I inherited many books from my older brothers—esoteric books from the 1970s on running and weightlifting, and Pietro di Donato’s classic novel Christ in Concrete, about an Italian immigrant family of laborers shattered by the death of their patriarch. But my favorite is Letters to a Young Poet, by Rainer Maria Rilke. It is a […]
Nick Ripatrazone
Nick Ripatrazone has written for Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, The Paris Review and Esquire. His books include Ember Days, a collection of stories and Longing for an Absent God: Faith and Doubt in Great American Fiction.
Posted inBooks
Review: Bennett Cerf, Random House co-founder and superstar editor
Gayle Feldman’s new biography of Bennett Cerf, ‘Nothing Random,’ is a window into the past of American literary culture.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Virginia Konchan, a poet of miracles
In ‘Requiem,’ her fifth book, Virginia Konchan takes the sacred seriously. She’s jocular with her subjects, including God, yet in doing so she demonstrates sustained attention toward the divine. God is among her natural poetic vocabulary.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Joyelle McSweeney mourns in verse
Joyelle McSweeney’s ‘Death Styles’—her 10th book across creative and critical genres—rewards our attention.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Fiction as a business—with a Catholic subtext
‘Big Fiction’ is a book full of cogent analysis, ambitious argument, juicy quotes from insiders and a demonstration of the central role of Catholics in American publishing.
Posted inArts & Culture, Poetry
The famous poet nuns who filled the pages of America magazine
In mid-century America, nuns and sisters were writing poems, and publishing them in the nation’s finest publications.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Marshall McLuhan, the Catholic thinker who predicted the internet, spent his last days praying with a Jesuit
Marshall McLuhan, the pop culture sage of the electronic world, spent the final days of his life with Frank Stroud, S.J.
Posted inArts & Culture, Television
Review: Netflix’s ‘Midnight Mass’ is Catholic horror at its best
“Midnight Mass” feels like a throwback to the world that received “The Exorcist” in 1973.
Posted inArts & Culture, Television
HBO’s ‘The Art of Political Murder’ profiles the ‘Óscar Romero of Guatemala’
“The Art of Political Murder” reveals what happened when the government finally had enough of Bishop Juan José Gerardi Conedera.
Posted inFaith, Features
The single life is a sacred vocation—and it’s more fulfilling than our culture leads you to believe.
A willingness to recognize the holiness of the ordinary might be the highest ideal of the solitary life.