news, views & reviews
Anyone interested in either modern British fiction or modern British Catholic fiction should take some time to browse the BBC’s lovely little online gallery of video interviews with some of the top British novelists of recent decades. This list includes (click on the links) Catholic writers Muriel Spark, Beryl Bainbridge and J.R.R. Tolkien
Jessica Sequeira has published an article in The Harvard Advocate on Graham Greene and the Catholic Novel. Or, rather, on the alleged death of the Catholic Novel. While she raises some interesting points, her eulogistic pessimism, which seems largely based on the common secular assumption that Catholicism holds little power or certainty anymore, even for [...]
I’d like to share with my fellow readers and students of Catholic fiction an article I just bumped into online on the website of the American Studies Center at Nanzan University in Japan. Written by David R. Mayer of Nanzan University, the article is entitled, “Who is an American Black, Catholic or Jewish Writer?” and it [...]
Wired has published a short but useful list of what writer Bruce Sterling regards as digital-age difficulties facing “literature” as we have known it these last few centuries. The fact that, “wired” (relatively speaking) as I am, I am unable to follow a couple of his examples may be proof enough of the problem us [...]
National Catholic Register journalist Tim Drake has published an interview with Catholic novelist Piers Paul Read, author of Death of a Pope (which is on my to-read-next pile). The article is online at the Register site, but you need to be a subscriber to read it. Here’s my favorite quote: Are there ways that you [...]
(from The Thing: Why I am a Catholic, first published 1929) I see that Mr. Patrick Braybrooke and others, writing to the CATHOLIC TIMES, have raised the question of Catholic propaganda in novels written by Catholics. The very phrase, which we are all compelled to use, is awkward and even false. A Catholic putting Catholicism [...]
reviewed by John Murphy How Fiction Works is a presuming title for a slim little book, made more conspicuous by a chapter called “A Brief History of Consciousness.” Oh, is that all? But the book’s author is James Wood, the New Yorker’s perspicacious literary critic, and his Preface quickly allays any fears of gassy pretension [...]
The Easter edition of Dappled Things (an online literary journal for young Catholics) features an essay written by yours truly. My piece is a reflection on the whole MySpace phenomenon from a Christian perspective. Keep in mind the Flannery quote: “I don’t deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always [...]
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