Articles by joesobran_344

Needless to say, it’s very common these days to
respond to an argument by addressing not the point the
writer is making, but his supposed feelings about the
subject.

DUNN LORING, VA —Rarely do I feel gratitude and even affection, toward a book with which I profoundly disagree. But such is the case with James Shapiro’s Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? (Simon & Schuster, 4/6/2010, 339 pp), a study of the Shakespeare authorship debate. Shapiro, who teaches at Columbia University, accepts the gent from Stratford as the real author, so I had to part company with him on page 8.

Man is the only creature who can believe in the theory of evolution, or who has a motive to believe in it.

Next to the peerless Tom Wolfe,
perhaps the most brilliantly gifted living American writer is Garry Wills.

One of the most famous and astounding saints
of the twentieth century, Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, was born Francesco Forgione
in 1887 to a destitute but pious couple in southern Italy.  He was named in
honor of St. Francis of Assisi and even as a small boy wanted to become a
Franciscan friar.

In his tremendous novel War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy observes that some men “choose their opinions like their clothes—according to fashion.” He adds that no matter how derivative their views are, such men may hold those views with all the passion of partisans.