Donald Barthelme’s The Dead Father is often viciously cynical, sometimes sexually explicit, but at times it hits home, hard. Like this: To the father who says in exasperation to his son, “I changed your diapers for you, little snot,” Barthleme imagines this response from the son: “This is . . . . Continue Reading »
Pountain and Robins comment that Cool “is in the process of becoming the dominant type of relation between people in Western societies, a new secular virtue. No-one wants to be good any more, they want to be Cool.” . . . . Continue Reading »
Our obsessiveness about exercise and health seems supremely anti-gnostic. But the opposite is the case. Consider the imagery: “Buns of steel” and “Abs of iron” and “Cable-like biceps.” The bodybuilder aims to exercise himself to robothood. His goal to exercise . . . . Continue Reading »
Vladimir Nabokov: “Some of my characters are, no doubt, pretty beastly, but I really don’t care, they are outside my inner self like the mournful monsters of a cathedral facade - demons placed there merely to show they have been booted out.” . . . . Continue Reading »
Chesterton again: “It is currently said that hope goes with youth, and lends to youth its wings of a butterfly; but I fancy that hope is the last gift given to man, and the only gift not given to youth. Youth is pre-eminently the period in which a man can be lyric, fanatical, poetic; but . . . . Continue Reading »
In his inimitably paradoxical style, Chesterton notes that “One of the actual and certain consequences of the idea that all men are equal is immediately to produce very great men . . . . This has been hidden from us of late by a foolish worship of sinister and exceptional men, men without . . . . Continue Reading »
One Axel Schmidt has written a book entitled: Die Suche nach dem rechten Lebens-Mittel. Harry Potter als Beispiel einer modernen praeparatio Evangelii . “Harry Potter” is part of the subtitle, of course, the Harry Potter that, for Schmidt, is an “example of a modern preparation of . . . . Continue Reading »
A reader, John Halton, writes in response to my comments on Tintin in the Congo : “I think the reason why Tintin in the Congo has ‘suddenly become controversial’ is fairly simple: a new paperback edition of the book has just been released in the UK. “As long as I can . . . . Continue Reading »
Published in 1931, Tintin in the Congo has suddenly become controversial. The British Commission for Racial Equality urges that this volume of “racist claptrap” be removed from bookshops everywhere; “It beggars belief in this day and age that any shop would think it acceptable to . . . . Continue Reading »
Shameless plug follows. Jim Manney of Loyola Press was generous enough to ask permission to reprint my essay, “Why Protestants Can’t Write” to The Best Catholic Writing, 2007 . As if I didn’t have enough troubles. The volume includes essays by real Catholics like Pope . . . . Continue Reading »
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