Atheist Bodies
By Book Review Issue 90
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Spiegel & Grau, 2015) The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (Graywolf Press, 2015) A Body, Undone: Living on after Great Pain by Christina Crosby (New York University Press, 2016) SON,” HE BEGINS. “LAST SUNDAY the host of a popular news show asked me what it meant to…
Read MoreFinding Our Names
By Essay Issue 54
Fathers and teachers, I ponder, “What is hell?” I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love. —Dostoyevsky How did I get so lucky to have my heart awakened to others and their suffering? —Pema Chödrön WHEN MY FATHER DIES, I may not know about it for days. The people at his…
Read MoreAtheism’s Easier
By Poetry Issue 74
Abstain from staring too long at the sky. Stick to screens, little keyboards; block out birds with private earbuds; never hear the wind breathe harder. Watch TV. Always drive. Try to avoid a night outside in ladled moonlight, glowing broth. Eschew solitude; cut back on silence; call up someone just to gossip; send lots of…
Read MoreKurt Vonnegut, Christ-Loving Atheist
By Essay Issue 82
WHEN I CAME HOME from King’s Chapel on the Sunday I published an article called “Returning to Church” in the New York Times Magazine in 1985, I had a message from Kurt Vonnegut on my answering machine. “This is Kurt,” his voice said. “I forgive you.” My becoming a Christian again in mid-life (after many…
Read MoreThe Novel as God: The New Atheist Tradition in Fiction
By Book Review Issue 84
The New Atheist Novel: Philosophy, Fiction and Polemic after 9/11 by Arthur Bradley and Andrew Tate (New Directions, 2010) The Children Act by Ian McEwan (Nan A. Talese, 2014) Fury by Salman Rushdie (Random House, 2001) The Book Against God by James Wood (Picador, 2004) HEAVY RHETORIC MIXED WITH biblical exegesis and reductive…
Read MoreThe Rage of Peter De Vries: Reckoning with a Brokenhearted Humorist
By Essay Issue 83
IT WAS AN ORDINARY autumn night in suburban Chicago when I received the most disturbing book I have ever read. I was seventeen, slouching in my bedroom making a half-hearted attempt at homework, my sweaty cross-country clothes festering on the floor. My father appeared at the doorway and handed me a yellowed paperback that looked…
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