Today philosophy professor Santiago Ramos steps in with the last word (we think) of “The Beauty Dialogues,” a periodic exchange between Image contributor Morgan Meis and Image founder Gregory Wolfe. For a while now I have borne the fearful hunch that sooner or later, Image would have to confront Immanuel Kant. A journal whose reason…

Note: This review contains mild spoilers. Hail, Caesar!, the Coen Brothers’ latest offering, tells the story of a pious hero on a religious quest, and by all appearances is a movie that asks to be interpreted in a theological way. A quasi-parable set in a big studio during the Golden Era of Hollywood, the film…

Back from an unannounced (and unforeseen) hiatus in blogging, I have so many ideas accumulated that I don’t know which to focus on. So here are brief mentions of various articles that have piled up over the last few weeks, all of which deal with artists who have worked within the “pile up” as Annie…

From this essay about the recently-departed English science fiction writer, J.G. Ballard, I found this comment interesting: “‘People who read Empire of the Sun have often said to me, What a strange life, how unusual,’ he told the BBC World Service in 2002. ‘And I say to them, actually, the life I led in Shanghai…

I can’t quite pin down why I can’t stand Pepsi’s new “Refresh Everything” ad campaign, which makes commercial use of the nation’s bad luck and blue mood by making happy, colorful signs with positive words on them. Every morning, I walk past buses with “JOY,” “TOGETHER,” and, most annoyingly, “OPTIMISMMM” emblazoned on their sides, like…

Note: If you are an absolute newcomer to the current Battlestar Galactica TV series and think you might want to catch up, this post contains spoilers. I wonder if anyone has said that the Sci-Fi Channel’s timing was off when it decided to air the first episode of the last season (or rather, half-season) of…

Inspired by a similar tradition in David Brooks’ New York Times column (but with fewer pretensions to comprehensiveness—I am calling them favorites, not the most important or influential), here is a list of five essays or reviews that I have read, on the internet, which I think are worth printing out to read and ponder…

When a man asks a question about something important, he is doing something important. Let the man ask the question. Help him, if possible, to answer it. Whatever you do, don’t parry, obfuscate, or otherwise stifle the question. I make these observations in light of Levi Asher’s comments on the blog, Literary Kicks (which, incidentally,…

There’s never a good reason to do a bad thing, but it’s possible, and regrettable, to do a good thing for a bad reason. Reading a novel (a good thing) for sociological content, for moral or ethical norms, or even simply for the jokes or titillating parts is a little bit like only eating the…

An early scene in Ingmar Bergman’s film Through A Glass Darkly places Bergman’s brooding protagonist, the post-suicidal, proud old novelist David, hunched over the galley proofs of his latest novel, slowly adding adjectives with a heavy pen. When I first saw that scene, my thoughts turned to genre: is Bergman trying to kill the novel?…