Faith, Fiction, Friends: Saturday Good Reads

Sometimes, fiction imitates life, and other times, life imitates fiction. Consider Edgar Allen Poe. He wrote some terrifying and disturbing short stories. One of them, at least, did not spring from his imagination. Dean Jobb at CrimeReads explains what inspired Poe to write “The Black Cat.”

I laughed until it hurt, and them I kept laughing. Philomena Cunk’s programs have apparently been around for years, but now you can watch them on Netflix. What’s so funny? As Alexander Larman at The Spectator points out, her programs perfectly satirize our era of idiocy (or, as a political figure recently pointed out, we are not divided between left and right; we are divided between normal and crazy).

More than 40 years ago, I read the story of Babi Yar by Anatoly Kuznetsov. The author was a writer in the Soviet Union who managed to escape to the West in 1970. He brought the microfilm of his novel with him. What he wrote, often called a documentary in the form of a novel, was the story of two days in September 1941, when German forces killed more than 33,000 Jews in a ravine in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. Kuznetsov had to flee with his story, because the Soviets didn’t want the story told. George Parker at The Atlantic describes the masterpiece no one wanted to save.

Jed Perl is considered one of the best art critics in the United States. He’s written a book, a short one, called Authority & Freedom, a defense of the arts against the current onslaught of relevance. Robert Boyers at Salmagundi talks with Perl about the book.

More Good Reads

Faith

Toward a Renewed Public Protestantism: The Beginnings of a Manifesto – Jake Meador at Mere Orthodoxy.

Writing and Literature

A Cross-Cultural Bridge of Kinship and Mutual Appreciation: The Moving Correspondence of Albert Camus and Boris Pasternak – Maria Popova at The Marginalian.

Sense and sensitivity: Some readers need thicker skins – Rosemary Jenkinson at The Critic Magazine.

A.A. Milne Reads from Winnie-the-Pooh in a Rare 1929 Recording – Maria Popova at The Marginalian.

Life and Culture

Have I Experienced Racism in America? – Samuel Sey at Slow to Write.

A Wild Christianity – Paul Kingsnorth at First Things Magazine.

A Dictionary of Dumb Ideas: Tradition vs. Convention – Benjamin Myers at Front Porch Republic.

Gasoline Car Review – Geoff Greer.