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Song of Myself
The ambition to some day become a writer was planted in my head sometime around 1980 in a Long John Silvers restaurant in Conneaut, Ohio. I was seated at the end of a Formica table, a plastic basket of crispy fried fish and brown hushpuppies in front of me, listening to my grandfather grill my aunt’s boyfriend, Sean. It was just me, my dad, and my grandfather all looking at Sean, who had an earring....
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No Faking It
Though I’m not Aryan (German-Irish), I was raised in typical Midwestern household that preached (though we were Catholic) the Protestant work ethic of discipline and moderation, making the syncopation of jazz and the soulful, showy, one-upmanship of improvising both thrillingly liberating, and the key to showing me how artists (I knew none) work if they expect to be successful....
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Writing Catholic After the Abuse Scandal
“Where have all the Catholic writers gone?” Robert Fay asked on the literary/culture blog The Millions at the end of November. As someone who identifies as a Catholic writer, when I read the headline I was like, “Oh, no he didn’t.” This is a sore subject for my wife and me. Our shelves are filled with the authors Fay mentions—Merton, O’Connor, Tolkien, Spark, and Percy—authors that most literate folks....
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We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live
Back home, reading the freshly inscribed copy of Blue Nights, I am reminded of advice I read once in a driving manual, something about how to avoid serious injury if you should find your vehicle headed straight for a telephone pole or tree: angle the vehicle left-of-center so that the car is dealt a glancing blow. Again and again, Didion seems set on a crash-course for a head-on collision with despair....
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I Am the 99%
I love my office. It’s the best office I’ve ever had; actually, it’s the only office I’ve ever had, and it’s beyond messy. The messiness is an embodiment of my rangy to-do lists. Just last night at an All-Saints feast, a student commenting on the state of my office said that she feared that something would emerge from the stacks of books and papers and eat her. I could walk to work—we live just on the edge of the campus where I am a professor in a house owned by the College—but these days....
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Current Issue
Issue 71
Fiction by Larry Woiwode, interview with Joe Henry, art by Fabian Debora, essay by Barry Moser.
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