by James V. Schall, S. J. | Nov 9, 2014
Provocative titles are meant to, well, provoke. I have always considered C. S. Lewis’s little 1952 book of essays entitled The World’s Last Night (Harcourt) to be one difficult to forget. It takes its title from the last essay in the book, itself redolent of Christian...
by James V. Schall, S. J. | Apr 21, 2014
The literary form of Pascal’s Pensées is something of a puzzle. Is it a series of jottings, aphorisms, short essays, even conversational letters, or all of the above? Whatever it is, it is a remarkable work bordering on the inexhaustible. Not unlike Boswell’s Life of...
by James V. Schall, S. J. | Jan 26, 2014
Recently, I received a letter, post-marked Lima, from a young Peruvian student who had attended Georgetown. She tells me that she has just finished reading C. S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces, a book that I recommend to anyone who will listen. She writes: One of my...
by James V. Schall, S. J. | Nov 15, 2013
In Joseph Epstein’s recent book, Essays in Biography, we find a chapter entitled “Never Give a Sucker an Even Break.” It is obviously an essay devoted to the great comedian W. C. Fields. I have often wondered: What would happen to me if I did not take Field’s famous...
by James V. Schall, S. J. | Oct 6, 2013
On Essays and LettersIn the handsome new book, The Loss and Recovery of Truth (St. Augustine’s Press), we find a short 1978 essay of Gerhart Niemeyer. It was written on the occasion of two commencement addresses. One was the justly famous Harvard Address of Alexander...
by James V. Schall, S. J. | May 13, 2013
On Essays and LettersWill Cuppy (1884–1948) was born in Auburn, Indiana, and he is buried there. He attended the University of Chicago and dithered with a higher degree. He wrote a number of books, the first of which I have. It is called How to Get from January to...