Literature
A Review of "Unapologetic: Why Christianity Makes Surprising Emotional Sense"
“Christians have given atheists less and less in which to disbelieve” –Alasdair MacIntyre Western Christianity received the atheists it deserved. Better yet, Britain has t...
Other Post
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The Principle of Volubility
June 07, 2013 -
A Review of Christian Wiman's "My Bright Abyss"
June 05, 2013 -
Reading Kierkegaard in the Age of MOOCs
May 22, 2013 -
In Praise of Nursery Tale Anthropomorphism
May 20, 2013 -
"Anna Karenina" and the Enchantment of the Ordinary
May 03, 2013 -
DBH's "The Devil and Pierre Gernet": A Pendulation of Spirit
April 29, 2013 -
Arthur, Adapted
April 26, 2013
Hard-Earned Hope
I’ve become a statistic. A mother of the one in one hundred ten children diagnosed with an autistic spectrum disorder in the United States. When my son was diagnosed, his developmental specialist told me that I did not stand alone - there was an international community of people who had been impacted by similar diagnoses to whom I should look for support and education. At a time when I craved tranquility and uni...
Women of the House
We three moved to the city-- I liked golden shag rug, clean white walls, square bedroom to myself that shut out sounds of a new place and trouble I found in line after gym (she kept nudging, named me Vanilla, so I stared hard, whispered, "Chocolate bar!" and was called on a different kind of carpet, not golden, not soft). Just when I learned my times tables we went back; the house and our th...
The Problem with Twilight
Before they became all the rage amongst sixth-graders, I wanted to write a story about vampires. I rode a wave of inspiration for about fifteen minutes before abandoning my project to the towering junk pile of books I never finished writing. A few short years later, Stephanie Meyer would lead a parade of the tragically postmodern faux-undead in what is perhaps the most disappointing resurrection of an otherwise ti...
The Lost City of Z
In New York, run-down and gutted buildings are often considered an eyesore and, unless they have someone like Jane Jacobs to defend them, are torn down and replaced with newer, taller, and more modern structures. But this is not the case in much of the world, and in the western states, where I was raised, there are a good number of ruins - still-standing remnants from the mining and early industrial booms that have f...
Books: Every Unhappy Worker's Safety Net
An unhappy worker generally has three ways to respond to a nightmarish job . . . 1. Survive She can aim for survival if her circumstances don't allow the luxury of unemployment, so she should pick up Cormac McCarthy's The Road. At least 40 hours of an unpleasant job is better than this. The journey in The Road confronts our ideas of morality, compassion, and society. An anonymous father and son traipse south...
Tony Soprano Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
Salvatore Scibona’s debut novel, The End, deftly avoids all the stereotypes that plague many mainstream works of Italian-Americana: you won’t find any greasy gumbas hanging on street corners pitching pennies, no weak little old ladies in head coverings praying to the Blessed Virgin, and absolutely no mention of la cosa nostra anywhere. Instead, Scibona has crafted an artful novel that explores nationality, ind...
Cat's Eye
Oh, Margaret Atwood, how could you have known – approximately 20 years before the advent of Facebook – that there would one day be a place (a cyber place, no less!) where ordinary people eagerly test their hypotheses about long-lost friends and acquaintances who once would have been relegated only to an aged yearbook or photo album? In light of our obsession with reconnecting with everyone from every facet of our...
Story Me This
Story. That's why people watch the Olympics. It's certainly not the finer points of curling technique or the joy of seeing the best athletes in the world excel at doing what so many of us try to do better every time we strap rifles to our backs, slip on our skis, and head out into the hills for a causal afternoon of recreational alpine snipering. We watch to see the grandson of WWII veteran drape his grandfather's...
