Book review: “The Law and the Prophets,” edited by Robin Fox
The man’s left hand is on the boy’s neck, holding the head down. On the boy’s face is a grimace. In this tight detail, nothing else of the man is [...]
Book review: “A History of Heaven: The Singing Silence” by Jeffrey Burton Russell
Life is a journey. We get to the edge, and then — what? As a Catholic, I grew up with lots of talk about heaven and all the other aspects [...]
Memo to the GOP: Dump Trump
Enough is enough. It is time — right now — for the Republican Party to expel Donald Trump. If the GOP acts now, it will not only do the right [...]
R. H. Mottram, looking back to Trollope and forward to Bellow
by Bassano, vintage print, 14 June 1939 A young William Faulkner admired R. H. (Ralph Hale) Mottram, comparing the literary achievement of the British writer’s trilogy of novels [...]
Book review: “Dragons at Crumbling Castle and Other Tales” by Terry Pratchett
Climbing a mountain in search of the abominable snowman, the group of adventures come across a tiny water wheel on which is attached a piece of parchment. It reads: When [...]
Book review: “The Holocaust in American Life” by Peter Novick
Peter Novick’s 1999 book The Holocaust in American Life examines in great detail and with great insight — and great skepticism — how the killing of six million Jews by [...]
The Prayer of Pope Francis (Adapted from his speech at the conclusion of the 2014 synod)
Lord, help us to avoid the temptation to hostile inflexibility. Lord, help us to avoid the temptation to treat symptoms and not root causes, to bind wounds without first treating [...]
My Top Eleven Books of 2015
Why eleven? I couldn’t cut the list down to ten, that’s why. Last year, I read and reviewed 69 books on my website, some of which had originally appeared in [...]
Book review: “Be Cool” by Elmore Leonard
I want to talk about Elmore Leonard as a practitioner at that high altar of modern literature, metafiction, but first… In Leonard’s 1999 novel Be Cool, Chili Palmer is explaining [...]
Book review: “Get Shorty” by Elmore Leonard
As Elmore Leonard showed in his early novels and short stories, he could write a straight-ahead tale with a tight plot that unfolded step-by-step-by-step to a climax. In most of [...]