All posts by Phil

Poetry

Holding Back

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I felt I should confess what is probably obvious to all of our regular readers. This blog could be in the top 10 of the blogosphere, if Lars and I weren’t holding back. As an illustration, I offer this poem by Holmes:

I WROTE some lines once on a time

In wondrous merry mood,

And thought, as usual, men would say

They were exceeding good.

They were so queer, so very queer,

I laughed as I would die;

Albeit, in the general way,

A sober man am I.

I called my servant, and he came; Read on

from “The Height of the Ridiculous,” by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Fiction, Reviews

Cornish’s Foundling

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A while back I meant to link to a review Mr. Holtsberry did on his jolly good blog, which could only be improved by short, coffee-related posts, IMESHO. Since I’ve been making good on my thoughts lately (note the radio interview Dr. Bertrand landed after I thought about suggesting it. (I didn’t know he was a doctor. Did you know he had a doctorate?)) Anyway, I saw this review of Foundling, by D. M. Cornish, and having seen the book before, I have faith it’s a good one.

Kevin says the book is both Dickensesque and Tolkienesque. “The Dickens reference obviously comes from the orphan plot line and the semi-Victorian feel. But also from the strong characters,” he writes. “The Tolkienesque aspect comes from the complexity and detailed nature of Cornish’s creation. The world of the Half-Continent has a depth and level of detail that is rare in YA fantasy.” Very interesting, though the hardback has a scary cover. The website is Monster Blood Tattoo, which has a short excerpt from the book.

Authors

Mark Bretrand on Moody’s Prime Time America

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I hope you trust I don’t lie to you for whatever perceived gain I could get. I have no idea how I could gain from false claims on a blog, but you and I are honest with each other, right? Good. So I’m not lying when I say that yesterday I thought about writing Prime Time America to ask about doing book reviews, mostly of Christian fiction, and maybe they could also interview Mark Bertrand about his new book, Rethinking Worldview. I didn’t, and yet Mark will be on the radio today during the first hour of Prime Time America. I’ll be listening.

Writing

Olasky Asks for More Salt

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Marvin Olasky has an interesting column in light of our recent discussion of modern Christian fiction, both here and elsewhere. He says we need more salt than sugar in our Christian novels.

. . . contemporary Christian fiction [are stereotyped] as the marriage of tract and melodrama, homilies decked out in purple prose. Some Christian authors, rebelling against that, have moved toward literary fiction, with some good results and more dull ones. But we still have a long way to go to develop popular fiction—action-adventure, mystery, romance—that isn’t poorly written and sometimes downright embarrassing.

I think Christian fiction will need a master, some bestselling or otherwise popular author who writes un-embarrassing stories, in order for this opinion of the whole industry/genre to be put down–or will even that be enough? Not that it matters, I suppose. We can write great stories without the support of current public opinion.

Uncategorized

Kasporov and the Struggling, Unawarded Winners

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Opinion Journal has a list of people who would have done more to earn a Nobel Peace prize than this year’s recipient, such as “Garry Kasparov and the several hundred Russians who were arrested in April, and are continually harassed, for resisting President Vladimir Putin’s slide toward authoritarian rule” and “Britain’s Tony Blair, Ireland’s Bertie Ahern and the voters of Northern Ireland, who in March were able to set aside decades of hatred to establish joint Catholic-Protestant rule in Northern Ireland.”

Speaking of Kasparov, he has a new book called, How Life Imitates Chess. Business Week experts the book in which he applies chess principles to politics. He says, “Litvinenko’s murder came on the heels of the Moscow killing of the well-known investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya . . . The killings have turned a spotlight on what the West had assumed was the autocratic but stable Putin regime. Suddenly the foreign media is realizing what we in the Russian opposition have been saying for years—the Kremlin is ever closer to dictatorship than democracy and yet is not stable at all.”

Reading

Reading in the Out of the Way

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Stephen King has been seen reading at a baseball game, so Mickey Mclean asks, “Where’s the strangest place you’ve seen someone pull out a book?”

I’ve wanted to take my book or magazine into the shower with me, but I have a stronger grip on reality than that. I wish I could read while walking, but I have taken to audiobooks for that. Now I just want to write another sentence which ends with that. Success!

Speaking of grip on reality, Athol Dickson points to an essay John Piper wrote about imagination and the fact that God is not boring.

Authors

Debating “What’s So Great About Christianity?”

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File this under Can’t Leave Well Enough Alone. Authors Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D’Souza will debate the merits of the Christian faith at The King’s College next week. The debate, coming October 22 at 7:30pm, will be moderated by World magazine Editor-in-Chief Marvin Olasky.

On D’Souza’s website, Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, is quoted saying, “As an unbeliever, I passionately disagree with Dinesh D’Souza on some of his positions. But he is a first-rate scholar whom I feel absolutely compelled to read.” D’Souza’s book, What’s So Great About Christianity, comes out this week.

Authors

Fujimura, McInerny, and Maritain in China

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The impressive artist Makoto Fujimura toured a bit of China with professor Ralph McInerny, author of the Father Dowling mysteries. Fujimura writes about it for World:

“The activity of the practical intellect divides into human actions to be done … and the works to be made; in other words, it divides into moral activity and artistic activity … Art is a virtue – not a moral virtue … Art is a virtue in the larger and more philosophical sense the ancients gave to this word; a habitus or ’state of possession,’ an inner strength developed in man … Art is a virtue of the practical intellect.” (Jacues Maritain, Creative Intuition)

The “habitus” of an Aquinas scholar could include mystery novels, or to consider all creative activities to be a significant intellectual work. Whether art and poetry, a Sunday afternoon baseball game or gourmet cooking, we do not need to segregate art and creativity into a corner, an exiled “extra” of our lives.

Ralph confided to me, though, that he really began to write mystery novels as a side business; to put his kids through school. I told him that my wife is a mystery novel fanatic, and knew of his books. I, on the other hand, first “met” Father Dowling as Tom Bosley, in a TV mystery show in the Eighties. “They loosely based it on my novels,” he said in his jovial voice, “but paid me well.” Having a son at NYU, I nodded, knowing that a financial opportunity a purist may resist, a parent grabs onto for dear life. I began to even ponder what kind of a mystery novel I would write … Murder at NYU (a parent gets mysteriously murdered on his way to paying his son’s tuition)?