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A Theology of Fiction

Cassandra Nelson

A spirited debate has been going on for nearly a decade now, much of it in these pages, about the apparent dearth of religious ideas in recent American fiction. Because...

When the TV Turns Off

Cassandra Nelson

The Silenceby don delilloscribner, 128 pages, $22 To say that Don DeLillo dislikes television would be an understatement. He actually seems to think it’s imperiling our souls. DeLillo’s novel...

A Good Editor Is Hard to Find

Cassandra Nelson

Good Things Out of Nazareth:The Uncollected Letters of Flannery O’Connor and Friendsby flannery o’connor edited by benjamin b. alexander convergent, 416 pages, $26 In graduate school, I was a...

Dare to Knock

Cassandra Nelson

The Kingdomby emmanuel carrèrefarrar, straus and giroux, 400 pages, $28 The genius and the apostle are alike, according to Kierkegaard, in that both bring new ideas into the world....

Quotidian Wonder

Cassandra Nelson

Zero K by don delillo scribner, 288 pages, $26 In 2013, Jonathan Safran Foer claimed that “Only those with no imagination, and no grounding in reality, would deny the...

Honor Thy Child

Cassandra Nelson

Lila: A Novel by marilynne robinson farrar, straus and giroux, 272 pages, $26 Of Pieter Bruegel’s sixteenth-century de­­pic­­tion of Icarus crashing into the sea, W. H. Auden observes “how...

Pears Not Pixels

Cassandra Nelson

Bleeding Edgeby thomas pynchonpenguin, 477 pages, $28.95 Don’t be fooled by the slapstick comedy and the silly names, the labyrinthine plots that careen around and veer maddeningly toward irresolution...