The title of this blog borrows from a phrase used by the British novelist and Catholic convert, Evelyn Waugh: “There is an Easter sense in which all things are made new in the risen Christ. A tiny gleam of this is reflected in all true art.” It is a hopeful and worthwhile idea and aspiration to believe that the human creation of art is a refracting of the truth as expressed in the person of the risen Christ.

This blog serves as a place to comment on and explore literature – or any other mode of art, such as film, poetry, visual art, and the like. Although the explorations and reactions here need not be centered on religious structures or ideas, it is assumed that the foundational core of the responses is a belief in the power and truth of Catholicism. Rather than this having the effect of a narrowing of perspectives, as some may claim, this standpoint is in fact one of freedom, for freedom is found fully only in truth – while a detachment from this bedrock of veracity, even in hopes of finding objectivity, is bound to end in hollow and incomplete untruth.

Monday, December 30, 2013

2012 in Review

For the sake of preserving my own memory, I want to list my favorite books from the previous year. Perhaps the year in between gives me a more honest assessment. Perhaps not. But here are my top five, in no particular order:

Gilead: Marilynne Robinson
Suttree: Cormac McCarthy
Out Stealing Horses: Per Petterson
A Confederacy of Dunces: John Kennedy Toole
A Handful of Dust: Evelyn Waugh

And here are two notable mentions that didn’t make the list:

How Fiction Works: James Wood
Chronicle of a Death Foretold: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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