Resident Theologian
About the Blog
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
Some reflections on Stephen Graham Jones’s great vampire novel of how the west was lost.
The ten-plus authors club
Reading everything an author has written, or at least ten of his or her books. What’s your ten-plus list? Who do you hope to add to it?
My latest: on Houellebecq (in Mere O) and Forgiveness (in Comment)
Links to two new essays just published online.
The Three-Body Problem
Ten laudatory thoughts about Liu Cixin's deeply theological and anti-totalitarian novel The Three-Body Problem.
Un-paywalled: me in Hedgehog Review on Slow Horses
A link to my essay on Mick Herron’s Slow Horses series of spy novels, now out from behind the paywall.
My latest: on Mick Herron’s Slow Horses novels, in Hedgehog Review
Link to and except from my latest essay: a reflection on the politics of Mick Herron’s Slow Horses novels in The Hedgehog Review.
Klosterman, Rowling, and the NFL
A brief thought about J. K. Rowling prompted by an old Grantland essay on the NFL by Chuck Klosterman.
About that famous Léon Bloy quote
A search for the true origins of that famous Léon Bloy quote about the tragedy of not becoming a saint.
To Osten Ard
A celebration of Osten Ard, the fiction world of Tad Williams’ fantasy trilogy—my favorite of the genre—in preparation for the sequel series, a tetralogy that concludes later this year.
Slow Horses
A few comments on what the Apple TV adaptation of the Mick Herron novels gets right and what it gets wrong.
The bishop of Rome in Alpha Centauri
I finally read Walter M. Miller Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, a novel with my name written on it if ever there was one. It’s more than six decades old—having been written in the wake of World War II; its origins there, as well as the fate of its author, are shadowed with tragedy—so I’m not worried about spoiling it for you, but be it known that the following quote comes from the final 50 pages of the book.
Cats, Catholics, and election
I went to Stonehill’s stock barn. He had a nice barn and behind it a big corral and a good many small feeder pens. The bargain cow ponies, around thirty head, all colors, were in the corral. I thought they would be broken-down scrubs but they were frisky things with clear eyes and their coats looked healthy enough, though dusty and matted. They had probably never known a brush. They had burrs in their tails.
James and le Carré (TLC, 3)
P. D. James and John le Carré are two of my favorite novelists. I’ve written about each of them before. A question occurred to me as I was reading le Carré’s Our Game this week, and that question reminded me of a question I asked on Twitter a couple years ago.
Piranesi and Decreation
Last month I read Piranesi, Susanna Clarke’s belated follow-up to her best-selling Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Piranesi is as wonderful as advertised, a bona fide mystery box of pure prose, genuine wonder, and spiritual imagination. It’s also best to go in without knowing anything, so unspoiled readers who prefer to remain that way ought to stop here.
The queen
Of all the brilliant British women writers who lived to a good old age in the long twentieth century, who is your favorite? The candidates are many; both Mary Midgley and Agatha Christie come immediately to mind. Doubtless Rebecca West is chief among all women and men of English letters during this period. But as for me and my house, we hail P. D. James, or as I affectionately call her, The Queen. Long may she reign, even in death.
The Book of Strange New Things, 3
So I don’t think Michel Faber’s The Book of Strange New Things works. Its lead is unbelievable; the prose is unmemorable to a fault; the payoffs meant to explain the eerie human and mental atmosphere on the alien planet are unsatisfactory, and call in turn for further explanations that are never forthcoming.
What works, if anything? A few things.
The Book of Strange New Things, 2
In my last post I wrote about how Peter, the protagonist of Michel Faber’s The Book of Strange New Things, is unbelievable. I want now to say a bit more about why the novel doesn’t quite work.
The Book of Strange New Things, 1
I just finished Michel Faber’s The Book of Strange New Things, and I’ve got Thoughts. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it either. I think I might expand on a couple reasons in future posts. But the first thing I have to say about the book is this.
The lead character is simply not believable.
Late le Carré
The truth is that politics began to intrude itself into le Carré’s work more flagrantly. It certainly preoccupied him. The Brexit vote outraged him, and at the end of his life he petitioned for Irish citizenship, so that he might remain a European. “I think my own ties to England were hugely loosened over the last few years,” he told The Guardian in 2019. “And it’s a kind of liberation, if a sad kind.”