Arts & Letters
A selection of recent articles on this topic
A Fresh Look at the Old Testament: New and Notable Books
It might be the Old Testament, but it’s certainly inspiring a lot of new books. Here are…
Last Call for Submissions to the First Things Poetry Prize
The second annual First Things Poetry Prize is open for submissions until June 30. Dana Gioia is this year’s…
Jesus After the Critics
Quests for the “historical Jesus” are as old as Christianity itself. The claims of Jesus’s earliest followers…
On Flannery O’Connor’s Centenary
How appropriate that Flannery O’Connor should have been born on the Solemnity of the Annunciation: the liturgical…
Metabolizing the Beautiful
Why Literature Still Matters:Beauty After the Apocalypseby jason m. baxtercassiodorus, 82 pages, $16 My father, a mild-mannered…
The Future of Reading
More is read now in a year than was read before in a hundred years.” So declared…
Classical Renewal by Research
The research pursued these days in university humanities departments does not, as a rule, enjoy high esteem…
The Death of Mass Literacy
In this episode, Wessie du Toit joins Rusty Reno on The Editor’s Desk to talk about his…
Milton and Me
I’ve just gobbled up a newly published book by my dear friend Alan Jacobs, whom I see…
Greetings on a Morning Walk
Blackberry vines, you hold this ground in the shade of a willow: all thorns, no fruit. *…
Why Twain Endures
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Sam Clemens (not yet “Mark Twain”) didn’t know where…
Calendar Rituals
On the first day of a new month, I turn the pages of our calendars. To the…
The God of Wes Anderson
The God of Francis Thompson is a stubborn God. In his seminal poem “The Hound of Heaven,”…
Seduction Is Dead, Long Live the Incel
Incel: A Novelby arx-han296 pages, $23.95 My only diagnosis—my incurable, wholly intractable condition—is that I cannot help…
Conservatives and Culture
In a recent talk at the American Enterprise Institute, Dana Gioia remarked that “in the past half…
