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Reading for Pleasure: Easier Doesn’t Mean Better
DO YOU “READ FOR PLEASURE”? For many people, this means they enjoy an “easy read.” But true pleasure, in any task or pastime, requires skill–and acquiring a new skill takes time and practice. What may start as a delight becomes…
The Secret to Reading Flannery O’Connor
Veiled Mystery ABOUT FORTY YEARS AGO, I read the work of Flannery O’Connor for the…
Andrew Seddon: Versatile Writer of Life-Affirming Stories
BESIDES THE JOY of writing about literature, I owe a lot to this blog because…
Great Flood Recap: Wrestling with Proteus
THERE IS A FIGURE in Greek mythology called Proteus (sometimes called the Old Man of…
Metamorphoses 3: Change Is the Only Constant
I LEFT the discussion of Ovid’s Metamorphoses by saying (as I am wont to do)…
Literature: The Best Kind of Time Machine
ONE OF MY FAVORITE KINDS of speculative fiction is the time travel tale, not the…
Freedom: What Is It, Really?
TODAY IS JULY 4, when we Americans commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence…
“People without hope not only don’t write novels, but what is more to the point, they don’t read them.”
FLANNERY O’CONNOR
The Moral Imagination
Special Series: The Great Flood in Ancient Literature
Great Flood Recap: Wrestling with Proteus
THERE IS A FIGURE in Greek mythology called Proteus (sometimes called the Old Man of the Sea), a minor sea god with two remarkable powers: shape-shifting and oracular utterance. To…
Metamorphoses 3: Change Is the Only Constant
I LEFT the discussion of Ovid’s Metamorphoses by saying (as I am wont to do) that, in literature, context is everything. We can’t really grasp the significance of Ovid’s version…
Metamorphoses 2: The Flood Story in Detail
READING, LIKE SO MUCH OF LIFE, is all about seeing all that can be seen—not only what is visible in a cursory glance, but also patterns that lie beneath the…