“The Western custom of one wife and hardly any mistresses.” —H.H. Munro Roger’s Version, John Updike’s latest novel, can be understood best if seen in intimate and serious connection with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. First, the cast of characters: Hester (Esther), Arthur Dimmesdale (Dale Kohler), Roger Chillingworth (Roger Lambert), and Pearl (Paula/Poopsie). The setting...
“We would rather run ourselves down than not speak of ourselves at all.” —La Rochefoucauld When the reputable and talented die, it is often their fate to have their privacy examined in detail. This is a mixed blessing at best. How chilling it is to remember that Nijinski’s feet were cut open to see if...
Three histories of the Catholic Church in the United States have become available within a two-year period—books by James Hennesey, S.J., Martin Marty, and now Jay P. Dolan, the bitterest of the three. More remarkable than the mere number are the significant likenesses. Are they the result of the zeitgeist or an attempt to shape...
When the Extraordinary Synod of the Roman Catholic Church ended (December 1985), thousands of words were written about the event by religious journalists of every variety. More interesting, however, from a rhetorical point of view, was the pre-Synod journalism; it provides an excellent illustration of the not-uncommon attempt of the press to formulate the agenda...
“(Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism, Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon . . . “ —Samuel Taylor Coleridge Individualism is the question of first concern to the future of the West. The dread argument of the individual case is, I think, the fundamental idea of modernism. Books like those by Turner and Bellah &...
It is impossible to read Gorham Munson’s The Awakening Twenties without thinking of Malcolm Cowley’s Exile’s Return, since both are memoir-histories of the 20’s. Munson, however, is concerned only with 1913-1924. “America will never be the same.” So opined the New York Globe after the official opening of the 1913 Armory Show. . . ....
“I don’t know whether it’s a good thing to run after our grandchildren and descendants.” -Dobrica Cosic H. G. Wells: Experiment in Autobiography; Little, Brown; Boston. H. G. Wells in Love; Edited by G.P. Wells; Little, Brown; Boston. Anthony West: H. G. Wells, Aspects of a Life; Random House; New York....
George W. Hunt: John Cheever: The Hobgoblin Comapny of Love; Wm. B. Eerdmans; Grand Rapids, MI. The Rev. George W. Hunt, S J., literary editor of America, has written a valuable study of the fiction of John Cheever, one that will remain a source of lasting value for future critics and scholars to consult. However, I have reservations about Hunt’s...
So too it may be useful to write a novel about the end of the world. Perhaps it is only through the conjuring up of catastrophe, the destruction of all Exxon signs, and the sprouting of vines in the church pews, that the novelist can make vicarious use of catastrophe in order that he...