The inadequacy of literature

For a long time now, on this blog and elsewhere, I have been hawking the idea that literature is not a special class of human efforts (“Imag...

Novels about Jesus

On this Easter morning I have been thinking about all of the bad fiction about Jesus of Nazareth written by those who believe in him. Some o...

Christians and Passover

A reader of my Reflections on Good Friday at Contentions writes to advise me that not all Christians who celebrate Passover are doing so t...

Viktor Frankl and Auschwitz

Although it is not widely read or appreciated as such, Viktor Frankl’s celebrated book Man’s Search for Meaning is a Holocaust memoir. When...

Fashions in forbidden speech

I have begun to blog for Commentary ’s Contentions , and my first post of any real substance is up this morning. I posted it there rather t...

It seeks me out that sometime did me flee

I do not want to be melodramatic. I have a white terror of melodrama. But on the other hand, I know that I must serve as a public witness. W...

“Breaking faith with readers”

On Saturday, when I would rather be doing something else than reading it—okay, not a day goes by when I would not rather be doing almost any...

Confusions with Charley

It would be difficult to cook up a literary exposé that is less earth-shattering than Bill Steigerwald’s accusation in the April issue of R...

Diagnosed with cancer

The biblical scholar James L. Kugel has written a new book on life in the shadow of death. Diagnosed with cancer ten years ago, Kugel dogged...

Hoffman’s Hunger

Not every Jewish writer who earns international attention is an anti-Zionist. The Dutch novelist Leon de Winter, who makes short work of th...