news, views & reviews
Posted in Anti-Catholic, Literary, Theological/Philosophical on Nov 25th, 2006
reviewed by Kevin Murphy
The Menace of Oblivion
Everyman begins “around the grave.” And it stays there for the course of its brief length, stewing in angst and mortal fear. Clearly, it is the work of a man coming to grips with his own mortality – a terrified [...]
Posted in Literary on Oct 8th, 2006
The Celluloid Void
reviewed by John Murphy
I love going to the movies. I even flatter myself I’ve acquired over time a connoisseur’s taste for excellence, but the truth is that I don’t always discriminate between high art and low art. Any kind of movie, any kind of genre, will do. The hypnotic experience of sitting in [...]
Posted in Literary on Sep 22nd, 2006
reviewed by Rachel Murphy
I went to the Garden of Love
And saw what I never had seen:
A chapel was built in the midst
Where I used to play on the green…
—from William Blake’s Songs of Experience
When I first attempted to read Brideshead Revistited, I confess that I put it aside rather quickly. Charles Ryder, from whose perspective the story is told, is not easy to warm up to; his cold, jaded view of the army—of life itself, for he had fallen “out of love” with both—imparts a deadness, like a stale air, to the opening pages. What I did not yet realize is that the reader need not fall in love with Charles to fall in love with the story; and that nothing in the atmosphere is accidental.
Posted in Literary, Suspense/Thriller on May 18th, 2006
reviewed by Kevin Jones (and originally published on Philokalia Republic)
I don’t suppose a book counts as light reading if it includes untranslated Greek phrases. Nevertheless, Dona Tartt’s The Secret History has been one of my more enjoyable lighter reads of the year.
To perform an imitation of a jacket cover summary: On a Northeastern college campus [...]
Posted in Literary on Feb 23rd, 2006
Reviewed by Debra Murphy
By virtue of his already classic Mariette in Ecstasy and Atticus, his two novels with Catholic themes, Ron Hansen must already be viewed as one of the great Catholic novelists writing in English. He’s also one of the few, judging by a recent interview in Sojourners, who doesn’t cringe at the description, [...]
plots from Shakespeare and the myth of St. George and the Dragon inspire this provocative mystery-thriller by CatholicFiction.net editor Debra Murphy.
More about the book....
[Orwell's essay, "Politics and the English Language"] is a warning about how language controls thought. It is evident that people who don’t think clearly can’t speak clearly, but Orwell pointed out that the reverse is true as well. If we are not accustomed or trained to speak precisely then our ideas will be imprecise, too. Language should be rooted in reality.
—
