Friday Links
September 19, 2025
Autumn by Giuseppe Arcimboldo
Christian in wheelchair killed while livestreaming his faith in France
The misuse of Seuss Children’s literature is getting dumber
Sam Franzini on Jordan Castro’s Muscle Man
John F. Deane at the Percy French Festival
Louisiana Arts & Culture Festival
Christian in wheelchair killed while livestreaming his faith in France
I’m not saying you should watch the video, but you should be aware of what is happening to Christians all over the world.
The misuse of Seuss Children’s literature is getting dumber
Marlene Morgan writes about the idiocy of so much children’s literature. She’s right—a lot of it is brutally boring and stupid. Kids (and the adults who read to them) deserve better:
I’m not suggesting we return to The New England Primer. But it’s clear that children can and should be introduced to diction, syntax, and concepts far beyond what is in much of our children’s literature today. I believe it is what they want. (My daughter often asks me, “When are we going to die?”)
Sam Franzini on Jordan Castro’s Muscle Man
Like Murakami was a runner, Jordan Castro is a lifter; his new book, Muscle Man, follows a day in the life of a college professor who can’t wait to get out of this meeting and into the gym. Not notably enormous, but so entrenched in the world of physical fitness such that every second thought revolves around it, Harold’s itch to lift goes hand in hand with his ire at the “mentally defective” oafs that are students, the pretentious teachers, and even Shepherd College itself, to the point of fanatical, paranoid thought — Harold would “always be in the clutches of some malevolent, tentacled beast; the sinewy halls.”
John F. Deane at the Percy French Festival
This is from 2022, but I’ve been thinking about it recently. John F. Deane, possibly Ireland’s last Catholic poet, speaks about poetry and three strange angels, the inner room where the Lord speaks to us, a red gate, and the facts of the Incarnation and the Resurrection.
Louisiana Arts & Culture Festival
Our friends at Joie de Vivre are throwing a party on November 15.
This day-long gathering, co-hosted by the St. Louis IX Art Society and Aquinas Lafayette and themed “Catholic Story-Telling in Acadiana,” will bring together local novelists, short story writers, poets, and artists with our wider community to celebrate the feast that is our Catholic faith and the arts in South Louisiana.
