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Books
March 19, 2001
Reading Mark Salzman rsquo s spare astringent novella about the struggles of a cloistered Carmelite nun inevitably reminds one of Ron Hansen rsquo s contemporary masterpiece Mariette in Ecstasy Sister John of the Cross is decades older than Hansen rsquo s teenage novice and has lived in the conv
Books
February 19, 2001
The distinction between fact and fiction is often a contested one Nor does it remain static especially for novelists like Graham Greene and Michael Ondaatje who have drawn their inspiration from the fractured politics of our just past century In The English Patient it was World War II and its ru
Culture
September 23, 2000
Back in the 1950’s, when I was a kid in a Jesuit high school, a novel called Mr. Blue, by Myles Connolly, was all the rage. The eponymous hero was a mystical type who combined the social activism of Dorothy Day with the contemplative reserve of Thomas Merton. In short, he made Catholicism cool
Books
July 29, 2000
Memoirists rule the literary roosts these days but sometimes with a bad conscience Shouldn rsquo t they be writing poetry or at least novels if they are serious writers Isn rsquo t this retailing of their personal lives a knock-off item or maybe even a cheat a pretense of authenticity undercut
Books
April 08, 2000
On the way as a guest to the annual meeting of the Chrysostom Society a community of Christian writers that includes novelists poets biographers and essayists I toted along this newly arrived book--oil to Houston perhaps By the time the plane landed in that city I had finished the seven grac
Books
February 19, 2000
With his latest novel Roddy Doyle the laureate of Dublin rsquo s present quot lower middle classes quot moves down the social ladder a notch or two and a century back in time His sympathy remains however clearly with the proles and in Henry Smart he has found his ideal protagoniststreet-sma