Endo and the Challenge of Orthodoxy
Silence: A Novel by Shūsaku Endō, translated by William Johnston. Picador Modern Classics, 2016. Paperback, 212+xxvi pages, $16. When he was a boy, Japanese author Shūsaku Endō (1923–1996) converted to Roman Catholicism. He attended Tokyo’s Keio University after the...A Guide to the Nightmare Countries
Horror: A Literary History edited by Xavier Aldana Reyes. The British Library, 2016. Hardcover, 232 pages, $30. Although superheroes and adolescent saviors have currently wrested pole position on screens and shelves from even vampires and zombies, horror is no longer...The Art of Sinking in Poetry
The Billy Collins Experience by A. M. Juster. Kelsay Books, 2016. Paperback, 66 pages, $14. “Like most poets, I don’t know where I’m going.” In a fit of concision, the poet Billy Collins managed to define his aesthetic, and his career. Despite his modesty, he has...Summoned to Greatness
A Torch Kept Lit: Great Lives of the Twentieth Century by William F. Buckley Jr., edited by James Rosen. Crown Forum, 2016. Hardcover, 336 pages, $22. Reviewed by William F. Meehan IIIWilliam F. Buckley Jr. had published forty-five books by the time his only volume...To Paradise, By Way of Kensal Green
The English Way: Studies in English Sanctity from St. Bede to Newman Edited by Maisie Ward, introduction by Bradley J. Birzer. Cluny Media, [1933] 2016. Paperback, 366 pages, $19. You might expect a book called The English Way: Studies in English Sanctity from Bede to...
.@JM_Butcher himself admits that there are in fact important divisions within American society, but he believes that “Americans are united on some very important questions that are driving debates in statehouses, schoolhouses, and even your house.” In this, as in nearly all that
Despite [Kirk's] and others’ efforts to prevent further decline in transcendent beliefs, more than a century later, it is clear that those Americans who adhere to them represent a small and frequently marginalized minority. @fhmcclatchey must be counted among their number, for he