Part of Richard Rodriguez's charm is his refusal to play to people’s expectations of who he should be.
The fascinating premise of Mary Gordon’s lovely little book On Thomas Merton is that, except for his extensive correspondence with Evelyn Waugh and Czeslaw Milosz, Thomas Merton was without literary peers who could perceptively judge, critique and improve his writing.
His lectures mixed paradox and wit, eccentricity and nonsense while spreading the war cry of beauty amid the agonizing ugliness of 19th-century American dress and décor.
When the essayist Meghan O’Gieblyn was a student at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, a Friday night out meant sidewalk evangelism. She and her friends would draw the plan of salvation on a portable chalkboard, hand out tracts and invite passersby to get saved. O’Gieblyn got few takers.
Flanagan invites scandal-plagued Catholics to face the reality of our sin with renewed hope with helpful rules.
Behind the camouflage of celebrity, who was the real Andy Warhol?
For years, Paul Schrader refused to write a spiritual film—until "First Reformed."