A violent assault on a famous author revives an ugly history: the fatwa against Salman Rushdie.
Literature
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, Catholic Book Club
Look back: America magazine’s love affair with J.F.K.
America’s editors shy away from endorsing political candidates—but J.F.K. proved a hard case, both during his life and in the decades since.
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, Catholic Book Club
Parish priest, sociologist, novelist: The many imaginations of Father Andrew Greeley
The Rev. Andrew Greeley had an enormous impact on the American Catholic Church—including through his many contributions to this magazine.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Joan Didion, Wendell Berry, Sally Rooney: Summer review for the Catholic Book Club
A very sunburned literary editor looks back on some Catholic Book Club columns of yore.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
We live in the age of anti-heroes. But few can top John Kennedy Toole’s Ignatius J. Reilly.
John Kennedy Toole’s only novel was published after his death—but quickly became a classic of American comic fiction.
Posted inArts & Culture, Vantage Point
From 1981: John Kennedy Toole and the myth of fame
This story has no moral, only a great joy for Mrs. Toole, and a great sadness.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Alice McDermott and the Brooklyn Irish Catholic community that inspired her writing
In her eight novels and many short stories, Alice McDermott has brought a distinctly Catholic imagination to her fiction—but not in the same way as her forebears.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
The greatest American Jesuit you’ve probably never heard of
One of the great Catholic thinkers of 20th-century America is too often overlooked: William F. Lynch, S.J.