The Artist and His Epoch

The Artist and His Epoch

David Jones on Religion, Politics, and Culture: Unpublished Prose ed. Thomas Berenato, Anne Price-Owen, and Kathleen Henderson Staudt. Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Cloth, xviii + 347 pages, $176. Reviewed by Adam Schwartz   David Jones (1895–1974) is acknowledged...
The Action of Grace

The Action of Grace

This Our Exile: Short Stories by Joshua Hren. Angelico Press, 2017. Hardcover, 131 pages, $22. Reviewed by Trevor C. Merrill The twelve stories in this slender but powerful volume bring the everyday and the eternal together in compressed, often dreamlike sequences,...
The Auroras of Helen Vendler

The Auroras of Helen Vendler

The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar: essays on poets & poetry by Helen Vendler. Harvard University Press, 2015. Hardcover, 444 pages, $35. DANIEL JAMES SUNDAHL Helen Vendler’s The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar opens with a twelve-page account of her life as a...
Stories of the Lost, Wandering Soul of Modern America

Stories of the Lost, Wandering Soul of Modern America

Cloudbursts: Collected and New Stories by Thomas McGuane. Alfred A. Knopf, 2018. Cloth, 354 pages, $35. JAMES E. PERSON JR. The short stories of Thomas McGuane can be summarized in the words of John Gay’s self-chosen epitaph: “Life is a jest, and all things shew it; /...

The Naked Emperors

Jews Queers Germans: A Novel/History by Martin Duberman. Seven Stories Press, 2017. Paperback, 384 pages, $20. EVE TUSHNET Martin Duberman, in his recent “novel/history” Jews Queers Germans, rarely describes clothing. He describes, instead, physical attractiveness—the...