What Kind of Art Is the Videogame?
Shadow of the Colossus Directed by Fumito Ueda. Sony Computer Entertainment, 2005, 2011, 2018. Nintendo PlayStation, $20. By Ben Conroy Can videogames be art? This question plunges one immediately into the pitched battle about the definition of art. Perhaps some...
Sophomore Inclinations and the Research University
The Rise of the Research University: A Sourcebook edited by Louis Menand, Paul Reitter, and Chad Wellmon. University of Chicago Press, 2017. Paperback, 406 pages, $32.50. Reviewed by Pavlos Papadopoulos Historians of higher education are members of a small subfield of...
Framing a Life in Liberal Learning
From the Cast-Iron Shore: In Lifelong Pursuit of Liberal Learning by Francis Oakley. University of Notre Dame Press, 2018. Paperback, 526 pages, $35. Reviewed by Weronika Janczuk The story narrated in any given memoir is dependent on the life of the one who narrates....
A New Apologetic
Steadfast in Faith: Catholicism and the Challenges of Secularism by David G. Bonagura, Jr. Cluny Media, 2019. Paperback, 308 pages, $19.95. Reviewed by Casey Chalk “When the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?” This question, asked by Jesus and recorded in...
The Lost Futures of Mark Fisher
K-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher Repeater, 2018. Paperback, 500 pages, $30. Reviewed by Ben Sixsmith In 2013, the British cultural and political theorist Mark Fisher wrote an article called “Exiting the Vampire Castle” in which he took...
The Doctor’s Mask, Removed
Counting Backwards: A Doctor’s Notes on Anesthesia by Henry Jay Przybylo, MD. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2017. Hardcover, 256 pages, $26. Reviewed by Jacob A. Bruggeman On occasion, one can come upon good books by coincidence. An offhand recommendation from a...
Like a Jazz Score: The Sense for Life
Pedro Blas González Improvisation as Metaphor Musicians often talk about there being no wrong notes, only notes that they do not intend to play. This is particularly true in jazz. At least in jazz, this serves as the impetus to structure improvisation. If we pay...
Nothing More to Prove
The Life of Saul Bellow: Love and Strife, 1965–2005 By Zachary Leader Alfred A. Knopf, 2018. Hardcover, 784 pages, $40. Reviewed by Carl Rollyson I was hard on the first volume, The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, 1915–1964, in the June 2015 issue of The New...
Liturgies Real and Imagined
The 21: A Journey into the Land of Coptic Martyrs by Martin Mosebach. Plough, 2019. Hardcover, 272 pages, $26. What Was Before: A Novel, by Martin Mosebach. Seagull Books, 2014. Hardcover, 248 pages, $27.50. Reviewed by Trevor C. Merrill This powerful little book...
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!