“It is not easy to be a Catholic, and it is not easy to be a writer. To be a Catholic writer is doubly difficult,” wrote Jacques Maritain, who nevertheless became one of the most influential 20th-century Catholic writers on either side of the Atlantic.

Parody, Ernest Hemingway said, is a step up from writing on the wall above the urinal. He was wrong.

In 1958, Joel Wells of Chicago's "The Critic" contributed a somewhat unique story to America. How, he wondered, would some of our most famous authors tell the story of a dog that had been hit by a car?

A newly available compilation of Rahner’s writings on the arts, edited and translated from the original German by Gesa Thiessen, traces Rahner’s thinking about the phenomenon of inspired enthusiasm.

Opening Day is a reminder that there are, to quote Bill Veeck, only two seasons: winter and baseball.

Chicago has James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonigan. New Orleans has John Kennedy Toole’s Ignatius J. Reilly. Boston has Edwin O’Connor’s 'Last Hurrah.' And William Kennedy’s Albany Cycle series has “ironweeds” like Billy and Francis Phelan. What, then, is the greatest book ever written about the New York City Irish?