Caroline Gordon may be the most influential Catholic author you have never heard of.

I recently read two hugely different novels in quick succession—The Wings of the Dove by Henry James and The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.

Personal trials and the chaos of summer have me buried in Agatha Christie yet again, seeking the distinct assurance that only a good murder mystery can provide. But what is it about a good who-done-it that calms our existential despair?

The novelist of grace and grittiness said: 'I write the way I do because and only because I am a Catholic.'

A poem on the foolishness that passes for wisdom these days.

A poem on the necessity of silence in this world of noise.

Prose is not poetry, yet it has its own rhythms; and the writer's meaning—conveyed not in bare words alone but in emphases, inflections, punctuations—can be clarified by speaking and hearing it as well as by seeing it. But reading well aloud takes practice.

As a literary critic, writer, and professor, I have the great privilege of working with literature every day, and helping others to encounter the beauty of great stories as well.

The literary critic and biographer Mona Wilson once began an introduction to a selection of Samuel Johnson's prose and poetry with a memorable disclaimer. "I shall say nothing of Johnson's life."

The great biographer of Newman, a convert from Anglicanism, always inspired fondness in those who reveled in his wit, his bonhomie, his learning, and his very real, if inconspicuous pietas.