For Andre Dubus, writing was a question of deciphering what was happening in the lives of his characters and translating that for others to see and understand—all of which can be seen clearly in “A Father’s Story.”
Books
Posted inBooks
Review: The joy of fandom
There are any number of excellent books about sports that shine a spotlight on particular teams or seasons or even players, but Michael Schur and Joe Posnanski’s “Big Fan: Two Friends, 82,490 Miles, and the Wild, Wonderful Sports We Love” is the new standard for celebrating the multifaceted nature of fandom itself.
Posted inBooks
Bob Dylan and the Beatles: New book captures how music changes its makers
The musical and personal lives of Bob Dylan and the Beatles were intertwined in myriad ways, as author Jim Windolf teases out in his pleasurable new book, ‘Where the Music Had to Go: How Bob Dylan and the Beatles Changed Each Other—and the World.’
Posted inBooks
‘Father, forgive me’: James O’Toole on Confession in America
In his artful account of American participation in the sacrament of confession, ‘For I Have Sinned: The Rise and Fall of Catholic Confession in America,’ James O’Toole offers a succinct analysis of when and why American Catholics partake of the sacrament.
Posted inBooks
Review: Mario Vargas Llosa’s final book approaches the question of nationhood
His final work, published now for the first time in English, Mario Varvas Lloisa approaches the question of nationhood not in the abstract terms of a sociologist or philosopher, but obliquely, through a kind of literary ventriloquism, in a hybrid form combining the novel and essay.
Posted inBooks
A history of British converts to Catholicism
In her new book, Melanie McDonagh gives us a rollicking account of a group of highly talented writers and artists as they make their way across the Tiber.
Posted inBooks
Review: A saintly variety show
In ‘Canticle,’ a page-turner of a debut novel by Janet Rich Edwards, the reader is offered the Catholic equivalent of a monster truck rally: Just when you think the story has settled into one track, it delivers a fresh surprise.
Posted inBooks
What America’s editors said about communism and the Berlin Blockade
In 1948, the Soviet Union initiated a blockade of the Western zone of the city of Berlin. ‘America’’s contributors and editors took that conflict very, very seriously.
Posted inBooks
Review: A Vatican journalist on seeing the church behind the church
In ‘Struck Down, Not Destroyed,’ America’s Vatican correspondent Colleen Dulle offers a powerful testament to her own commitment to the church—a commitment where scrutiny and critique go hand in hand with reverence.
Posted inBooks
Mexico’s James Joyce: Remembering Carlos Fuentes on a complicated holiday
Carlos Fuentes, sometimes called “the Joyce of Mexico,” “the Balzac of Mexico” or “the Faulkner of Mexico,” was a wizardly innovator of language and narrative and is universally recognized as one of Latin America’s literary giants.