“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
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Joseph Schwartz
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Postmortem
“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.
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Catholic Church USA
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
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The Pope and the Press
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
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Not a Prayer
“(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,
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Bridge Out
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
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Stranded by the Time Machine
“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.
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Missing Pieces
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
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One Way Out
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
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