Suppose I’ve been in the Army
Arts & Culture
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Halfway to Heaven
Garnished with stories of saintly figures and their teachings, Robert Ellsberg’s book consists of eight chapters that are like interlocking facets of happiness and holiness.
Posted inArts & Culture, Of Many Things
Of Many Things
Summer is the perfect time to catch up on reading those books you’ve set aside for that eschatological someday. With that in mind, I offer a short list of summer reading suggestions. The four books can be characterized as follows: new and fun, sort of new and very interesting, old and wonderfu
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Sweetness and Light
Ron Hansen’s new novel is a dollop of sweet cream, an entertainment, a sip of champagne, a screwball comedy, a romp, a bauble, a love letter to Nebraska.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Paradise Lost
During an interview several years ago Edna O’Brien told me a story about an appearance of hers in the 1960’s on an Irish television program during which the host said to the studio audience: “Hands up all of you who think Edna O’Brien has shamed her country.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Film
Melting Pot: Gangs of New York
Not long ago a distant cousin, a genealogy buff, sent me an antique clipping from a local paper about a possible ancestor on trial for murder. In the labor wars of the 19th century, scabs did not have much longevity in the Irish factory towns of the Middle West. This long-forgotten enforcer simply p
Posted inArts & Culture, Poetry
Driving to South Lake
Sometimes you can hear the moon before it ever rises, moaning from a recent conversation with the lapping secrets of an eastern sea.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Whence Human Depravity?
Andrew Delbanco has persuasively argued in his book The Death of Satan How Americans Lost Their Sense of Evil that the word evil has all but vanished from the American vocabulary and with it the symbols once used to articulate our experience of evil In the wake of the tragic events of last Septemb
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Mindful Monks
Robert King a retired philosophy and religion professor and academic dean, discovered only late in his academic career the contemplative dimension of Christianity
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
A Hungry Philosopher
The novelist Iris Murdoch died only two years ago at the age of 79, but already a memoir, film and biography have appeared to preserve her memory for devoted fans and to introduce her to new audiences. In Iris Murdoch: A Life, Peter J. Conradi offers a wide-ranging look at the life of a writer and philosopher who had a remarkable “hunger for the spiritual in a post-theistic age.”