Parsing the pros and cons of ‘A Canticle for Leibowitz,’ the latest selection of the Catholic Book Club.
Catholic Book Club
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
What has the Catholic Book Club been reading?
The two most recent selections by the Catholic Book Club couldn’t have been more different: A look at Thomas Jefferson’s quixotic attempt to rewrite the Bible, and Niall Williams’s richly evocative novel about a small village in the west of Ireland.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
The gleeful language of Niall Williams’s ‘This Is Happiness’
The latest selection of the Catholic Book Club, this novel by Niall Williams is full of lively, dancing imagery sure to bring glee to the reader.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
When Thomas Jefferson rewrote the Bible
Peter Manseau, the curator of American religious history at the Smithsonian, offers his definitive description of Thomas Jefferson’s eclectic efforts to remake the Bible in the Catholic Book Club’s latest selection.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
The Catholic Book Club explores two literary classics
Over the summer the Catholic Book Club read John Kennedy Toole’s darkly comic novel, ‘A Confederacy of Dunces,’ and this fall we are finishing up our discussion of John Howard Griffin’s ‘Black Like Me.’
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Reading John Howard Griffin’s challenging ‘Black Like Me’
Kevin Spinale, S.J., offers his initial thoughts on John Howard Griffin’s ‘Black Like Me,’ the latest selection of the Catholic Book Club.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
We need John Kennedy Toole’s ‘A Confederacy of Dunces’ now more than ever
Among the many clichés operative in Covid-time (“in these uncertain times,” “the new normal”), there is the sturdy cliché, “now more than ever.” Well, I think we need comedy now more than ever.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Thoughts on the Magdalene, Part 2
Another look at the story of Mary Magdalene and interpretations of her throughout history.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
There’s something about Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene’s actual history, as Margaret Arnold tells us, is much richer than we think. The tradition’s appropriation of Mary Magdalene is much more intricate and complex—as the saint herself is complex.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Unpacking ‘St. Peter’s B-List’: Poems on faith, laughter, guilt, anguish and hope
The new selection of the Catholic Book Club is a collection of poems about the saints.