Authors love to write their memoirs of the 1950 rsquo s when they came of age and were apt to have a copy of The Catcher in the Rye in their jacket pocket I started out in this way myself as an English major at Columbia College The atmosphere in the English department in Hamilton Hall reflected t

There is something of an unwritten rule among many writers that unless you rsquo re a celebrity or have done something truly extraordinary you shouldn rsquo t come out with a memoir until you hit at least retirement age if not beyond That rationale counts even more if you rsquo re a journalist It

In the sort of paradox typical of the Christian story as the number of Jesuits in the United States declines it appears that more and more lay women and men find themselves deeply attracted to and committed to the Ignatian spiritual tradition mdash to such an extent that many like Ronald Modras

When Columbia Records celebrated Bob Dylan rsquo s 30th anniversary in the music business in 1992 they feted him with a star-studded concert at Madison Square Garden During the long evening of music legendary artists paid homage to rock rsquo s poet laureate by performing incredible songs from th

The one story that everybody in the theater tells about Jerome Robbins has him angrily giving notes to his dancers in either ldquo West Side Story rdquo or ldquo Billion Dollar Baby rdquo while backing away and then falling into the orchestra pit And no one says a word or makes a move to hel

I met James Torrens S J for the first and only time sometime in the mid-1990 rsquo s in August at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference in Vermont He was an editor then at America living in mid-town Manhattan in the years before I myself became the poetry editor there and I was eager to meet hi