Must art always promote a particular idea or ideology? Jed Perl argues that “the artist in the act of creation must stand firm in the knowledge that art has its own laws and logic.”
Books
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Water is essential for life. Katy Carl’s debut novel reminds us that God is, too.
Katy Carl’s debut novel traces the slow growth of love between two people thirsting for something more out of life.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Motherhood and the impossibility of perfect work-life balance
Lara Bazelon’s ‘Ambitious Like a Mother’ raises (perhaps unintentionally) some interesting questions about gender, work, family and ambition—and how individual women (and men) who are blessed with options might want that four-way intersection to look.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust: Reality or Revisionism?
A new book by David I. Kertzer argues that Pope Pius XII has more responsibility for the Holocaust than previously reported. But is the charge merited?
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
The Jesuit influence in David Foster Wallace’s final, unfinished novel
David Foster Wallace’s novella ‘Something to Do With Paying Attention’ features two conversion narratives, a “fearful Jesuit” and “the death of childhood’s limitless possibility.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: What is a woman?
Kaya Oakes offers reflections on what it means to live as a woman today. This meaning grappling with growing older in a society and a church that both continue to prize feminine youth, fecundity and docility above all else.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: The history of Yellowstone, our greatest national park
Readable, well researched and carefully documented, ‘Saving Yellowstone’ does not get bogged down in minutiae in its history of the park.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: The limits of the human body
In ‘The Body Scout,’ Lincoln Michel explores the limits of what it means to be human through a future in which companies tempt consumers with upgrades—new arms, organs and more.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Ten tales of Dubliners
In his new 10-story collection, Roddy Doyle tells stories of catastrophes—unemployment, a deadly storm and Covid-19—and their socioeconomic and psychological fallout on Irish families.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: The devout Catholic at the heart of the Supreme Court’s landmark same-sex marriage case
In his memoir, Greg Bourke illuminates the devout faith that sustained him and his husband through the legal journey that resulted in the groundbreaking marriage-equality ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.