be, it . . . . Continue Reading »
Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The World: A Family History of Humanity presents three burdens. The first: At 1,300 pages, the book in hardcover weighs several pounds. The second: its cachet. I read books in public all the time and no one ever notices. But in an airport business lounge (I had a . . . . Continue Reading »
Eugene Vodolazkin's latest book is a chronicle of a fictional island, written by many hands. It’s a perfect Bakhtinian set-up, a Dostoevskyan dialogic novel where diverse viewpoints are given equal time.
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I do hope you’ll find at least one title I mention worth looking into. Books about Trump and current politics? Nah, not interested. Continue Reading »
We ought to value persons for their habitual qualities and their achievements. Chilton Williamson’s character and accomplishments are in many respects exemplary—especially his Christian hope. Continue Reading »
The most important book you can read right now is a little (and little-known) Russian novel titled We. First published in English in 1924 by E. P. Dutton, it soon landed its author, Yevgeny Zamyatin, in trouble. An early and enthusiastic Bolshevik—he was arrested in 1905 for his . . . . Continue Reading »
Recently, while reading Sally Rooney’s hugely acclaimed novels for the first time, I messaged a friend to say how bleak I was finding them. He replied that his impression of the books was different. In a way, we were both right. On the one hand, the novels have shafts of light and humor; . . . . Continue Reading »
The inspiration for this column is one of the most wonderfully strange books I’ve encountered in a lifetime of reading (strange and a bit melancholy), John McPhee’s Tabula Rasa. Continue Reading »
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