Comment magazine has just published my essay on Charles Wright’s poetry, “Show Me the World.” The piece focuses on Wright’s most recent collection, Sestets, which I highly recommend, along with his earlier collections Negative Blue and Scar Tissue. Here’s a snippet from the opening of the article: Of late, a stream of Christian cultural criticism…
Though it appeared in May, I just had opportunity to read Jonathan Franzen’s New Yorker story, “Agreeable.” It seems to me that Franzen could be seen as something like the heir to Updike, not as a stylist, but in terms of his commentary on suburban, middle-class America. This story is a snapshot of Patty, a…
Amid the hype over Christopher Hitchens’ ‘memoir,’ Hitch 22, I think Ian Buruma’s review in the New York Review of Books nails it. Entitled “The Believer,” Buruma’s rightly notes the provincialism of Hitchens’ supposedly contrarian and cosmopolitan perspective. But most importantly, he points out the fundamentalist irrationalism lurking behind Hitchens’ black-and-white universe wherein anything “religious”…
“In every sphere of life, form is the beginning of things. […] Forms are the food of faith, cried Newman in one of those great moments of sincerity that made us admire and know the man. […] The Creeds are believed, not because they are rational, but because they are repeated.” ~Oscar Wilde, “The Critic…
I have to thank my brother-in-law, Luke, for putting me onto a new favorite: Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, specifically “Up from Below” (get the deluxe version with bonus tracks and video if you can). What whimsical profundity; what lighthearted sobriety; what cheerful terror; what enchanting haunting! Their sound emerges from a delightful array…
A post from my alter ego: Last night was a big night for the Nationwide Series–the little brother to NASCAR’s Sprint Cup elite. Returning to Daytona’s superspeedway for the summer race, Nationwide unveiled a new car for the series. What’s most striking about these cars is the fact that they actually look like their namesakes,…