A year ago at this time, I devoted a column to “Hopes and Wishes for 2024”—mostly hopes, as it turned out, but with a handful of wishes. (I was surprised and touched by the number of people I heard from after that column appeared.) Here I am looking back at the list and also looking forward, hopefully, to the year to come.
My very first hope, a year ago, was that “our dear surviving cat, Nina, old now yet still lively, will be with us to celebrate the beginning of 2025.” Alas, that didn’t happen. But after Nina was gone—we miss her still—my daughter Katy adopted a cat who had been one of more than a hundred in a house presided over by a Chicago woman who had a long-running scam. After she was busted, the cats were taken to a number of legitimate shelters in the area. Katy found one of them online. The cat's official name was “Brunello,” which we shortened to Bruno. He is very slender, with long limbs, and quite adorable. Remarkably, he hadn’t lost his ability to bond with people—on the contrary. He loves us (Katy especially), and we love him.
My second hope was that the Cubs would re-sign Cody Bellinger, “giving him the pricey, long-term contract that will be required.” That didn’t happen either! But Yankee Stadium should be a great place for him to play.
But my third hope—that Gregory Wolfe’s Slant Books would publish A. G. Mojtabai’s new book before the end of 2024—did indeed come to fruition; Mojtabai’s novella Featherless appeared in December (and you should order a copy today).
And so it went throughout the list. Many hopes were not fulfilled, but some were. Diane Glancy didn’t win the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, but she did produce yet another marvelous book, Quadrille: Christianity and the Early New England Indians (the subtitle may mislead you about its nature, but it is in its own way a very accurate description), which you should make haste to acquire along with Featherless. First Things, Prufrock, Current, Plough Quarterly, Comment, and the Marginalia Review of Books continued to thrive; also the Washington Review of Books. Wiseblood Books had a banner year. And though the second volume of J. C. Scharl’s verse-drama trilogy still hasn’t appeared, it is promised for this October.
Last year, I hoped that “Israel’s campaign to root out Hamas concludes successfully, insofar as success is obtainable, and sooner rather than later.” That hope, shared by countless people—people who in some respects are deeply divided over the nature of the conflict—was not fulfilled in 2024; on the contrary. May it happen before too long.
And last year, I hoped that “the recently arrived migrants who have entered our country in vast numbers, often with children in tow, will find decent lodging, jobs, and ‘opportunity.’ And I hope that, whoever the next president may be, Republicans and Democrats will work together to achieve some semblance of border control.” I remain hopeful on that score.
I have other hopes for 2025, of course. I hope that Theresa—our oldest grandchild, who started at Christendom College in Virginia last August—continues to thrive there. She loved her first semester. It helps that more than 50 percent of her fellow students are from Catholic homeschooling families.
I hope that the novelist T. C. Boyle will continue to recover from his injuries, and that we can expect to have his next book in hand in the spring of 2026.
Anouar Brahem did not release a new album in 2024, alas, but maybe he will this year; I hope so.
I hope that our son Andrew’s months of study in Cairo this coming semester will be blessed.
I hope that in 2025, Wendy and I will discover some splendid jigsaw puzzles of the kind we enjoy and can manage (maybe some by Charles Wysocki that are no longer available “new” but might be obtainable from dealers).
I hope that Andrew Klavan takes good care of himself and continues his splendid Cameron Winter series for Mysterious Press.
My greatest hope, against the odds, is for respite for my dear Wendy. But I am also thinking just now of our dear friends in Altadena, and of the countless others whose lives have been upended by the wildfires. Wendy and I lived in Pasadena for roughly twenty years (for much of that time sharing a big old house with my mom and brother). Three of our four children were born while we were living there. Wendy often took our kids (and other people's kids) to Eaton Canyon; it was one of their favorite places. Oh, Lord.
John Wilson is a contributing editor for the Englewood Review of Books and senior editor at the Marginalia Review of Books.
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Image by Scott Medling, via Creative Commons. Image cropped.
