Saturday Good Reads

Last week we saw Terrence Malick’s new movie, “A Hidden Life,” the story of an Austrian farmer who wouldn’t fight for the Nazi army in World War II. It’s based on a true story. It’s a long movie (2 hours, 45 minutes); it’s also a beautifully filmed movie. A lot of critics hate it, for various reasons. I didn’t; I loved it. It was about a man doggedly living out his faith and doing a better job of it than his priest or his bishop. David Deavel at The Imaginative Conservative takes a look at the movie. Also see "The Knight of Faith: Franz Jägerstätter’s Hidden Life" by Casey Spinks at Front Porch Republic.

Poet Christian Wiman, who was once editor of Poetry Magazine (the top poetry publication in the United States) and now teaches at Yale, spoke recently at a Duke University Initiatives in Theology and the Arts conference. Faith & Leadership Magazine talked with him about the making of art as an expression of faith.

Noir literature flourished in the 1920s through roughly the 1950s, and includes such authors as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, and Mickey Spillane. Wallace Stroby at CrimeReads calls Cornell Woolrich the greatest of all noir novelists.

More Good Reads

Culture

It’s 2020 and You’re in the Future – Tim Urban at Wait But Why.

Thinking along with Emma Green: Sen. Josh Hawley dares to tilt at many GOP windmills – Terry Mattingly at Get Religion.

Googling Wisdom – Seth Lewis.

“The Speech”: Maintaining Sanity in an Insane World – Forrest McDonald at The Imaginative Conservative.

Faith

Say What No One Else Will: The Men We Need as the World Drowns – Greg Morse at Desiring God.

Alleluia: On Morten Lauridsen’s “O Magnum Mysterium" – Amy Baik Lee at The Rabbit Room.

Are You in a Winter Season? Look for the Harvest to Come – W. Scott Brown at the Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics. 

Why Texas Minister Talked to Me — And Only Me — About Deadly Church Shooting – Bobby Ross Jr. at Religion Unplugged. 

Impeachment, Karl Barth, and Christianity Today – J.V. Fesko at Credo Magazine.

Writing and Literature

Is there still such a thing as a Catholic writer? – Liam Callanan at America Magazine.

Not So Innocent Abroad: Mark Twain in the Holy Land – Diane Cole at Jewish Review of Books.

What is the Value of a Dead Language? – Michael De Sapio at The Imaginative Conservative.

Poetry

A Sonnet for Epiphany – Malcolm Guite.

On Truth – Anish at The Chained Muse.

Prufrock and T.S. Eliot – Mary Harwell Sayler at The Poetry Editor.

“I Can’t Make Neither” and “Picasso” – Paul Brookes at Burning House Press.

Seven times seven – Kathleen Everett at The Course of Our Seasons.

Epiphany – Sally Thomas at First Things Magazine. 

News Media

In Praise of Tabloid Catholic Journalism – Rod Dreher at The American Conservative. 

British Stuff

The Tudor dynasty owed everything to Margaret Beaufort’s machinations – Thomas Penn at The Spectator.

Blowing in the Wind – The Bee Gees (1963)

Painting: Young Man Reading by the Light, Norman Rockwell circa 1926, advertisement done for General Electric Lighting.