Arts & Letters
A selection of recent articles on this topic
Disintegrating England
The English Soul:Faith of a Nationby peter ackroydreaktion books, 416 pages, $30 Peter Ackroyd is a major…
Letters—December 2024
Still Breathing I appreciated Matthew Burdette’s insights into “Progressive Supersessionism” (October 2024), drawing out continuities between today’s…
Lady Scrooges
I noticed it last Christmas: It’s the women who really hate Ebenezer Scrooge. In the opening scene of…
Apophatic
Not with the myth and phosphorus of metaphor. Notwith lines of force looped in true-love knots.Not by…
Heresy Costs
About one-third of the way into Nick Cave’s Southern Gothic novel And the Ass Saw the Angel (1989), the…
Paul Bowles’s The Sheltering Sky at 75
The Sheltering Sky begins with one protagonist opening his eyes and ends with another refusing to open…
From LSD to Christ
With psychedelics, I was sure—sure I’d found a Way, and even more that I’d only begun to…
Immigration Realities
If you have followed this column for a while, you will have gathered that there are a…
Christ-Haunted Sally Rooney
I grew up in Ireland in the 1970s and eighties. The parents of my friends, neighbors, cousins,…
Reclaiming Our Catholic Schools
An alarming number of children from Catholic families lose their faith during elementary and secondary school. By…
Burdened By What Has Been
History and contemporary life often present reflective persons with terrible ethical and political choices. One current American…
Book Recommendations for Christmas
October is almost gone (we’ve had a lovely fall season here in Wheaton), and it’s time—if you…
Jane Austen’s Novels are Darker Than You Think
Jane Austen’s DarknessBY JULIA YOSTWISEBLOOD BOOKS, 86 PAGES, $8 A glance at the cover of Julia Yost’s…
Baffled Joy
I have long known who Mischa Elman was: one of the great violinists of the last century (1891–1967).…
In the Activities Room
No one will say it, but we knowtoday’s fresh-flamed hibiscus flowerreveals in one brief, glorious showour birth,…
