The churches of the West are fundamentally compromised not by doctrine but by motive. Many a church has basically serviceable doctrine. They know their soteriology to the point of salvation and farther. They are perfectly orthodox on God’s nature. But
I have now read Dune. I first conceived the ambition more than a year ago, and at last I have done it. So, do I recommend it? Well, yes, but not without reserve. Dune is written with undoubted skill and
I’ve no familiarity at all with the work of Wyndham Lewis, this article’s partial subject, or Dr. Gilfedder, its author, and my knowledge of Shakespeare is small. men against darkness, published in Islander #5 doubtless possesses certain interests for the
Eowyn stands as perhaps my favorite female character in all of fiction. A few there are which stand near her- Harriet Vane, for instance- and a few I will acknowledge as being, to my experience, as well written- Orual (Till
Writing advice is sometimes less helpful than it sounds. Across my years as an active writer of fiction, particularly long-form fiction (novels- one published so far), I’ve dabbled in all sorts of writing advice, and I’ve come up with my own.
The prefaces to this consideration of The Princess and Curdie are two. First, I must highly commend the book to you, together with its prequel. MacDonald is a skilled teller of tales and includes many gems of insight in his
“In all the long wars with the Dark Tower, treason has ever been our greatest foe.” In the modern world, we have plenty of dark forces to point to. Child murderers to the left of me; warmongers to the right;
Allegory versus application The question of who Tom Bombadil is has puzzled Tolkien’s readers ever since he came out. Maiar? Valar? Man? Elf? Something else? He seems to possess certain traits which imply or exclude each of these, and the
#1 – Characters Need to Hurt A good story matters. A good story touches the reader’s soul and changes it, just a little. A good story matters because it touches the reader’s soul and changes it for the better. Which
Have you heard of Twilight? The financial success of the series cannot be doubted. Its writing? If it has a claim there, it rests in creating a successful blank-slate everyman protagonist (or everywoman). The same can be said for many