The Importance of Being Iris
Why Iris Murdoch Matters By Gary Browning. Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Paperback, 272 pages, $27. Reviewed by Emina Melonic Philosophy and literature are often not very good bedfellows. For the most part, the novelist, or any artist, does not care about philosophy. It...
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...
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...
"Haven’s book is an engaging introduction to Girard. Reading through its presentation of the components and explanatory power of mimetic theory, it becomes clear Americans have arrived at a time for a very different kind of choosing."
"Knowing the truth about scapegoating does not mean it has been abandoned. Indeed, while people have become increasingly good at seeing the scapegoats of others as just that, scapegoats, they remain convinced their enemies really are evil."