Dear Friends,<\/p>\n
Has the summer heat gotten you down? Fear not! The cool new edition<\/a> of Dappled Things is sure to refresh you with an invigorating selection of prose, poetry, and art.<\/p>\n
Our fiction this issue runs the gamut from the weighty to the wild. We have Dena Hunt\u2019s The Funeral<\/a>, a moving meditation on the finitude of human loves, followed by a story that features a troop of Dominican friars dispassionately considering whether they should eat each other or not\u2014Eleanor Donlon\u2019s wacky but affecting De virtute cannibalismi<\/a>\u2014and conclude with Tony France\u2019s The Ninth Floor<\/a>, the often bizarre tale of a young thief set on making off with the treasures of a legendary department store:<\/p>\n
Leyland\u2019s catalogue was a thousand pages filled with hope, joy, and goodwill. The actual wares offered for sale seemed like a pretext for displaying tapestries, paintings, mosaics, frescoes, fountains, statuary rising above cobalt blue pools, hanging gardens, tropical forests, marble temples, and ancient ruins. Walking into the blue and gold aura of the Leyland\u2019s Fifth Avenue main entrance reinforced the impression that at Leyland\u2019s, merchandising, although necessary, served an ulterior motive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
If you\u2019re looking for solid non-fiction, we\u2019ve got that too. Eileen Cunis delves into the Catholic tradition for insight in her essay \u201cWhat is Art?<\/a>,\u201d the first installment of a three part series titled \u201cOn the Vocation of the Christian Artist.\u201d Then in \u201cThe Wisconsin Baroque, Priests, and Paper Architecture<\/a>\u201d Matthew Alderman lays out a vision of how sacred architecture might develop in the future by building on\u2014rathern than discarding\u2014the foundations laid out in the past. Along those line, our featured article this issue\u2014\u201dRestoring the Fresco of Progress<\/a>\u201d by Dr. Wilfred McClay\u2014considers the danger of paralysis in a culture that has come to question the very possibility of positive change:<\/p>\n
But our compulsive belief in progress is being challenged constantly by the honesty of our unbelief. Hence when we speak of progress, it is so often \u201cprogress\u201d that we speak of. The use of sneer quotes is often a way of pretending to be superior to the concept being quoted, and to those who would be so na\u00efve or mendacious as to use the words without critical distance. But their use may also be a way of frankly confessing one\u2019s inability to get beyond straddling an issue. It may even be a way of evading the law of noncontradiction, by both asserting and not asserting something at the same time. A way of saying tacitly what was once said biblically: \u201cLord I believe; help thou my unbelief.\u201d (Mark 9: 24)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
If you are looking for a new book to read this summer, make sure to check out Bernardo Aparicio and Katy Carl\u2019s interview<\/a> with Carlos Eire, author of Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy. Eire\u2019s book won the National Book Award in 2003 and is a gem of Catholic literature that has remained hidden only to Catholics. In this thought-provoking interview, our president and editor-in-chief give this fascinating memoir the long-overdue attention it deserves:<\/p>\n
Eire\u2019s voice is one we overlook at our own loss. His memoir, though a work of non-fiction, is suffused with the magical realism of the best Latin American novels. His is the kind of realism that grows out of an understanding that reality is, indeed, magical\u2014full of depth and possibility, sacramental. Eire\u2019s facts are never flat; he can follow the simplest details in surprising directions, all of which lead to either hilarious or deeply poignant conclusions, most often both. For this reason, even as Waiting for Snow succeeds as a memoir of childhood and exile, it accomplishes much more than that. Something solid moves beneath the words. Don\u2019t be surprised at that. It is Augustine, not Rousseau, that Professor Eire is echoing in the memoir\u2019s subtitle: Confessions of a Cuban Boy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
If poetry and art is what you crave, you have come to the right place. Just consider artist James Dean Erickson\u2019s beautiful and moving portraits of humble workers<\/a> and homeless men<\/a>. Erickson uses everyday materials to create works of fine art, a method that supports his interest in highlighting the dignity of those we so often turn away from in the street. And as Erickson paints with brushes our poets paint with words: take a look at Meredith Wise\u2019s \u201cRoman April<\/a>\u201d or John Savoie\u2019s \u201cBeads<\/a>,\u201d among many others, to see what we mean.<\/p>\n
These are just some of the many excellent fiction pieces, essays, poems, and works of art that we have prepared for you this time.<\/p>\n
Wishing you a joyful and blessed summer,<\/p>\n
The Editors<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Check thou it out!<\/p>\n