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Funeral Narratives
When my uncle died last February, the local priests were out of town for a conference, so my family called on a deacon to preside over the funeral. We hardly knew what hit us....
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The Prodigal Daughter
The definition of a good memoir, like St. Paul’s famous definition of love, is perhaps better fleshed out in considering what it does not do than what it does. A good memoir, for example, does not ignore the harsh truths of the past, but neither does it delight in placing blame; it does not enlarge the sins of others, nor does it downplay the memoirist’s own shortcomings. Rather, a memoir rings true when it devotes as much time to investigating the self as it does to interrogating the past.
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The Book of Buechner
Writing down the life story of an esteemed and holy man is no easy task. Just ask Reginald, the eager and at times fawning biographer who documents the life of an uncooperative hermit in Frederick Buechner’s ninth novel, Godric. Or ask Dale Brown, who—though his subject is much more willing than Reginald’s—just might have something in common with that enthusiastic biographer-of-a-near-saint.
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Current Issue
Issue 72
Memoir by Lauren Winner, Poetry by James Harpur, Art by Guy Chase and Adrian Wiszniewski
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