A Commonplace Blog

For a long time now, on this blog and elsewhere, I have been hawking the idea that literature is not a special class of human efforts (“Imag...

On this Easter morning I have been thinking about all of the bad fiction about Jesus of Nazareth written by those who believe in him. Some o...

A reader of my Reflections on Good Friday at Contentions writes to advise me that not all Christians who celebrate Passover are doing so t...

Although it is not widely read or appreciated as such, Viktor Frankl’s celebrated book Man’s Search for Meaning is a Holocaust memoir. When...

I have begun to blog for Commentary ’s Contentions , and my first post of any real substance is up this morning. I posted it there rather t...

I do not want to be melodramatic. I have a white terror of melodrama. But on the other hand, I know that I must serve as a public witness. W...

On Saturday, when I would rather be doing something else than reading it—okay, not a day goes by when I would not rather be doing almost any...

It would be difficult to cook up a literary exposé that is less earth-shattering than Bill Steigerwald’s accusation in the April issue of R...

The biblical scholar James L. Kugel has written a new book on life in the shadow of death. Diagnosed with cancer ten years ago, Kugel dogged...

Not every Jewish writer who earns international attention is an anti-Zionist. The Dutch novelist Leon de Winter, who makes short work of th...

A friend sent me this translation of an interview with Nicole Krauss in the Tel Aviv daily Yediot Ahronot : “American Jewish writer Nicole ...

As someone who is “ unambiguously hostile ” to the enemies of Israel, I was aggravated but not particularly surprised by Judith Butler’s ess...

The “leftist domination of college faculties,” sighs David French of the Alliance Defense Fund in a post at National Review Online , is “by...

Now that Israeli Apartheid Week has come and gone, and now that the Jews have answered with the holiday of Purim , perhaps there is time to ...

The seventh annual “ Israeli Apartheid Week ” is being held on university campuses across the United States this week to renew the call for ...

Although it may be wide of the target, Kevin Neilson’s suggestion that there is some “family resemblance” between Edith Wharton and Sigmund...

Over at Interpolations , Kevin Neilson suggests that Edith Wharton “shares a family resemblance with Freud.” Granted, my impressions of Fre...