I met James Torrens S J for the first and only time sometime in the mid-1990 rsquo s in August at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference in Vermont He was an editor then at America living in mid-town Manhattan in the years before I myself became the poetry editor there and I was eager to meet hi
Arts & Culture
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Rabbinical Thinking
What would Jesus do This simple formula has found its way onto wristbands and T-shirts as WWJD It is promoted as the Christian rsquo s sure guide to the right moral choice But this is not the question Harvard theologian Harvey Cox uses to catch the moral significance of Jesus In fact he has rea
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Dancing for Identity
The one story that everybody in the theater tells about Jerome Robbins has him angrily giving notes to his dancers in either ldquo West Side Story rdquo or ldquo Billion Dollar Baby rdquo while backing away and then falling into the orchestra pit And no one says a word or makes a move to hel
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Storytelling at Its Irish Best
In the very useful Penguin Book of Irish Fiction 2000 editor Colm T ib n ultimately selected but one short story from the prolific Benedict Kiely an unenviable task to say the least T ib n chose Homes on the Mountain a modest-seeming tale about a 12-year-old boy and his extended family tw
Posted inArts & Culture
The Second Adam
The paintings on the walls of the Brancacci Chapel in Florence show Masaccio (1401-28) at his artistic and spiritual best, least in the way he links Adam and Eve with Christ. Driven from the Garden of Eden, our first parents are in despair.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
‘I don’t know who I am yet’: Gabriel García Márquez’s ‘Living to Tell the Tale’
The front cover of ‘Living to Tell the Tale’ shows the author as a wide-eyed child of 2, while the back cover shows the Nobel laureate as a distinguished gentleman of 75.
Posted inArts & Culture, Film
The Call of the King: ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King’
Whether we love or hate the “Lord of the Rings” films, we have to admire them: they are a monumental cinematic achievement. Shot over 274 days for $281 million and lasting 558 minutes, these films have, at the time of writing and in the United States alone, grossed over $897 million.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
A Force to Reckon With
In this brief but compelling little book Joseph Kelly professor of religious studies at John Carroll University in Cleveland Ohio offers a thoughtful contemporary theodicy for young Christians Framed as a meditation on the events of Sept 11 2001 the book marshals Kelly rsquo s wide knowledge
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Sensational Secrets
Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is a fast-paced, well-plotted murder mystery that takes the reader through the Louvre a long night of murders and a police chase out of Paris to a wet morning in London. There the identity of the evil Teacher who masterminded the killings is revealed.