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)?

The 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature goes to Doris Lessing, born to British parents in Iran (formerly Persia) in 1919, “that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire, and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny.” Nobel’s Swedish Academy writes:

The Golden Notebook (1962) was Doris Lessing’s real breakthrough. The burgeoning feminist movement saw it as a pioneering work and it belongs to the handful of books that informed the 20th-century view of the male-female relationship. It used a more complex narrative technique to reveal how political and emotion conflicts are intertwined.

Harper Collins has a reading guide to The Golden Notebook.

Philadelphia and Baltimore are fighting over a dead man, which may have pleased the former owner of the body being that it’s Edgar Allan Poe.

Edward Pettit writes: “This is a literary grave robbing. I want to exhume his body and translate his remains to the City of Brotherly Love. … That’s because Poe is ours. He belongs to Philadelphia.”

Sarah Weinman has tolled in too, saying Poe Knows Philly.

Chef Robert Irvine, recently of “Dinner: Impossible” on The Food Network, has a book out on his style, experiences, and ideas on thinking ahead. WSJ.com has a video spot on him here. I’ve seen his show a few times, and it’s impressive what he can accomplish. I must be nice to pull up good ideas in a few minutes and carry them through with excellence. No doubt, no hand-wringing. I’d like to try that sometime.

Apparently, Richard Dawkins and other atheists agree to be in a documentary without full knowledge of the intent of the film–or with incorrect knowledge because the film makers did not level with them. They say they were told it was a film on the debate between Darwinism and creationism, but it appears it was actually a film on the shut-out of professors who endorse Intelligent Design. (via Books, Inq.)

Hopefully, Dawkins is fully aware of what he’s debating tonight at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. He is scheduled to debate John Lennox on the question of God. Both men work at Oxford, so it will be an peer argument in a sense. The debate is hosted by Fixed Point Foundation.

Pictures of writer’s rooms — ahhh, dream break.