The Superhero and the City
Superhero Ethics: 10 Comic Book Heroes; 10 Ways to Save the World; Which One Do We Need Most Now? by Travis Smith. Templeton Press, 2018. Hardcover, 190 pages, $25. Reviewed by Ryan Shinkel Classical art imitated life to cultivate it. In Greek sculpture, great souls...
Champagne Flute with an Iron Spine
Dystopia and Providence in Five Novels Eve Tushnet The political upheavals of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries bore all kinds of names, from the euphemistic “people’s republic” to the dystopian “total war.” It’s hard to name precisely what was born of these...
Faith and Works and the Novel
The Decline of the Novel by Joseph Bottum. St. Augustine’s Press, 2019. Hardcover, 153 pages, $25. Reviewed by Trevor C. Merrill In this wide-ranging essay, Joseph Bottum has managed to turn a stale topic—the death of the novel—into fresh cultural criticism, arguing...
The Last Inkling
A farewell to Christopher Tolkien. By Michael Toscano By the time Christopher Tolkien was called up, His Majesty’s Royal Air Force had already been chased off the continent of Europe, losing nearly five hundred fighters over Belgium and France; had turned around and...
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!