Testimony to a Catholic Existentialist
Renée Radell: Web of Circumstance by Eleanor Heartney. Predmore Press, 2016. Hardcover, 220 pages, $80. When I was an undergraduate student I had the privilege of working as an assistant to the founder of this journal, Russell Kirk. One of my tasks was helping him to...Strange Thing: How Camus Wrote ‘The Stranger’
Looking for The Stranger: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic by Alice Kaplan. University of Chicago Press, 2016. Hardcover, 288 pages, $26. The French philosopher Gabriel Marcel wrote in The Philosophy of Existentialism that Jean-Paul “Sartre’s world is...Books in Little: End of an Era
This Gulf of Fire: The Great Lisbon Earthquake, or Apocalypse in the Age of Science and Reason by Mark Molesky. Alfred A. Knopf, 2015. Hardcover, 512 pages, $35. Despite its status as one of history’s most powerful tremors, the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 has barely...Glimpses of a Great Light
Ronald Knox: A Man for All Seasons edited by Francesca Bugliani Knox. PIMS, 2016. Hardcover, 416 pages, $65.Jesus said only a fool would light a candle and proceed to hide it under a bowl. Yet time, even more than neglect or abuse, has a way of snuffing out even the...
There are metaphorical hills on which I would be willing to die. The Oxford comma is one of them.
So easy to forget that the best way to educate yourself is to read great works of literature and philosophy, then talk about them. Bring back the salon!