RECENT ESSAYS & REVIEWS

• "Politically Incorrect Joyce,” a review of James Joyce: A Political Life, by Frank Callanan, forthcoming in Portico
• "St. Patrick's Battle with the Druids: Low Comedy and High Theology in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake," forthcoming in Renascence: Essays on Literature and Ethics, Spirituality and Religion 
  
• "Finnegans Wake and the Foenix Culprit: Here Comes Everybody's Original Sin," in LOGOS.
• "I Want to Make You See" (On Dostoevsky's Idiot's Spiritual Tutorial),  in Plough
• "The Ghosts of James Joyce in the Fiction of Edward P. Jones'” in America
• "Joseph Conrad's Crooked Cross: Transcending the Tragic Sense of Life," in the University of Notre Dame's Church Life Journal
• "The Moral Imagination and the Spirit of Literature," in Public Discourse
• Review of Annihilation: A Novel, by Michel Houellebecq, in First Things
• Review of Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness, by Inger Brodey, in The Hedgehog Review
• "Proust's Sacramental Sacrifice," in LOGOS.
• "Testing the Spirits of Jon Fosse's The Shining," in First Things
• "Taking the Persecutor's Side," on Proust's The Swann Way
• "More than a Mortal God": A Review of Vinson Cunningham's Great Expectations, in Current
• Review of Jason M. Baxter's Translation of The Divine Comedy: Inferno in CWR:  "Saving Dante from the Classicists."
• "Fail Better, James Joyce," a Review of James Joyce: A Life, Gabrielle Carey, in America
• "The Dumb Ox the Good Samaritan: A Double Review of: James Joyce and Samaritan Hospitality: Postcritical and Postsecular Reading in Dubliners and Ulysses, by Richard Rankin Russell & Joyce, Aristotle, and Aquinas, by Fran O’Rourke, in Literary Matters
• Review of Why Do the Heathen Rage?: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Work in Progress, by Flannery O'Connor
• "The Afterlife of Coetzee's Secular Commedia," in Notre Dame's Church Life Journal
• "In Search of Ordinary Time," in Genealogies of Modernity
• "Flaubert's Anti-Sentimental Sex": Review essay on Raymond MacKenzie's translation of Sentimental Education (2024) & The Letters of Gustave Flaubert (NYRB), in The Hedgehog Review
• "Eugene Vodolazkin's Angel of History: A Review of A History of the Island," in Notre Dame's Church Life Journal
• "The Novel is Dead. Long Live the Novel!: A Review of The Novel, Who Needs It? by Joseph Epstein," in New Polity
• "Hölderlin’s Successful Failure: A Review of Hölderlin’s Madness: Chronicle of a Dwelling Life, 1806-1843, by Giorgio Agamben," forthcoming
• "Every Mann: A Review of New and Selected Stories, Thomas Mann, translated by Damion Searls," in The University Bookman
• "Man Laughs, God Weeps: On Milan Kundera and the Spirit of the Novel," in The European Conservative
• "Cormac McCarthy's De Profundis: A Double Review of The Passenger and Stella Maris," in The Englewood Review of Books
• "A Cartography of Redemption": Review of Heimito von Doderer's The Strudlhof Steps, in The Los Angeles Review of Books
• “Prisoner of War in the Machine Paradise: Review of Bernanos: His Political Thought and Prophecy, by Thomas Molnar,” in New Polity
• "The Suffering Cure: On Georges Bernanos' The Diary of a Country Priest," in Word on Fire's Magazine.
• "A Communion of Pathless Solitudes: Review of The Making of Poetry: Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Their Year of Marvels, by Adam Nicholson," in The Los Angeles Review of Books
• "David Foster Wallace's Denomination of Joy": Review of Something to Do With Paying Attention, in America
• “Radical Sympathies: Review of Fathers and Children, by Ivan Turgenev,” in The European Conservative
• "All That's Left is This Foundation Stone," Review of The Commonwealth: Poems by Dan Rattelle, in The University Bookman
• "Henry James and the Secular Pilgrim," in The European Conservative
• "Toni Morrison's Many-Colored Lamb: Review of Recitatif," in The Englewood Review of Books
• "Divine Ironies"
• "Saunders on Story": Review of A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, by George Saunders in First Things
• "What Waugh Saw in America," in America
• "On the Use and the Abuse of the American Martyrs"
• Review essay on Jonathan Franzen's new novel Crossroads in Law & Liberty
• "The Silence of the Poets: Dana Gioia and the Transcendence of Verse," in Word on Fire's Magazine
• "God, if there was a God": Review of Phil Klay's novel Missionaries in University Bookman
• "Finding Dante in the Infernal Midwest": Review of Randy Boyagoda's Dante's Indiana in Law & Liberty
• Review of Steven Faulkner's The Image: A Novel in Pieces
• "Irony that Gives a Damn" in Public Discourse
• "More than a Matter of Taste" in The Hedgehog Review
• "Christopher Beha's Capacity for God" in University Bookman
• "Cracks of Faith in the Secular Self": Review of Christopher Beha's novel The Index of Self-Destructive Acts
• Review of Dana Gioia's Studying with Miss Bishop: Memoirs from a Young Writer's Life
• "Kerouac's Beatific Visions," First Things
• "The First Commandment of Fiction," First Things
• "Christ-Haunted George Saunders," First Things
• "An Ancient Descent into a Modern Hell: Dana Gioia's 'The Underworld' Under the Influence," in FORMA
• "Mystery That is the World’s Least Hidden Thing," Review of
• The Harvest and the Lamp, by Andrew Frisardi, in Presence
• "Death Comes for Ross Douthat: Review of The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery," in The Lamp
• "The Catholic Writer of the Future," Review of Many-Colored Fleece: An Anthology of Twentieth Century Fiction by Sister Mariella Gable, O.S.B., in Dappled Things

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