Archive

In a wall relief at the shrine of Hathor,goddess of love and joy, Thutmose III,Napoleon of Egypt, conqueror of Syria holds a ball in one hand and in the...

In the obits, ballplayers still finish first,their August exploits no one quite remembersrestored to life: the diving stop unrehearsedamid the routine plays of life’s surrender. But beneath our unnamed...

Critics, Monsters, Fanatics, and Other Literary Essays by cynthia ozick houghton mifflin harcourt, 224 pages, $25 At eighty-eight, Cynthia Ozick focuses her attention where she always has—Henry James, Harold...

The conspiracy theories began to swirl soon after Mad Men ’s sixth season opened with a shot from the perspective of a dying man being rescued. The sight, just...

Last week, Melinda Selmys’  On the Square  essay touched upon an aspect of James Joyce’s writing that’s been on my mind lately: Joyce as a Catholic novelist. Though he...

In his “City Meditations” series (which you really should be reading), Alan Jacobs offers a critique  of Wendell Berry’s 2012 Jefferson Lecture . Berry’s “Boomers and Stickers,” he points...

The Drive-By Truckers released their fourth studio album in June, 2003—but it seems more fitting to take Memorial Day as its tenth anniversary. It is, after all, the modern...

Spring is here and summer is fast approaching, so now seems as good a time as any to offer some suggestions for reading, preferably outdoors. Since Rod Dreher’s The...

A great deal has already been written about Rod Dreher’s new book, The Little Way of Ruthie Leming (including William Doino’s  review ). I only have two short comments...

It’s easy to read, perform, or teach Othello as Shakespeare’s race play—with, I should say, good cause. In this regard, he may well have written a play that speaks...

A few more thoughts on wonder and contemporary culture, if you’ll bear with me. Wonder as a sought-after object (as opposed to a manner of apprehending what is found)...

My  previous post  on  Star Trek  and wonder caused a reader to ask what I thought of the thematic darkness of  Deep Space Nine , one of the later ...

Saturday evening, burned out and brain-dead after two weeks of grading papers, I plopped down in the living room to take advantage of my weekend by watching the first...

In December, Paul Elie caused a small stir by claiming that “the novel of belief” has disappeared. I don’t want to wade into that debate—-for those who missed it,...