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Testing the Spirits of Jon Fosse’s A Shining

Joshua Hren

A Shiningby jon fossetranslated by damion searlstransit books, 88 pages, $16.95 In her little-known essay “The Spirit and Writing in a Secular World,” the reclusive Pulitzer Prize winner Donna...

George Saunders on Story

Joshua Hren

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Lifeby george saundersnrandom house, 432 pages, $28 In his...

The First Commandment of Fiction

Joshua Hren

What insults my soul,” Zadie Smith confessed last year in The New York Review of Books, “is the idea—popular in the culture just now . . . that we...

The Centurion’s Tale

Joshua Hren

Ernest Hemingway’s little-known play Today is Friday, originally published in the collection Men Without Women, is a haunting depiction of Christ’s crucifixion. The story begins in archetypal Hemingway fashion....

Kerouac’s Beatific Visions

Joshua Hren

Jack Kerouac, who coined the phrase “Beat Generation,” railed against those who interpreted it as meaning “beat down,” “heedless,” or “rootless.” For him, it meant “beato, the Italian for...

The Banality of Evil

Joshua Hren

“Evil is ‘thought-defying,’ because thought tries to reach some depth, to go to the roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustrated because there is nothing. That is...

The Lesser Angels of Our Nature

Joshua Hren

The lesser angels of our present dangerArraign the better angels of our natureAnd rearrange the stature of our hatredOn which the union of our state is wagered. For Madison...

In Secular Saeculorum

Joshua Hren

If all the oughts and nots given by GodAre excommunicated from debate,Except in terms of conscience which she lauds,I’d like to blame our Holy Mother State. I’d blame this...

Sanguine

Joshua Hren

Requiescat in pace, Father Jacques HamelMartyred at the church of St. Étienne,Named for the first martyr.  Before Pure Will he bows so reverently,His captive mind conformed to prison sheikh...

Gehenna

Joshua Hren

Where Moloch relished children sacrificedOutside Jerusalem, where worms won’t die. Am I a fool to claim the cursed valeHas migrated from Israel to Mosul? A pack of cigarettes for...