new releases de libris
William R. Cross ’77
Andrew P. Porter ’64
James Boyd White ’56
Winslow Homer: American Passage
Unanswerable Questions, Ambiguity & Interpersonhood
Let in the Light: Learning to Read St. Augustine’s Confessions
In a richly illustrated book on the life of Winslow Homer (1836–1910), Transcendence is commonly taken biographer William Cross reveals the to be about another world, one that artist’s surprising role in American transcends this one. Instead, the culture and identity as the visual author argues that transcendence counterpart to better-known figures is about unanswerable questions, in literature such as Walt Whitman and unanswerable questions arise and Mark Twain. The tale he tells is naturally in human life. We deal not only of this one American life, with them without answering but also of race, class conflict, justice, them (or answering them only with and technical innovation—issues with irony, for example, in the comic which Homer engaged. strips). But philosophers are usually Homer was witness to the loath to admit that there are any Civil War, to colonial tyranny, and unanswerable questions. Philosophy to the rhythms of sea, storm, tide, of religion usually starts with familiar and season, as women and men questions such as “Is there a God?” confronted powers far greater (That’s kind of like “Do neutrinos than their own. The Metropolitan exist?” or “Is there a luminiferous Museum of Art hosts Crosscurrents, ether?”) the largest Homer retrospective in David Porter suggests beginning nearly thirty years (through July 31), instead with more basic questions: making the story especially timely. What is your idea of ultimate reality? Filmmaker Ken Burns wrote that What does it mean to “succeed” in Winslow Homer: American Passage brings life? Where does your ultimate reality “to life this most American of painters” show itself in life and the world? while Pulitzer-winning Caroline Unanswerable Questions is the sequel Fraser called it “a narrative as well as to The Accountant’s Tale: A Reading of the an aesthetic genius … with the moral History of Biblical Religion. heart of a historian.”
The Confessions of St. Augustine is heralded as a classic of Western culture. Yet when James Boyd White first tried to read it in translation, it seemed utterly dull. Its ideas struck him as platitudinous, and its prose felt drab. Only when he started to read the text in Latin did he begin to see the originality and depth of Augustine’s work. In Let in the Light, the author invites readers to join him in a close encounter with the Confessions, to share his experience of the book’s power and profundity by reading at least some of it in Augustine’s own language. He offers an accessible guide to reading the text in Latin, line by line—even for those who have never studied the language. Equally attuned to the resonances of individual words and the deeper currents of Augustine’s culture, Let in the Light considers how the form and nuances of the Latin text allow greater insight into the work and its author. It guides readers to experience the immediacy, urgency, and vitality of Augustine’s Confessions.
► Please send information about your new releases to quarterly@groton.org. Book summaries were provided by the authors and/or publishers. www.groton.org
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