Denis & Margie Haack continue to write at Critique-Letters
One way to think about art is to understand it as an attempt to use human creativity to help us see life and reality…
Philosopher Charles Taylor has spent a lifetime of careful study unpacking the meaning and development of secularism. One of the things he demonstrates…
Child of God (1973) is Cormac McCarthy’s most disturbing book, and the film is hard to watch. The story is of Lester Ballard (played…
“What the detective story is about,” author P. D. James says, “is not murder but the restoration of order.” Something has gone astray in…
I argued in the first installment of this series that one reason we are drawn to detective stories is that we were made to…
The appeal of detective stories includes our need for order when crime has introduced disorder (always a dangerous state), and our yearning for justice…
The fourth reason detective mysteries are appealing as stories is related to the foundational truth that human existence is meaningless apart from community. We…
One of the most important books to be published in these opening years of the 21stcentury in philosopher Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age.…
This past Sunday (in 2013) Margie and I wandered through five acres of woods with our good friend, Joe Schwen, organic farmer extraordinaire. The…
In terms of genre these three films are very different: Lincolnis a historical drama, Waste Land is a documentary, and Traitor is a spy…
