Fourth Friday Links

Joseph Pearce is a convert to Catholicism and is probably most well known for his ETWN show The Quest for Shakespeare, and a book by the same name, which explores the evidence that Shakespeare was a secret Catholic. Pearce is also a former white supremacist, and this week he chimed in at the National Catholic Register about the lessons we need to learn about what happened on August 11-12 in Charlottesville.

Nick Ripatrazone writes: "Earnestness in secular literature has been gauche for years, but one of the greatest literary sins is frank depictions of religious belief. God forbid the writer who chooses conviction over irony. A character who authentically believes in God is strange, mad, or a liar. Sometimes all three." The writer of this essay had to go all the way back to Myles Connolly’s 1928 novel, Mr. Blue, to find an earnest modern hero, reminiscent both of St. Francis and of Dostoevsky's The Idiot.

Ivy Grimes at Quail Belle compares Twin Peaks with Christian movies and shows. "The first acts of many of Lynch’s projects (for example, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, and Twin Peaks) are filled with glittering, cozy charm, falsely-cheerful acting, and characters who seem bereft of interior lives. So too it is with many Christian movies and shows."