Description: Writer Robert Fay's literature blog on books, literary culture and lit criticism. Rob Fay is a native of Boston who lives in Portland, Oregon.
Search Robert Fay Writer, Critic & Book Podcaster Menu Home Writing Vanity About Me Search Search for: Close search Close Menu Home Writing Vanity About Me Categories Literary Essays The Calvinism in Our Literature Post author By Robert Fay Post date February 15, 2021 Martin Luther spent the winter of 1522 hiding at Germany’s Watburg Castle. It was a smart move, for he had challenged the Roman Catholic Church’s monopoly on biblical interpretation and the pardoning of sins, and was not likely to receive a Ch
This rather anxious Augustinian monk wasn’t a conscious saboteur of institutions and norms, he was no Jacobin, but a devout personage, and almost certainly a sufferer of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder by today’s standards. His writings reveal a nagging fixation on whether he was in a state of mortal sin or not (no small matter in 16 th Century Germany); in the Catholic tradition, this is a spiritual malaise known as “scrupulosity” and it often afflicts the super-devout, and has included a number of canonized
By Robert Fay Post date November 25, 2020 Last year I wrote an essay in 3 Quarks Daily trying to clarify my thoughts on “the total novel” or what I’ve started calling “the everything novel.” This is the land of Joyce, Gaddis, Musil and other giants. I took the essay, entirely reworked the middle and the ending, and recorded it for the Feeling Bookish Podcast as part of our “Audio Essay” series. Take a listen: