America’s film editor reviews “The Godfather,” a film he thought too long but otherwise a remarkable movie by a 33-year-old Francis Ford Coppola.
Vantage Point
Posted inArts & Culture, Vantage Point
From 1994: A review of John Cheever’s ‘Thirteen Uncollected Stories’
A posthumous collection of some of John Cheever’s early stories shows his development as a writer.
Posted inFaith, Vantage Point
‘Let’s get rid of Lent?’ Not so fast.
From 1982: “When unemployment and nuclear weapons sound the notes of despair and dread in our land, many Catholics too may find the sober lessons of Lent more instructive than ever this year.”
Posted inFaith, Vantage Point
Let’s Do Away with Lent
“Isn’t it odd that 2,000 years after the Resurrection the emphasis in Christianity is still more on the cross than on the empty tomb?” wrote Frank Moan, S.J., in 1982.
Posted inArts & Culture, Vantage Point
The American Catholic Writer is dull.
Myles Connolly on American Catholic writers: “I can’t read them, and few others can, for the simple reason that I and the others do not care to be bored.”
Posted inFaith, Vantage Point
A History of Black Catholics in the United States
Recovering the history of black Catholics is an important challenge for all black Americans and for their churches.
Posted inArts & Culture, Vantage Point
From 1974: Walker Percy on the humbling, eccentric craft of writing
Walker Percy: “Writing is a craft like any other. Writers and carpenters had better have respect for the workaday tools of the trade, the feel of the wood under the thumb.”
Posted inFaith, Vantage Point
Henri Nouwen: How to (actually) pray without ceasing
St. Paul does not ask us to spend some of every day in prayer. No, he asks us to pray day and night, in joy and in sorrow, at work and at play, without intermission or breaks.
Posted inFaith, Vantage Point
From 1988: Bart Giamatti on the serious business of sportswriting
In 1988, A. Bartlett Giamatti, later the commissioner of Major League Baseball, addressed the American Society of Newspaper Editors. His speech was printed in America .
Posted inFaith, Vantage Point
The Problem with Mother Angelica and EWTN (from 1995)
From 1995: Mother Angelica, devout and well-intentioned as she may be, has some big problems.