Books
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I often think about how photography conditions and limits our imagination of times after it was invented but earlier than we can personally remember. I think it's difficult for most of us to see events of roughly 1860 to 1950 in color, real color, exactly as we see it now. Or at least we have…
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I mean paperback in the sense that it was used fifty or more years ago, when it referred mainly to the small editions badly printed on cheap paper of generally disposable if not trashy fiction–before there was such a thing as "quality" or "trade" paperbacks. For a book to have its original printing in this…
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Are they really as crazy as Dostoevsky makes them seem? Or is it just that Dostoevsky was somewhat crazy?
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I finally bought and read this a couple of weeks ago. I suspect most people who read this blog and would be interested have already read it, but in case that's not true, I'll say that anyone interested in Flannery O'Connor should read it, both for what it reveals about her and for what it…
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I bought this book, a discard from the local public library, for a dollar a year or so ago. I don't know how long it might have been before I read it had I not left it in my office and turned to it one day a couple of months ago when I needed to…
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(It seems a little crass to publish this somewhat frivolous post when someone I know, if only through his writings and through mutual acquaintance, is close to death. But that's the way of it, as both Frost ("Out, out–") and Auden ("Musee des Beaux Arts") have noted in their well-known poems: the rest of us…
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At least for another hour or so, at least in my time zone. So in the great cynic's honor, let's have a few choice items from The Devil's Dictionary. We need look no further than the "M"s for half a dozen nice ones. MAGPIE, n. A bird whose thievish disposition suggested to someone that it might be taught…
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Going at least back to the use of the eagle as a symbol for St. John the Evangelist, there has been an impulse to describe theologians and philosophers as soaring or climbing to heights inaccessible to the ordinary mind. Such imagery occurred to me often while I read this book, and I have to admit…
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Craig Burrell has written such an insightful and extensive review of David Bentley Hart's The Experience of God that I'm half-tempted to write a review of the review. But instead I'll just provide you with the link and recommend strongly that you read it for yourself. I bought the book a couple of months ago, in…
Light On Dark Water 