One of my favorite lines from one of Anthony Burgess’s greatest (and underappreciated) novels. “Mrs. Killigrew, whose husband played bridge all the time, discovered a passion for a man whose face was covered with warts. Why was this? In a story you had to find a reason, but real life gets on very well without… Continue reading Book Notes
Veteran Boston Globe columnist Scot Lehigh’s first novel, Just East of Nowhere, is a delightful surprise. Published this past summer by Islandport Press in Maine, Just East… is a little too easily described as a ‘coming of age’ story, a genre I frankly dislike. But in Mr. Lehigh’s telling, this is more of a mystery,… Continue reading Scot Lehigh’s Just East of Nowhere
It’s hard not to envy the experience and the deep reading of philosophy and literature which writer-farmer Rebecca Bratten Weiss brings to bear in the marvelous poems she’s been composing for almost a decade. A former adjunct professor of literature, Rebecca is the digital editor of U.S. Catholic (for whom I’ve written). Her articles and… Continue reading Rebecca Bratten Weiss and The Gods We Have Eaten
If you’v never read anything by Shirley Hazzard, you need to. I’m hooked, after reading an appreciation of her stories in Commonweal a couple of months back…
If men are compelled to make the melancholy choice between atheism and superstition, the scientist, as Bacon pointed out long ago, would be compelled to choose atheism, but the poet would be compelled to choose superstition, for even superstition, by its very confusion of values, gives his imagination more scope than a dogmatic denial of… Continue reading The Melancholy Choice
