A philosophically instructive, spiritually uplifting dialogue.
A theologically edifying dialogue between a committed Catholic and an observant Jew about the natures of their faiths and beyond.
Particularly in a religiously divisive age, an unabashed display of theological cooperation between two discussants of different but often related beliefs is simply inspiring. This book is essentially the cataloging of a conversation between two spiritually driven men, Richard Chapin, a rabbi, and Jerome Pitarresi, a lifelong Catholic, who exchange letters covering the basic controversies confronting men of religious conviction. Some of their conversations are scholarly and doctrinally centered, ranging from topics such as faith, the grace of God and the nature of religious belief itself. In these sections, the two interlocutors deftly straddle the fence between deep scholarly erudition and accessibility, soberly discussing issues that could easily devolve into academic minutiae. Most of their discussions, however, center on topics of social controversy that are not irreducibly religious: marriage, tradition, failure, disappointment, anger, sex, forgiveness and elderly care. The reflections on the nature of spiritual life are typically profound and intelligibly presented: “As you suggest, the addition of other forms of so-called spiritual expression—be it yoga, meditation, or a dash of Buddhism here and there—have sufficed for many who choose to lead completely secular lives. I find this development sad and, at worst, tragic. There is nothing wrong with supplementing one’s religion with these so-called spiritual exercises. But one should be careful not to make those supplements to our religion the religion itself!” Underlying the entire dialogue is evidence of a life of friendship; even differences between the two men, sometimes enlivened by a gentle argument, never rise to the level of fiery debate. In fact, one minor failing of the book is that the significant theological differences between the two men and their religious traditions are sometimes lost amid the men’s congeniality. It’s heartening to see a committed Jew and a Catholic converse about such powerful topics without a hint of adversarial conflict; yet their worldviews are powerfully distinct, especially regarding the afterlife and the bonds of marriage.
A philosophically instructive, spiritually uplifting dialogue.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4909-9074-3
Page Count: 138
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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