Direct, heartfelt religious essays that mostly preach to the choir.
A debut collection of letters addressing moral issues from a Catholic perspective.
This slim volume represents a compilation of essays, written by Dan Pryor and his father, Hal Pryor, from 1994 to 2016, and sent to the editors of various New Jersey and Pennsylvania newspapers, including the Newark, New Jersey-based Star-Ledger, and the Easton, Pennsylvania-based Express-Times. Although written by two different people, the missives are very similar in content and tone. The elder Pryor’s letters seem more associated with answering specific, published items, while the son’s most often discuss general issues in the news. They tackle such subjects as abortion, homosexuality, and suicide from a Catholic point of view, which the younger Pryor says is “the only view from which I am confident to write.” It’s a conservative viewpoint, including anti-abortion and antigay stances and a strong reliance on church hierarchy and teachings, and it seems aimed at readers who already agree with these stances. As Pryor notes in a page on “Getting Letters Printed in the Newspaper,” he found that “Explaining the intangible religion to society is difficult.” Over time, however, he realized that, “Earthly comparisons to moral/religious issues make the intangible religion a tangible acceptance.” Therefore, Pryor does effectively use comparisons to day-to-day life and simple analogies (such as the well-known metaphor of the frog in boiling water), as well as simple, accessible language. Both authors are straightforward and unapologetic in sharing their view that Catholicism holds the final answer regarding moral issues. The younger Pryor, especially, cites specific Bible verses to back up his points. The letters are sometimes choppy in style and often end abruptly, but they’ll be easily understood by any reader.
Direct, heartfelt religious essays that mostly preach to the choir.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4809-4535-7
Page Count: 68
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Co.
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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