The Mock Turtle tells Alice how he went to school in the sea, taking courses like Reeling and Writhing and Fainting in Coils. He means these to relate to Alice’s own lessons of Reading and Writing and Painting in Oils. Likewise, I blog while walking the shoreline between the humanity of art and the science of information. afterlives of the saints
Afterlives of the Saints: Stories from the Ends of Faith by Colin Dickey (Unbridled Books, 2012).
Dickey’s latest work is an interesting selection of saints – famous and forgotten, martyred and disfigured, the academics and the ignorant. Afterlives is not a collection of biographies; it is much more a postmodern investigation of their lives. A foundation in Catholicism is less necessary than being well-read in Joyce, Proust, Borges, Flaubert, and Foucault. Because of this, those merely curious about the more strange and macabre saint stories will be disappointed. While Dickey’s examinations can be, at times, tedious and feel forced, they invite the reader to reconsider complex life stories. His insights on the lives of saints in contemporary culture and faith are a welcome perspective in the scholarship.
(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review)