Being the mother of the crucified, risen and glorified savior must be a bit like being a retired pope. Just what exactly are you supposed to do? This, in any case, is something of the challenge that the Irish writer Colm Tóibín, him of The Master fame, has assigned himself this Christmas, though
MORE
It's been a while since I left a movie theater scratching my head but The Master, Paul Thomas Anderson's latest product, did it for me. This movie has received a lot of plaudits for the two central performances by Philip Seymour Hoffman as the Master himself and Joaquin Phoenix as the alcohol-
MORE
This past Sunday the world saw the passing of Joe Cunneen, by any standards a great twentieth century American Catholic. Together with his wife Sally and Bill Birmingham, Joe published Cross Currents for half a century. Yes, I said half a century, fifty years to be precise. In that time he was
MORE
What is it that makes a reader become interested in a really rather unpleasant character, especially when it’s the central character, even sometimes the narrator, of a work of fiction? The obvious examples that spring to my mind at least are the awful Bendrix in Graham Greene’s The End of the
MORE
I just finished reading David Plante’s old (1991) novel, The Accident, having also delved a few days ago into Jens Peter Jacobsen’s older (1880) Danish novel, Niels Lyhne. Plante’s short book takes place in Leuven in the days when it was still known as Louvain. Its central character is an
MORE
Alan Hollinghurst is to me that rare find, a novelist in total control of his material. His latest novel, The Stranger’s Child, stretched over most of the twentieth century and taking up the perspectives of multiple individuals as the scene moves from one era to another, tests this capacity to
MORE
It was only a matter of time before the New Atheists were challenged from within their own ranks. Hitchens and Dawkins and Dennett and Sam Harris, the leading figures among the self-proclaimed “brights” (seriously, with no sense of irony) offer sometimes serious and thoughtful challenges to the
MORE
One of the blessings or perhaps curses of Netflix is that you can sit down any time and fill in the episodes of The Sopranos or Inspector Lewis that your busy schedule forced you to miss. You can even start at the beginning and go through to the end. Which is just fine if there aren’t too many
MORE
Because I spend quite a bit of my working life talking and thinking about the Catholic intellectual tradition, I was more than a little humbled to read Patrick Hayes’ excellent new book, A Catholic Brain Trust, which is the history of the Catholic Commission on Intellectual and Cultural Affairs (
MORE
I’ve been reading a marvelous new collection of essays edited by Penelope Rowlands, Paris Was Ours: Thirty-Two Writers Reflect on the City of Light, and I just saw Woody Allen’s latest movie, Midnight in Paris, so it won’t be a surprise that I’m wallowing in nostalgia, even though my own
MORE
I’m pleased when one of my students is excited to discover that something we are talking about in the course I’m teaching actually connects to something in another course! But I found myself falling into the same set of feelings without the justification of inexperience or youth when two of the
MORE
If you know Walter Mosley for his series of Easy Rawlins stories, already an established classic of the mystery genre, be prepared to be very surprised by his latest novel, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey. Mosley’s protagonist is a 91-year old semi-recluse who depends for his lifeline to the world
MORE
In these days when American bishops seem to have the time to write scolding books informing us how we should be thinking and acting in public life, arguably areas about which people in general know more than their clergy, it is refreshing to discover a newly-translated classic that breathes the air
MORE
Raymond Chandler didn’t just write some of the best American detective fiction. He also wrote about the genre and in much the same hard-boiled style of his own Philip Marlowe. He takes no captives, whether he is writing about authors or readers. “Show me a man or woman who cannot stand
MORE
I’m starting with a long list of names but I need to in order to make my point. So, suppose you had encountered a new book on the Catholic Church by Michael Lacey or Francis Oakley or Joe Komonchak or Frank Sullivan or John Beal? What if it had been written by Gerard Mannion or Lisa Cahill or
MORE
Rebecca Goldstein (see my post of July 5) is not the only current author making much of Henry James. Colm Toíbín has been well-known for his interest in James, at least since his 2005 tour-de-force, The Master, a remarkable novelistic reading of James’s life. Actually, Toíbín’s interest
MORE
When I was in grad school working on a dissertation on Hegel, my director warned me that “Hegel is easy to get into, very hard to escape.” He should know. He’s still inside Hegel. However, I escaped Hegel. The one I cannot escape is Henry James, and I’m not even sure I want to. Of course,
MORE
Ron Hansen’s latest novel is a real page-turner. Want another cliché? I couldn’t put it down. But I also couldn’t decide if it is really a novel or not. Hansen (Santa Clara University) has divided his work pretty much between re-imagining historical characters (Jesse James, Hopkins, and now
MORE
