March 24th, 2008
Here’s a fun speculation from a Jewish blogger: the idea that JRR Tolkien was inspired by the Purim story related in the Book of Esther for the main plot of The Lord of the Rings.
No question, JRRT knew his Bible very well. (Or, as the writing teachers like to say, “Steal, but only from the [...]
March 12th, 2008
IT’S UP! LISTEN TO A FABULOUS AUDIOBOOK READING BY SYLVIA DORHAM OF MAUREEN MCQUERRY’S WOLFPROOF, NOW ON CATHOLIC RADIO INTERNATIONAL.
Great news for Idylls Press readers and audio/bibliophiles: Maureen McQuerry’s Narnia-esque fantasy, Wolfproof, has begun to air on Catholic Radio International. New chapters will appear on CRI’s Cover to Cover program every Monday, Wednesday, and [...]
February 26th, 2008
A discussion of the book/film of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men is going on over on the Yahoo discussion group, Literate Catholics Unite, and I thought it would do a bit of double duty for me to post here what I just posted there about this book/movie, both of which I regard as [...]
January 13th, 2008
John has posted new reviews on both Catholic Fiction and Bardolatry…
Respectively, Mauriac’s Viper’s Tangle and Branagh’s HBO film of Shakespeare’s As You Like It.
September 25th, 2007
Mark your calendars! Mon Sep 27, 2007 9 - 11 pm (PST) in Karina’s Chat Room
Meet Maureen McQuerry the author of a YA fantasy, Wolfproof (Idylls Press, 2006) the first in the Wolfproof Trilogy), Relentless Light, a collection of poems that won the New Eden Chapbook Award, Student [...]
Debra Murphy on Reviving Christianity’s Artistic Tradition
Kelly Hatzenbihler on Reviving Christianity’s Artistic Tradition
Rach on Nessun Dorma, As You’ve Never Heard it Before
Kathleen Lundquist on Reviving Christianity’s Artistic Tradition Debra Murphy on Reviving Christianity’s Artistic Tradition
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale
Joan of Arc: A Life (Penguin Lives) by Mary Gordon
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Those were the days [the nineteenth century] of the great schism between the artist and Catholicism when it seemed that art and sanctity must be forever separated. One thinks of the convert J.K. Huysmans standing among the crowd of pious pilgrims at Lourdes, his soul harassed by the observation that, although Mary had chased the devil from the rocks of the shrine and the hearts of the pilgrims, he was still there blaspheming her and her Son by the ‘hideous’ architecture of the place. He distinctly hears the devil say to Mary: ‘I shall dog your footsteps, and wherever you stop, there I shall establish myself; you may have at Lourdes all the priests you please, but art, which is the only worth-while thing on earth after sanctity, not only will you not have, but I shall so effect that it will unceasingly insult you by the prolonged blasphemy of its uglinesss….All that represents you and your Son will be grotesque…’
— Calvert Alexander, SJ