Tag Archives: Covenantal Literature

Today, I read two selections from Alfred Hitchock’s curated collection, My Favorites in Suspense. The two illustrate the opposed content of suspense stories. “A Sentence of Death” by Thomas Walsh finds suspense in a cop seeking to correct injustice. Mann Rubin’s “A Nice Touch” finds tension in making the story’s protagonist even more unjust thanContinue reading “Ethics and Suspense”

David Foster Wallace’s posthumous novel The Pale King (2012) is incomplete, but its best sections demonstrate the power of Wallace’s fiction. THEME Set in an IRS office, the novel concerns various characters attempting to find meaning in rote, often dull work. Wallace sees their dilemma as an ethical one. Characters thrive when they discover thatContinue reading “The Pale King: A Covenantal Theme”

Every semester, I teach Jhumpa Lahiri’s collection Interpreter of Maladies (1999). I reread it today and found it as powerful as ever. THEME We destroy our communities through greed, lust, and pride. We most experience broken communities, particularly in marriage, when we communicate poorly. For Lahiri, we experience redemption when we tell or listen toContinue reading “Interpreter of Maladies: Covenantal Theme and Plot”

John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974) is nearly fifty years old, but its espionage yarn and themes of ethics and disillusionment still resonate. PLOT In the middle of the Cold War, the British spy service must find its mole, a Russian infiltrator. George Smiley, an ousted spy, must figure out who the moleContinue reading “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: Covenantal Plot and Theme”

Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (2009) tells the story of England’s break with the Roman Catholic Church from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s chief political adviser. This is the first book in a trilogy. PLOT Henry VIII wants to marry Anne Boelyn. There’s just one problem. He’s already married. Thomas Cromwell works for CardinalContinue reading “Wolf Hall: The Covenantal Plot and Theme”

C.S. Lewis would disagree with what I have been doing on this site. My readings, he would argue, turn literature into philosophy and religion. I am using Shakespeare, not receiving him. For that reason, I will continue to mull over Lewis’s argument. I know that he and I disagree. I do not know precisely whatContinue reading “An Experiment in Criticism: Part 2”

This site takes its name from CS Lewis’s book An Experiment in Criticism. What is Lewis’s experiment? He focuses on readers rather than books. Here are the five important points he makes in the book’s first half. Literary readers receive the books they read, while the unliterary only use what they read. Literary readers restContinue reading “An Experiment in Criticism: Part 1”

Don DeLillo’s novel Libra (1988) offers a fictional account of Lee Harvey Oswald’s life and death. What follows is an account of the novel’s plot and theme. PLOT Lee Harvey Oswald is a directionless boy who seeks access to a secret world. Three men connected with American intelligence conspire to nearly assassinate the president soContinue reading “Libra: A Covenantal Outline”

Marxist literary criticism begins with the presupposition that the causes for art are material. Though Marxist criticism is not monolithic, they all deny spiritual realities. When they differ, it is in the different material causes they identify: strictly economic or diffusely political. From this materialist premise comes the following covenant. The content of literature neverContinue reading “The Covenant of Marxist Literary Criticism”

This is the 30th anniversary of Oliver Stone’s scabrous film, JFK. Stone played fast and loose with the facts to hold the military-industrial complex’s feet to the fire. The government had to kill JFK, Stone maintained, because JFK would have quashed Vietnam and other CIA shenanigans. Conspiracies highlight the storytelling at the heart of historyContinue reading “Fiction and History”