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Father’s Day Hieroglyph
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...
Thumbing an Issue of Forbes
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...
The Critic’s Calling
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...
Sin and Redemption in Mad Men
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...
Joyce’s God, Bullied and Bullying
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...
David Brooks at Howards End
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...
Decoration Day, Ten Years On
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...
Summer Reading: Going Home
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...
Starhill and the Tsar
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...
Shakespeare’s Cypriot Crisis
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...
Is Batman Bored?
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)...
Lost in the Reboots
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 ...
Darkness, Wonder, and the New Star Trek
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...
The Novel of Belief and Jewish-American Demography
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,...
