Friday Links
March 28, 2025
‘Everything Beautiful Comes From and Speaks of God,’ Says French Artist
“Saint Thomas and the Forbidden Birds” James Matthew Wilson on the Catholic Culture Podcast
The Moral Authority of a Body
B.D. McClay: The Soul Should Not Be Handled
And Announcing the J.F Powers Short Fiction Contest Shortlist
‘Everything Beautiful Comes From and Speaks of God,’ Says French Artist
Augustin Frison-Roche is a French artist. His work is stunning. NCR includes a few of his paintings, but you really should go to his website and check out all of his work.
In his view, the dimensions of freedom and poetry associated with Epiphany enabled the Christian holy day to permeate popular culture and appeal to both secular and religious audiences, captivated by the image of the Magi from the East and their processions, flanked by elephants, dromedaries and other exotic creatures.
“The Adoration of the Magi is almost an artistic manifesto to me, because I believe that art should always be an epiphany,” he said.
“Saint Thomas and the Forbidden Birds” James Matthew Wilson on the Catholic Culture Podcast
This is from last June, but it is so good that I want to bring it to your attention. Please listen to James reciting from his recent book, Saint Thomas and the Forbidden Words.
Poet & philosopher James Matthew Wilson rejoins the show to read poems from his new collection, Saint Thomas and the Forbidden Birds, published by Word on Fire, and to discuss the tradition of English poetry and, in particular, meter.
The Moral Authority of a Body
This is a really interesting consideration of Kate Manne’s Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia, though it’s about much more than that, as the following quote shows. (H.T. Katy Carl)
The Stylites not only practiced self-starvation, but did so while exposing themselves to the scorching sun and the harsh elements at the top of a pillar; Saint Simeon lasted 37 years up there. Saint Rose of Lima not only fasted, but slept on a bed of broken glass. And beyond these uncompromising cases, many more or less “regular” people have alternated between austere fasting and grateful feasting, in accordance with their religious calendars, and when they are in the fasting phase they do indeed get hungry, and they do indeed ignore the “moral authority of the body,” not because they are stubborn or misguided or mistaken about where the real authority lies, but because this practice gives order and meaning to their lives and is central to their own idea of thriving. This is such a common feature of the human experience of embodiment that it is simply negligent to leave any consideration of it out of a book proposing to investigate why people diet.
B.D. McClay: The Soul Should Not Be Handled
This is the first column in a four-part series by B.D. McClay on speculative fiction from The Point. (H.T. Rhonda Ortiz)
A proposition: though “trash art” remains with us, the trash artist is a dying species. Trash art is focus-grouped these days, high-gloss. Trash art is a direct-to-streaming show full of people who are slightly too attractive that’s meant to be played in the background while you play Candy Crush on your phone. Even our truly lowbrow cultural productions, like The Bachelor, are not the product of particular people; they’re crafted through a system. Without romanticizing the old days of pulp magazines and Brill Building song writers, we can—ah hell! Let’s romanticize them. Why not? They certainly put out lots of garbage, but it was honest human garbage. Look at an old issue of Weird Tales—in terms of nostalgic reverence, the Partisan Review of pulp fiction—with its now charmingly dated pinup girls on the cover, and its promise of many stupid adventures within, and try not to romanticize it.
And Announcing the J.F Powers Short Fiction Contest Shortlist
These stories, selected by our editorial board from nearly four hundred submissions, will move on to the next round of consideration, competing for cash prizes and publication in the print edition of Dappled Things.
We are grateful to all who submitted their best short stories to this year’s contest. Once again, you collectively have proven that Catholic fiction is alive and well. Please keep writing—the world needs your voice.
