Tolkien’s Yuletide Fiction
Letters from Father Christmas by J. R. R. Tolkien Houghton Mifflin Company, 2020. Hardcover, 208 pages, $28. Reviewed by John Tuttle The name Tolkien is first and foremost associated with what is widely acknowledged as the man’s chief literary creation, The...
Properly Dangerous Ideas
Raised in Captivity: Fictional Nonfiction by Chuck Klosterman. Penguin Press, 2019. Hardcover, 320 pages, $26.00 Chris Butynskyi Ideas are dangerous. Most people would agree that a certain level of danger and harm can take root in ideas. Culture, too, is dangerous....
Bradbury in the Afternoon
Bradbury Beyond Apollo by Jonathan R. Eller. University of Illinois Press, 2020. Hardcover, 336 pages. $35. Reviewed by James E. Person Jr. Anyone who considers the life and career of Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) is eventually struck by a remarkable fact: although the...
Beha’s Capacity for God: Sophie Wilder Revisited
What Happened to Sophie Wilder: A Novel by Christopher R. Beha. Tin House Books, 2012. Paperback, 253 pages, $16. Reviewed by Joshua Hren In his new novel The Index of Self-Destructive Acts, Harper’s editor Christopher Beha makes grace a noisome concern, not least...
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!