The Night Is Far Spent: A Treasury of Thomas Howard

by Thomas Howard

Book Overview

In his books and articles, Thomas Howard has never been one to shy away from controversy. While attending the Evangelical Church of his parents and teaching English at an Evangelical college, Howard wrote his provocative best seller Evangelical is Not Enough. Soon after entering the Anglican Communion, Howard began asking the kinds of questions that would eventually lead him into the Roman Catholic Church.

Throughout his pilgrimage of faith,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1586171321
• ISBN13: 9781586171322
• Release Date: February 2007
• Publisher: Ignatius Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

The Night is Far Spent by Thomas Howard

I loved Thomas Howard's Lead Kindly Light about his conversion to Roman Catholicism. He is a gifted writer and never disappoints in his writing style and content. He has a wonderful story to tell. This book as well as his others are all well worth taking the time to read and enjoy.

Enrich your reading, your intellect, and your soul

Start with fiction in general, with Oedipus and War and Peace, then walk through the Nicene Creed, Lord of the Rings, Beowulf, Arthur Miller, the Chronicles of Narnia, Brideshead Revisited (a great chapter on "Brideshead Revisited Revisited" - I read it twice), TS Eliot, and Beatrix Potter. I could go on. But this book will enrich your reading, your intellect, and your soul. The chapters "Catholic Spirituality" and "What is a Sacrament" are particularly useful for anyone beginning to explore the wonders of the Catholic faith. And he ends up with some rich essays on ballet, on fatherhood, and a final one, "On Being Forgotten". As others have said, keep a dictionary by your side, as he will also expand your vocabulary (see how many of the words he himself did not know you know yourself ("Let us Purify the Dialect of the Tribe"). Highly recommended.

Treasury Indeed!

This collection of Thomas Howard's articles and essays has all of the things that made us fall in love with his writing in the first place. It it honest and personal without being familiar and chatty. Howard has spent a lifetime steeped in the finest English prose; it is now his native dialect. Get yourself a cup of coffee, find a comfortable chair, and prepare to be delighted and challenged and to glimpse through another's eyes a glorious vision of the Permanent Things. But keep your dictionary handy because Professor Howard will not shy away from using the perfect word to express his meaning just because you've never heard it.

Contra-Spontaneity

"Through the impersonal we meet the natural. Through the prescribed we meet the sincere." That line from "The Power of Wise Custom" also echoes elsewhere in this collection of 31 talks and essays that could be termed "Thomas Howard's Greatest Hits". As that title implies, these essays were chosen from the vast sea of Howardania and, as oft happens with hit collections, this reader's favorites did not make the cut. But then, with so many publications to choose from, from His to Envoy to Christianity Today to The New Oxford Review, only a very few could make the final line-up. Of those that did, my favorites are the bits on Beowulf, Brideshead Revisited, and The Wages of Reading. There's an interesting talk from Oxford on C.S. Lewis, a piece called "The Touchstone of Orthodoxy" from Christianity Today, and numerous interesting bits from Touchstone, which bills itself as "a magazine of Mere Christianity". As with Chesterton, some of the dullest titles head the liveliest essays, the case in point being the final entry, the very self- revealing "Being Forgotten". there's also a fascinating talk on Christian Studies that, like Chesterton again, is about everything but the topic. My title for this review is from an essay in InterVarsity's long gone, late great mag His, but the idea is underscored in a talk at Gordon College called Catholic Spirituality in which Howard writes or says: "For the form sets you free from the shallow puddle of your own ad hoc resources of the moment and draws you into the dignity, nobility, and splendor attending the angelic worship of the Most High, and for which you and I yearn with fathomless yearning." If that doesn't make you want to read Howard's essays, let alone his many books, nothing will.