(ANALYSIS) Leo Tolstoy spent half a century avoiding arguably the most essential truth of them all: Everything comes to an end. If that’s true, which it is, what’s the point? He’d conquered every peak the world could name. “War and Peace” made him immortal. “Anna Karenina” made him rich. Critics worshipped him in tongues he didn’t even speak. Russian aristocrats name-dropped him like Scripture.
Read More(ANALYSIS) A young J.R.R. Tolkien wrote: “The fume of the burning, and the steam of the fair fountains of Gondolin withering in the flame of the dragons of the north, fell upon the vale of Tumladen in mournful mists.” The battlefields were “cold and terrible.”
Read More(ANALYSIS) Shakespeare’s works are, and have always been, profoundly theological — not because they provide answers but because they compel us to confront fundamental questions of existence. Is there justice in the universe? Do our actions have eternal consequences? Can the worst among us be saved? These questions not easily answered, if they can be answered at all. These are questions that still haunt us.
Read MoreNorwegian writer Jon Fosse was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on Dec. 10, an honor universally praised as much-deserved for a writer who has been one of Europe’s greatest for quite some time. Fosse, a playwright, novelist and poet, hasn’t always been happy, but he’s been prolific. He’s also a Catholic convert.
Read More(OPINION) Take a look back at “The Bible Code,” the 1997 book that claimed that the Hebrew Bible’s text contained secretly coded, uncanny predictions of phenomena across the subsequent thousands of years that could only be revealed through modern computers. Did it ever prove anything?
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