The Emerging Scholars Blog

I feel I am closest to God when writing. You’re singing praises. You’re describing the world, as it is. And even if the passages turn out sordid or depressing, there’s something holy about the truth — John Updike, commenting when interviewed for NPR’s ‘Tell Me A Story,’ as reflected upon by the host, Marjorie Leet Ford, March 31, 2003.*

Over breakfast this morning, I read the NY Times article A Relentless Updike Mapped America’s Mysteries.  In addition, I watched the brief, but stimulating October 2008 interview of John Updike (1932-2009) focused upon the craft of fiction and the art of writing.  Hungry for more, I watched the A Life in Letters Interview. ** With regard to both pieces, I was struck by the wisdom of this 76 year old from central Pennsylvania (who moved north for a Harvard education and continued in suburban Massachusetts for writing and family life).  As for Updike’s Tour of Protestantism, I found a helpful piece in Religion & Ethics Newsweekly’s report on his 2004 presentation at the Center for Religious Inquiry, St. Bartholomew’s Church, New York City.

Any Updike fans/experts have thoughts to share regarding the film version of “The Witches of Eastwick” (1987) versus his 1984 book, his range of writing, his characters, his themes (and the research involved in them), his life, his faith?  I must confess that I’m not very familiar with Updike and would love to learn more.  Teach me. Read the rest of this entry »

Nearly everyone cares — or says he cares — about art. After all, art ennobles the spirit, ­elevates the mind, and educates the emotions. Or does it?  — The End of Art by Roger Kimball, Copyright (c) 2008 First Things (June/July 2008).

How about The End of Art?  Take some time to reflect upon and discuss this article with friends, family, and the blog over Thanksgiving break.  To tease you a little, here’s the conclusion after ruminations on Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Jones, Murray, modern/postmodern art (to drop a few of, but not all of the names): 

Man is the sort of creature whose nature is to delight in art and aesthetic experience; I believe that he is also, by nature, a religious animal — a creature who becomes who he really is only by acknowledging something that transcends him. These different aspects of humanity will often conspire, but we do both a disservice if we blur or elide their essential difference.

Over at the First Things On the Square blog, Matthew J. Milliner reviews Daniel Siedell’s God in the Gallery, which provides a different approach to art from the Reformed, Rookmaaker-influenced tradition.

Here’s a teaser:

Simply put, God in the Gallery succeeds by dividing, that is, by clearly distinguishing the sanctuary from the salon. The author has no interest in churches aping galleries or galleries playing church. But what keeps Siedell from merely erecting a Jeffersonian wall of separation between church and gallery is his unflinching insistence that the church’s aesthetic framework, grounded in the ecumenical warrant for icons, is strong enough to inform, shape, and underwrite the practice of contemporary art. “The church’s aesthetics and poetics . . . is the ground of all aesthetics and poetics.” And the direction of influence “goes from the church outward toward culture, not from culture to a passive, inert, irrelevant church.”