I’ll not forget the charming maid Who asked if I had been flambéed And, seeing I knew little French, Proceeded without pause to drench My clothes with liquids dark and strong, And purred I wouldn’t feel it long, Then closed the door and dropped the latch And asked me if I had a match. What …
So what do I have in common with Annie Dillard, Ron Hansen, Kathleen Norris, and Valerie Sayers? We’re all in Image Journal’s 20th-anniversary anthology, Bearing the Mystery. You should buy a copy.
If you’re looking for a counterweight to my usual cheeriness, you might get yourself the latest issue of Ruminate, which has my short story, “The Glass Child.” Here’s the opening paragraph: This is the blood, David tells himself. He twists open the bottle and pours its dark content into a blue plastic cup. The label …
Some of you may enjoy my latest Wall Street Journal essay, about modern friendships. In a nutshell: though I have more Facebook friends than my four-year old Isaac, I’m pretty sure that’s a poor indication of who is more loved.
Okay, here’s the thing. “Literally” doesn’t mean “really.” It’s not a word that you put in front of some other words to show that, unlike the rest of your lackluster sentence, this is the part you really totally completely, like, absolutely mean. And it doesn’t mean figuratively, or metaphorically. “Literally” means that it actually happened. So …
The most lied-about book in England? Orwell’s 1984. For me it’s business books. The only thing worse, I think, than reading The Black Swan would be having an enthusiast recount it to me chapter by chapter. So what books do you lie about reading?
Christine Rosen in The New Atlantis: “Despite the attention once paid to the so-called digital divide, the real gap isn’t between households with computers and households without them; it is the one developing between, on the one hand, households where parents teach their children the old-fashioned skill of reading and instill in them a love …
The good news: the percentage of Americans who report reading novels, short stories, poems, or plays has increased from 46.7 percent in 2002 to 50.2 percent, according to the National Endowment for the Arts. The bad news: only a little more than half of Americans report reading books that aren’t required by work or school. Now …
It’s accepted American wisdom now that smart people are not to be trusted. Thus our presidential candidates sprinkle the occasional “ain’t” when speaking to the little people, and strive to project the image of someone who did not spend his formative years in prep school. And everyone knows it’s a sure-fire formula in action film-making …
I don’t care if Hemingway, Chandler, and Vonnegut hated it; I heart the semicolon.
I’ve just finished Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire, a novel about the Battle of Thermopylae that is far more faithful to history than the stunning film, 300. The story is told from the vantage point of a single survivor, who has been kept alive by the Persian King Xerxes to understand his Greek foes, in …
I confess that I’m not a French movie buff. I’ve never seen La Veuve de Saint-Pierre or Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge. I never bothered with The English Patient, for that matter, or Chocolat. For all I know, Juliette Binoche was brilliant in each of these films. Asking her to play opposite Steve Carell and …
I don’t know what film-school genius is teaching his students to use handheld cameras in lieu of stationary shots, but once the dizziness fades I’m going to track him down and beat him to death with his seldom-used tripod. The litany of errors that ultimately makes Hancock a disappointment includes the apparent employment of someone’s …
The opposition that fussy Christians voice toward Juno seems to boil down to the fact that it is filled with sinful people who live, think, and speak like sinners. Then again, this used to be true of the Church, at least until recent times. The fussy Christians seem to want morality plays in place of …
The mistake people make about modernism is thinking it’s old-fashioned. Thus a movie like Vantage Point comes along, built around the premise that it will be clever to show the same events through several characters’ eyes, and people call it “postmodern” because it’s, well, so very different. We are accustomed to being omniscient observers, or …
I have an arrangement with myself, which is that I can only have a Starbucks hot chocolate (two-percent milk, no whipped cream) on cloudy days, or on Sundays when I catch the early service at a different church, or on Mondays when the thought of going to work presses me down onto my bed like …
I’m in the midst of a writing frenzy at present, so for your reading pleasure I present an excerpt from Flannery O’Connor’s “The Nature and Aim of Fiction,” which may be found in the volume of her speeches and essays, Mystery and Manners. This came to me some weeks ago courtesy of Adam DeVille, who …
Since literature seems to be the theme this week, check out Dana Gioia’s speech delivered at Stanford’s commencement exercises. Some highlights: “There is an experiment I’d love to conduct. I’d like to survey a cross-section of Americans and ask them how many active NBA players, Major League Baseball players, and American Idol finalists they can …
On my way to the office this morning I listened to Sufjan Stevens’s Seven Swans CD. Though this is not my point, it’s worth noting that I only bought his CD because I Googled “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” for the lyrics, and discovered the Youtube video below, which is precisely the kind of …
My writer friend Darren Defrain recently turned me on to Andre Dubus, and so I’ve been working through his stories and essays. He has, as another writer friend describes it, a lyrical voice. You can see faith in his stories, along with doubt, and the grit and ugliness in life that makes faith the anchor …
A poem, because I’m in that kind of mood, and because if you’ve not read Louise Glück, you ought to: The Gift Lord, You may not recognize me speaking for someone else. I have a son. He is so little, so ignorant. He likes to stand at the screen door, calling oggie, oggie, entering language, …
Well, I let a week of things that pay the bills get in the way of writing my fourth and final installment on this topic, and I think I’ve lost my steam. Or maybe there’s just nothing left to say, other than that good writing flows from good reading, both at the level of the …
After I discovered Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River, I breathlessly recommended it to my friends. I could barely disguise my disappointment when some said it was “too slow,” or “hard to get into.” I love them all the same, but I couldn’t help but view them as slightly handicapped, like someone who is colorblind, …
What is Christian fiction? Does Doris Betts’s story, “Serpents and Doves” count? In it a dying, guilt-ridden man has a feverish conversation with the Devil that brings him to realize the salvation that has eluded him. Then there’s Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, wherein a priest is executed for refusing to renounce his …
There’s a debate in Christian writing circles arising out of the perceived difficulty of getting publishers under the Christian Booksellers Association (CBA) umbrella to carry more “literary” work. The underlying conflict between literary and mass-market fiction has existed in one form or another long before the CBA took root, of course. The first time a …
Something that has always bothered me about the theological enterprise is an undercurrent of arrogance, the notion that we possess so clear a discernment that we can build mental boxes to contain the wild God of the ages. I once heard a sermon where the pastor quoted a brilliant theologian, who was commending Jesus for …
I’ve been reading “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” to Caleb and Eli in the evenings. Caleb has been on the edge of his seat during parts of it, wondering if the Witch will turn Edmund to stone, if Aslan will die, if the Witch eats children. We finished the book last night, and …