The Cloister Walkby kathleen norris riverhead books, 304 pages, $23.95 I had read Norris’ previous book, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, and enjoyed the way she consistently unites the exalted and the mundane, finding manifestations of the holy in the most ordinary events and objects. In The . . . . Continue Reading »
Sacred Music of the 20th Century LAL-2001, Life Art, Ltd. 129 Frandview Terrace, Box 300, Lakeside, MT 59922 The most unexpected classical music recording I’ve run across recently is Sacred Music of the 20th Century, a compact disc chiefly devoted to a cantata by John Boyle called Requiem for the . . . . Continue Reading »
Once we’ve denounced the balderdash that all too often passes for teaching in contemporary American colleges, there still remains the question of what we ought to teach instead. Indignation is an insufficient alternative to the brutal secularization of the college curriculum. But some conservative . . . . Continue Reading »
It is common in some circles to say that our legal system worries too much about rights and not enough about responsibilities. The complaint is a fair one, as far as it goes. But the real problem with rights—and with what Mary Ann Glendon calls “rights talk,” a kind of talk that dominates . . . . Continue Reading »
Once one gets right down to it, the difference between liberals and conservatives traces home to a disagreement about the basic source of human troubles. Liberals are inclined to blame external causes—for example, poverty, prejudice, poor rearing, or just plain misfortune—against which . . . . Continue Reading »
From the earliest days of Christianity, the Gospels’ resemblance to certain myths has been used as an argument against Christian faith. When pagan apologists for the official pantheism of the Roman empire denied that the death-and-resurrection myth of Jesus differed in any significant way from the . . . . Continue Reading »
Last year I saw two truly vile movies, Pulp Fiction and Kids. The first turned my stomach. The second filled me with shame for having sat through it: leaving the theater, I felt unclean. Those movie experiences reminded me of the depths to which popular culture has sunk, a reminder . . . . Continue Reading »
Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist by peter berkowitz harvard university press, 313 pages, $35 A consensus about the meaning of Nietzsche’s philosophy continues to elude us. One might have thought, for example, that a man who praises cruelty, denounces pity, and entertains the idea of mass . . . . Continue Reading »
Chinese astronomers Hi and Ho were put to death for failing to foretell the solar eclipse of 2169 B.C. I myself was taken by surprise in 1979. A sifting of light pulled me away from my baby’s morning nap and onto the edge of the porch. A line in the west, the leading edge of shadow dividing light . . . . Continue Reading »
Mencken: A Lifeby fred hobsonrandom house, 650 pages, $35 H. L. Mencken, My Life as Author and Editor.edited with an introduction by jonathan yardleyknopf, 450 pages, $30 H. L. Mencken, Thirty-five Years of Newspaper Work . edited by fred hobson, vincent fitzpatrick, and bradford . . . . Continue Reading »
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