Truth belongs to love alone

The “religious-seeking novel,” as Ruth Franklin calls it, has been making a splash recently. Roland Merullo’s The Talk-Funny Girl , William...

“He looks mysterious to me”

A quick in-and-out visit to Houston yesterday to see my oncologist. Dr. Garrett R. Lynch has been treating me for nearly five years now, eve...

Going Like Sixty

In Stone Arabia , Dana Spiotta’s narrator is worried about her older brother. As they both sink more deeply into their “morbid middle years,...

Every “best” list is now a “personal inventory”

Yesterday Terry Teachout conducted a “ purely personal inventory ” of the ten American novels he “most wished” he had written, and this morn...

Jewish sin and repentance

Another Yom Kippur, another difficult fast . It never seems to get any easier. Toward the end of Avinu Malkenu yesterday, during the Neilah ...

The regional basis of a hard heart

Last night, during the Republican presidential debate in Orlando, Florida, Governor Rick Perry defended his state’s decision to admit the ch...

Men and friendship

This morning I heard from a longtime friend who, like me, has recently moved from Houston to another city. “Big community here and easy to g...