“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.“ — Mark Twain Wes Anderson is a hard case. As a director … Read more
Reviewing a novel by Martin Amis recently in the pages of The Weekly Standard, David Gelernter spoke of irony as a “glacier that has pinned modern culture under its massive arrogance.” A nifty turn of phrase, certainly. But surely it applies to irony as it is currently known and practiced, not to the irony of … Read more
Why do you let me see ruin;why must I look at misery?Destruction and violence are before me;there is strife, and clamorous discord.Then the LORD answered me and said:Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets, so that one can read it readily.For the vision still has its time,presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint. … Read more
Flourishing fully in the 19th century, with Darwin and Marx ascendant and Freud in the wings, the novel matured as a very worldly art form. A kind of heightened journalism, the art of Dickens, James, Balzac and others chronicled society while examining class, romance, war, and politics. The great Russians — Tolstoy and Dostoevksy, the … Read more
I have loved reading since I first put “see,” “spot,” and “run” together, and so one of the great joys I anticipated from motherhood — not in vain — was the pleasure of revisiting childhood books and being introduced to ones I’d missed the first time around. At first there were board books and Pat … Read more
Aunt Lucerne was the only relative Philip and Roger Knight had, so it was perhaps fitting that she should be absolute. Once in the dimly remembered past she may have entertained doubts, but this was long before her nephews came to know her. In their experience, she had always been omniscient, riddled with certainty and … Read more
On Thursday, May 1, 1783, with “the young Mr. (Edmund) Burke” present, Samuel Johnson remarked: “It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read if they can have anything else to amuse them.” The word “reading” here does not mean, … Read more
Imagine one body with two heads. The twin giants of the Catholic literary revival of the early 20th century, G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, were so much associated in the eyes of the reading public that they together became the butt of the caricaturist’s humor and the satirist’s wit. Most famously, George Bernard Shaw, in … Read more
I taught for a while in Paris and, after knocking off work, would walk down the rue des Écoles, past the College de France, past the statue of Joachim du Bellay, to the Cinéma Henri Langois — the best repertory cinema I know — to see a Western. I took my seat in the dark … Read more
Even among fantasy devotees who recognize Tolkien as the father of the modern genre, few realize that Tolkien insisted that The Lord of the Rings is “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work.” This probably comes as a surprise to most Catholics as well. Â Readers of The Lord of the Rings are unlikely to find … Read more
Since film’s earliest days, no genre has stood out as more quintessentially American than the Western. Drawing heavily upon that era of America’s violently romantic, whirlwind adolescence, Hollywood’s savviest studios churned out an extraordinary number of them during the industry’s silent and early sound years. These films — along with the dime novels and tall … Read more
A Cracking of the Heart David Horowitz, Regnery, 188 pages, $24.95 Â David Horowitz remembers the moment well. The author of Radical Son, fresh off his political conversion, was having dinner with his family one night, explaining why he had become a conservative — and why they should, too. At that point, he admits, he … Read more
To Begin the World All Over Again: Lawrence of Arabia from Damascus to Baghdad John Hulsman, Palgrave Macmillan, 256 pages, $27.95 Â Those of us who try to keep up with developments during the Iraq War find that there are many basic facts about the region that don’t get answered in the daily coverage by … Read more
It’s not often I take the time to recommend a book I haven’t written, but this one is too much fun for me to hold its authorship against it: Secret Places, Hidden Sanctuaries: Uncovering Mysterious Sights, Symbols, and Societies, by Stephen Klimczuk and Gerald Warner. I can see how the writers sold this deeply Catholic … Read more
Hollywood has always been preoccupied with that most exciting, most mercurial of human emotions: romantic love. There’s nothing particularly surprising about this obsession, of course: Filmmakers have long been drawn to those moments when human emotions run highest and most transparent, and if that isn’t a textbook definition of eros, I don’t know what is. … Read more
Recently my family and I watched The Sound of Music for perhaps the twelfth time — probably the last great musical that Hollywood ever produced. It made me wonder if I could list the reasons why such a movie could not now be made. These reasons I offer below; but it seems to me that … Read more
God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, Penguin Press, 416 pages, $27.95 Â It was a commonplace of the late 1960s that religion was obsolete and that modern 20th-century people had no need of faith. “Is God Dead?” Time asked in 1966, and books … Read more
The best religious films, and therefore the best Catholic films, convey the great truths of Christianity implicitly rather than explicitly, not unlike the mystery of incarnation itself, in which the Word became flesh in the person of an obscure carpenter from a hick town in a minor province. In addition, this list consists … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Deal W. Hudson says his journey to the Catholic Church proceeded book by book. Reading, said Josemaría Escrivá, has made many a saint. In my own case it has merely made a convert, but I do continue to read ever more deeply into the mystery that is the … Read more
Almost 75 years after the death of G. K. Chesterton and 45 years after the death of C. S. Lewis, millions continue to read them as guides and gurus. New readers will pick up a book, or even just an essay or two, and become lifelong fans and devotees. These portly, homely, undramatic men … Read more