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.

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

October 19: "Dappled Things" Easter 2021 (1/2)

The half+ I read was a bit of a mixed bag:  Some strong poetry by James Matthew Wilson and Devon Balwit.  A nice nonfiction piece by Brian Pugh.  But there was an inexplicably opaque fiction piece, alongside a too sincere on-the-nose (essentially didactic) prolife fiction story.  I tend to be most critical of Dappled Things' fiction, but I do wish we could find a space between these two extremes: the vagueness of the "artsy" story and the didacticism of the "religious" story.

I plan on finishing the second half soonish.

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