Richard Doster
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Richard Doster is the editor of byFaith, the magazine of the Presbyterian Church in America. He is also the author of two novels, "Safe at Home" (March 2008) and "Crossing the Lines" (June 2009),

  • Morality and Fiction

    December 13th, 200905:50 PM ET
    By Richard Doster
    Last month the National Book Foundation honored Flannery O'Connor, yet again. Each year since 1949 the Foundation has bestowed the National Book Award. Last month, in the fiction category, the Foundation chose the one best book from among the past 60 winners. Voters selected O'Connor's "Complete Stories." As people who care about how stories are ...

  • How Should I Read This Novel

    November 05th, 200911:53 AM ET
    By Richard Doster
    I just finished Pat Conroy's new book, South of Broad. When I read Conroy I get so caught up in the language-in the cadence and tempo of it-that I sometimes lose track of story. His style, at least for me, can overwhelm the plot. As a result, I find myself wallowing around in all this glorious construction, content to soak in the beauty of how the ...

  • Rational Creatures, Moved by Emotion

    September 24th, 200910:47 AM ET
    By Richard Doster
    Arnold Weinstein-the author, scholar, and winsome English professor-brings two fundamental beliefs to his assessment of literature: That feeling is the basic, invisible fact of life. And therefore, the basic but unacknowledged fact of literature.  Novels, poetry, and short stories, Weinstein informs his readers, provide a gateway t...

  • The Most Social Medium

    September 02nd, 200902:03 PM ET
    By Richard Doster
    Many of us are discouraged by the decline of reading, and what it portends for our society. Novels, poetry, and short stories continually lose ground to lighter fare -- to shallower but more social media, like Facebook and Twitter-where all our friends, real and virtual, can add their own dab to the never-ending conversation. Reading books, on the...

  • Reading and Progress

    August 01st, 200909:04 AM ET
    By Richard Doster
    In his book, Reading Between the Lines, Gene Edward Veith insists that reading books is critical to a thriving culture. Television and movies, Veith claims, if enjoyed to excess, will turn us into an image-dominated society. The Internet, we know, is a medium that's scanned and browsed, but not studied. "Only reading," Veith says, "cultivates a sus...

  • Seeking an Enlargement of Our Being

    July 25th, 200907:27 AM ET
    By Richard Doster
    A good friend of mine doesn't read fiction. Why, he asks, would I spend precious time reading about things that aren't true? Why would I get tangled up in a story that never happened? Why, he insists on knowing, should I get emotionally involved in some fictional set of circumstances when my own family's every bit as dysfunctional as Pat Conroy's? ...

  • Rethinking Christian Literature

    July 19th, 200907:21 AM ET
    By Richard Doster
    Ask your neighbors for an off-the-cuff reaction to the words "Christian literature" and you're likely to hear them stumble through a list of belittling adjectives. Despite the swelling ranks of able Christian writers, the reaction demonstrates that we're viewed as an inconsequential presence in the world of literature. This image belies reality-in ...

  • A Lie That Makes Us Realize the Truth

    July 04th, 200903:28 PM ET
    By Richard Doster
    I read novels with pencil in hand, ready to underline a sentence that's beautiful, a metaphor that's especially scenic, or any phrase that prompts an appreciative smile. Here, from page eighty-three of The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers, are three examples: "Dalia sang fearlessly. She threw back her head and nailed free-flying notes like a ...

  • Finding the Self's Authentic Interests

    June 27th, 200901:42 PM ET
    By Richard Doster
    In literature, writers test their theories. They play out a whole range of ideas and circumstances, evaluating scenes, actions and reactions, conversation, emotions, character traits.... Like sculptors, I suppose, writers step away from the work and examine it-asking themselves: "Does this convey what I had in mind? Does it sound good? Is the temp...

  • The Reason We Read

    June 21st, 200908:09 AM ET
    By Richard Doster
    In his book, How to Read and Why, Harold Bloom, the respected literary critic, says that there is no single way to read well, but that there is a prime reason. "Information," Bloom says, is "endlessly available to us..." Then he rhetorically asks, "Where shall we find wisdom?" Bloom unknowingly underscores the urgency of Proverbs 3: "Blessed is th...
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A blog about books, news and other forms of Christian media matter important to the faith community.