We French have for some years been overcome by a furor for republicanism and for citizenship. There is no activity so humble that it cannot take on an intimidating nobility as soon as it is associated with citizenship. The republic calls us, besieges us, smothers us—but where is the republic? Are . . . . Continue Reading »
America’s national epic was not written in meter and verse. Nor, for that matter, was it written by an American. Yet The Pilgrim’s Progress is nonetheless the primal American story, the account of our mad flight from order and lonely quest for grace. Hemmed in by civilization, resentful of kin, . . . . Continue Reading »
Everyone should have a copybook of maxims. So I tell my students at the start of freshman year. “You will meet priceless bits of wit and wisdom in the next eight semesters—write them down and tap them often.” They hear it as bad advice, though. Don’t they have enough to do already? But the . . . . Continue Reading »
The library in question is not the Great Library of Alexandria, but it is every bit as much a thing of the past, existing now as scarcely a memory—almost legendary, positively Edenic. I think it had been my ambition throughout much of my life to accumulate a collection of books in the ideal, . . . . Continue Reading »
Evelyn Waugh’s slim and critically unappreciated novel, Helena, is, at bottom, an act of faith in the reality of revelation. Continue Reading »
In Gautreaux’s stories, signals demand knowledge, even wisdom, if they are to be understood. Continue Reading »
By now, everyone who reads contemporary fiction will have heard of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel’s acclaimed historical novels about Thomas Cromwell, the powerful advisor to Henry VIII who all but single-handedly disestablished the Catholic Church in England. Anathema to many . . . . Continue Reading »
Learning lessons from Molly Hughes’s rollicking chronicles of Victorian family life. Continue Reading »
Shūsaku Endō’s Silence is now widely regarded as a modern classic. The initial reaction of Japanese Catholics, however, was largely hostile. Continue Reading »
What do we do with—or, more accurately, without—that strange breed of writer, the literary critic? Continue Reading »
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