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even after learning of her crime. It's as if Paddy Chayefsky's Marty had been rewritten by the Marquis de Sade. Solondz is a real artist in that he knows how to make the look and feel of his...

Shakespeare (November 1998)

THE SOURCE OF OUR SELVES Frank McConnell Ill ~ have to begin by acknowledging that Harold Bloom has been, for almost forty years, a major presence in my life. He was my teacher and my...

Let's dance (October 1998)

Frank McConnell ! LET'S DANCE The democracy o f "Swing" r etween 1935--the year of Benny Goodman's first, extraordinary triumph--and 1950--when Dizzy Gillespie decided to hang it up with...

Vatican II: The TV Show (September 1998)

~ ear the end of the two-hour documentary, "Reflections on Vatican I I ' - - w h i c h airs on PBS on September 18 and which is splendid--George Weigel, the former president of the Ethics...

Summer Reading (June 1998)

Frank McConnell Frank McConnell, Commonweal's media critic, avoids the blandishments of California's natural beauty by teaching English literature indoors at the University of California,...

No Way to Exit? (June 1998)

to understand the central theme, for example, First Wife intones: "When change comes, it comes like fire no one knows who will live and who will be lost." But the flame of change,...

Moyers on Addiction: Close to Home (March 1998)

n the midseventies, there I was a brilliant TV commercial for some alcoholism treatment center, which I remember as "The Elephant in the Living Room." Here's the gag. We see an irenic...

Marshall McLuhan (February 1998)

tempted to betray her husband and her country. Despite the scenes of brittle diplomacy and the menace of future war, The Magician's Wife is not the most suspenseful of Moore's novels; the...

Goliath swallows Leviathan (November 1997)

Frank McConnell GOLIATH SWALLOWS LEVIATHAN Conglomerates and the Media Millennial fever is upon us, and it's pandemic. Never mind that Clio, the Muse of history, doesn't really pay much mind to...

Sister Wendy's Story of Painting (October 1997)

Frank McConnell A NUN'S 'STORY' Sister Wendy on PBS I have to be honest. I'm a good teacher. No: I'm a really good teacher. But when I started showing my wife the tapes of "Sister Wendy's Story...

Nothing Sacred Inside the rectory, the confessional, and the faith of some contemporary seekers (October 1997)

MEDIA Frank McConnell FAITH & DOUBT ON THE TUBE 'Nothing Sacred' In the premiere episode of ABC's "Nothing Sacred" (Thursdays at 8:00 p.m., Eastern), a younger priest and an older one are...

Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon (August 1997)

BOOKS Good & plenty Nasen & Dixen Thomas Pynchon Frank McConnell I 've never been any good at keeping secrets. So: Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon is not only the most stunning novel I've read...

Millennium (July 1997)

Frank McConnell A KILLER SERIAL Chris Carter's 'Millennium As I write, we are coming to the end of the 1996-97 TV season in which the most arresting new series was "Millennium," on the Fox...

Lucas's 'Star Wars' Great movie making, great stories, great liturgy-our media critic takes off (May 1997)

Frank McConnell IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY Lucas's 'Star Wars' This year's first Big Cultural Event began twenty years ago. I'm talking, of course, about the release of the Star Wars trilogy,...

PBS's 'Before I Die' A 'seminar' on euthanasia makes for surprisingly informative TV (April 1997)

Frank McConnell DEATH ON TRIAL PBS's 'Before I Die' Man has "invented death," wrote Yeats, and the poet was absolutely right: As the only animals who know that we will die, we are also the only...

Reading Jazz edited by Robert Gottlieb (March 1997)

DIZZY WITH ECSTASY Reading Jazz A Gathering of Autobiography, Reportage, and Criticism Edited by Robert Gottlieb Pantheon Books, $37.59,1J368 pp. Frank McConnell My all-time favorite Dumb...

Expecting visitors? (November 1996)

Frank McConnell EXPECTING VISITORS? Aliens from inner space At this point it's difficult to red the movie listings, or channel-surf in prime time, without coming across an invasion from outer...

Genesis II J, E, and P are the missing characters in PBS's otherwise enlightening look at the Bible (October 1996)

Frank McConnell 'GENESIS' II Redactor missing in action I have told you the good news about "Genesis: A Living Conversation" (Commonweal, October 11,1996). The bad news is a little more...

Genesis Bill Moyers, Mandy Patinkin, Adam, Eve and their descendants (October 1996)

Frank McConnell 'GENESIS' PBS does a mitzvah Hum it and turn it, for there is everything in it." That's what the (probably) mythical and (certainly) wonderfully named Rabbi Ben Bag Bag is quoted...

With God on Our Side (September 1996)

Frank McConnell MEDIA THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD PBS looks at the political prophets With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America" is a six-hour documentary series pre-miering on...

Eloise Knapp Hay, R.I.P (August 1996)

MEDIA Frank McConnell ELOISE KNAPP HAY, R.I.P. I've lost a sparring partner Eloise Knapp Hay died at six in the evening of April 30, 1996, of inoperable brain cancer. She was the best friend-or...

Desecrating literature (April 1996)

Frank McConnell Reading the PMLA Hor reasons too complicated to go into here, I recently found myself subscribed- for the first time since 1964, my first year as a graduate student at Yale-to...

What hath Phil wrought? Phil Donahue didn't mean to, but he opened the floodgates to rivers of bathos (March 1996)

Frank McConnell WHAT HATH PHIL WROUGHT? A coarsening of culture Hhil Donahue, he says, is retiring. This will be his last season hosting the talk show he's stage-managed for coming-on thirty...

Gerry Mulligan & his baritone sax (March 1996)

MEDIA Frank McConnell MUSIC TO HAVE FUN BY Gerry Mulligan & his baritone sax I' ve been trying to remember a time when Gerry Mulligan-somewhere, somehow-wasn't on my mind, and I can't think of...

How 'Seinfeld' was born The joys of a sitcom about 'nothing' (February 1996)

Frank McConnell HOW 'SEINFELD' WAS BORN Jane Austen meets Woody Allen Being Irish, I think it's important always to have a few really good reasons to be depressed-otherwise you'll start feeling...

Frank Sinatra's birthday Our critic pays homage to the quintessential American voice (December 1995)

MEDIA Frank McConnell A VERY GOOD 8O YEARS Frank Sinatra's birthday As of December 12, 1995, Frank Sinatra is eighty. And that may be one of the most poignant lead sentences I've ever written. The...

Sandman "If Sandman is a 'comic,' then The Magic Flute is a 'musical' and A Midsummer Night's Dream is a skit" (October 1995)

Frank McConnell EPIC COMICS Neil Gaiman's 'Sandman' A few years ago I wrote a column for Commonweal (February 28, 1992) on comic books and how they had become a refuge for some very fine, and very...

IT'S TIME TO TAKE SIDES Has Commonweal surrendered to the spirit of nihilism in the arts? Definitely not (September 1995)

Frank McConnell Since my colleague Richard Alleva takes most of the heat from Counselor Hagen, and since he's a better writer than I am anyway, I'll be short. Can art conflict with morality?...

Media: (March 1995)

MEDIA THE VALUES THING IT'S NOONAN AGAIN IN AMERICA A specter is haunting America: the specter of old-fashioned values. Never mind, for the moment, just what those values are-or were: the...

Media: (January 1995)

MEDIA WHO'S ON FIRST THE GREATEST ROCK BAND Last October, VH1, which is basically MTV for people with intelligences higher than that of a breath mint, ran a full day of clips-including live...

Critics' choices for Christmas (December 1994)

BOOKS Critics1 choices for Christmas Sara Naitland Sara Maitland, a novelist and theologian, lives in Kettering, England. Her most recent novel is Ancestral Truths (Henry Holt). asily the...

Media (November 1994)

MEDIA NO FALL CLASSIC BURNS'S 'BASEBALL' It's an irony that has already been repeated to death, but it bears repetition one more time, because it isn't just an irony but, I think, a key moment in...

Media (November 1994)

TWICE-TOLD TALES WHY 'LAW & ORDER' WORKS I am, and I admit it, a bear of rather little brain, which may be why it took a stint of jury duty for me to realize what a really good show—and what...

Media (September 1994)

MEDIA GO AHEAD, TAKE A PEEK FOX'S 'X-FILES' Let us now praise the Fox Network. TV, as its most Cromwellian cntics never tire to tell us, is debased, popular entertainment out to make the...

Media (June 1994)

SUPERPERSONS 'LOIS AND CLARK' Phat—more about Superman? Give us a break, why dontcha? It's a comic book, for crying out loud, and a comic book read by kids, not by the law-school-bound...

Media (May 1994)

But you want to hear about the music. Just as New Age thought has, really, no thought, so New Age music is not re- ally a music. (Think about that glorious product, "Real Turkey Pastrami.")...

Media (March 1994)

MEDIA DOWNHILL & SLIPPERY CBS GOES TO THE OLYMPICS It's Saturday, February 26, 1994, and last night in Lillehammer Nancy Kerrigan got a silver medal, Tonya Harding did—uh, something—and CBS...

Media (February 1994)

MEDIA TAKE MY WIFE—PLEASE GOOD (DEEDS) TO THE LAST DROP If you check out the November 22, 1993, issue of People, you may have caught, on the recto page of the centerfold, a rather enigmatic ad...

Media (February 1994)

Moving to 'el centro' T he three decades following Fidel Castro's triumphal entry into Havana on January 8,1959, produced great hope and equally great frustration on the part of the Left...

Media (January 1994)

28 MEDIA ART IS DANGEROUS 'BEAVIS & BUTTHEAD/ FOR EXAMPLE Having established a reputation as an antinomian nihilist pornographer (sounds like a "Geraldo" guest) with my defense of "NYPD Blue,"...

Media: (November 1993)

MEDIA each episode. I'll get back to the moose. Cicely is a...

Media: (October 1993)

So what's the problem? MEDIA The problem is the Reverend...

Media (June 1993)

cal comments (a burning house that turned into a burning book, performer on a radio show where he happily expresses opin- the Desert Storm bomb strikes) or sometimes comic routines. ...

Media (February 1993)

a finger to make sure each reaches the happiest of harbors for and which grows ever more sinister as Fergus keeps learning he knows it's useless. That's the way Neil Jordan seems to...

Media: (February 1993)

only to heighten it. Pulling away from the festivities of a Fourth many genres, from folk song to reasonably complicated ma- of July picnic, Charlotte (Congdon has given Gilman's name ...

Media (January 1993)

torical need: "The urgency of confuting heretics made it nec- MEDIA essary to find new words to express the ancient faith about God." Finally, he exhorted his readers to value these new...

Media (November 1992)

YOUNG FOR HIS AGE THE TUBE, THE MUSIC & THE SHADOW ver the last few years, my g-g-generation has found an amazing new analgesic for the pang—and that's a serious word—of just sticking around....

Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being (November 1992)

The perils of this kind of discontinuous interpretation are seen most clearly when Neuhaus deals with the pope's exhorta- tion to make important changes in estab- lished lifestyles. Since this...

Media (October 1992)

PERFECT FOOLS LENNY, GEORGE, RICHARD & FRANK I've always wanted to write a short story with the title "Inside Room 101." Remember Orwell's 1984, when Big Brother's guys have caught Winston Smith...

Media (September 1992)

A PERFECT MATCH CDs & JAZZ t this moment, I'm still brooding over my fiftieth birthday, and the resentment has been projected onto any technology to evolve after my personal psychic climacteric....

Media (July 1992)

FRANK & CELESTE & DAN THE UNTHINKABLE 'MURPHY BROWN' I told them I'd do a piece about 'Murphy Brown' and the Dan Quayle silliness," I said to my wife as I hung up the phone. "Oh, good!" Celeste...

Media (May 1992)

MEDIA CATHEDRAL TO OCTOPLEX REMEMBERING THE MOVIES Two interesting and related things happened-my stars, for a change, must have been in synch-as March gave way to April and spring began (in...

Media (March 1992)

MEDIA ERIC CLAPTON'S GENIUS A MENSCH WHO PLAYS THE BLUES “Clapton is God." That was the graffito scrawled all over London in the late sixties. It is, for sure, one of the most famous graffiti...

Media (February 1992)

MEDIA COMIC RELIEF FROM 'GILGAMESH' TO 'SPIDERMAN' The first time I assigned a comic book—Frank Miller's grimly revisionist Batman saga, The Dark Knight Returns—for my course in "The Art...

Media (February 1992)

MEDIA THE CHAT SHOW FROM STEVE ALLEN TO OPRAH uring the second round of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings—you remember, when Judge Thomas was accusing the Senate Judiciary Committee of...

Media (November 1991)

and what these films suggest, is that despite the significant historical differences between black and white American experience, the road to middle-class security taken by both groups...

Media (October 1991)

except the lyrics of her songs. It threads its way through the night-club show numbers that have a nice forties' feel to them and that are performed by a band that is a great deal more...

O'Malley of Notre Dame (September 1991)

rH[ DYNAMIC50g SPI/elYUAL UFE 1'~ BUDDHISM AND CrlRjSTIA~VITy SPI TUAUTY FII) DOI~LD W./~T(t~LL THE WORD IN AND OUT OF SEASON, Homilies for the Sundays of Ordinary Time, Cycle C,...

Media (August 1991)

both its meanings, is frighteningly appropriate: to be a little sister means to have been saved from an early death. In India, the situation is no less grim. Although female infanticide was...

Media (May 1991)

at a high emotional moment being forced to sing about there being days like this, and the Chris-Kim duet about the "song on a solo saxophone." There are several vigorous and very...

Media (May 1991)

etry looks remarkably the same. What teen-agers, rock entrepreneurs, and college students proclaimed as moral and sexual wisdom had more to do with the social autonomy made possible by affluence,...

Media (March 1991)

prospect darkened when Dad is invalided by a stroke--but at the end Greg reappears, and Jeff and the audience are left with the possibility of what in The Sum of Us passes for a happy ending....

Media (February 1991)

brings suffering and death to his immediate family. But this scenario remains an outline that never gets filled in. Gluey writing, muzzy direction, and a surprising number of ineffective...

Media (January 1991)

good witch---brings into this platitudinous family scene. An infusion of a tea made from dried flowers ("I do not drink potpourri," says the sister) and a sincerely reiterated, "I love you," will...

Media (January 1991)

with a shot of fly-attracting instruments, operates in high gear throughout the film. It makes Dances with Wolves one of the finest adventure movies of recent years, not unworthy of Lawrence of...

Media: (December 1990)

MEDIA GAMES PEOPLE WATCH UNSPORTSMANLIKE PRODUCTS Let us now praise baseball. And if that sounds a little elegiac, it's meant to. By the time this sees print the Cincinnati Reds' stunning World...

Something gained-& lost (October 1990)

REPORT FROM GERMANY SOMETHING GAINED-* LOST WHAT UNIFICATION FEELS LIKE "How thick is the Wall, Frank?" That was the first question a friend asked me when I got back, in 1988, from six...

Media: (August 1990)

MEDIA FOODSCAM ONLY THE FAT ARE FREE My concern here is with food, and the way we sell food. Did you see the commercial, that ran for about a year, for a very popular brand of margarine? A...

Media (June 1990)

MEDIA 'REAL' CARTOON CHARACTERS 'THE SIMPSONS' Not long ago, Homer Simpson got a little blitzed at a bachelor party for one of his co-workers at the Springfield nuclear power plant, and wound up...

Media (May 1990)

OUR TOWN LYNCH'S 'TWIN PEAKS' For years now readers of Graham Greene have been referring to the fascinating, seedy, morally ambiguous landscape of his novels as "Greeneland." Now, with the advent...

Media (April 1990)

MEDIA JUST A MOMENT THE LOGIC OF NINTENDO Jeremy Rifkin, who writes on technology and culture, wrote a brilliant book called Time Wars a few years ago. Its point-garnished with an elegant...

Media: (March 1990)

Media FRANK McCONNELL THE TRIALS OF TELEVISION THE McMARTIN CASE In America in January 1990, the words in fact have very little, or a very specialized, meaning. Here in California, the McMartin...

Shelf indulgence (November 1985)

MARKETING BOOH, LITERARY BUST Shelf indulgence FRANK McCONNELL WELCOME to the third annual McConnell - quick - association trivia contest. You may give one, and only one, answer to the...

ON THE ROAD AGAIN (October 1985)

Commonweal: 532 Music ON THE ROAD AGAIN WILLIE NELSON'S SPREZZATURA I AM AT the Kentucky State Fair, August 1985. Willie Nelson is performing, and that alone is a kind of metaphor for his...

A NAME FOR LOSS (August 1985)

Media A NAME FOR LOSS MEMORIALS OF VIETNAM BY THE time this appears in print, we will be some months beyond the tenth anniversary of the fall of Saigon. At the time I write this, Newsweek, Time,...

Media: (December 1983)

Media ADS & ADDICTIONS BOOZE ON THE TUBE "DON'T TAKE the car, you'll kill yourself!" Who hasn't seen that commercial by the National Coun-cil on Alcoholism-the drunk husband lurching toward his...

Media: (August 1983)

Media A ROCK POET FROM FITZGERALD TO SPRINGSTEEN IN HIS RECENTLY videotaped, brilliant live performance, Robin Williams concludes the act by giving his impression of "Bruce Springsteen as sung by...

Media: (April 1983)

Media WATCHING TALK DONAHUE AS DIET COLA WHEN THE MARTIANS finally arrive on the burnt-out cinder of Earth, and their tentacled anthropologists try to reconstruct our civilization from...

Media (February 1983)

Media THE VANISHING FAMILY MIRRORING THE SUCCESSFUL SELF TRIVIA QUIZ, medium-level difficulty: What do Frank Furillo, Ken Reeves, and Mary Richards have in common? First answer: they are all...

Media (November 1982)

Media ZONKER'S SUNSET STRIP CLAIMS OF ENDANGERED INNOCENCE ZONKER HARRIS is in danger of graduating from college, Joan Caucus-Redfern is about to have a baby in her middle age-thereby suspending...

Boiling the Irish Catholic pot (June 1982)

SELF-HUGGING PARABLES Boiling the Irish Catholic pot FRANK McCONNELL A SOCIOLOGIST-Andrew Greeley, say-might well be interested in the reasons the Irish Catholic potboiler has suddenly become...

A Rag For Sunrise (March 1982)

Transfiguration of despair A FLAG FOR SDNRISE Robert Stone Knopf, $13.95, 439 pp. Frank McConnell NIHILISM is a difficult faith to maintain in its purity; one might always find oneself...

Correspondence (March 1981)

Correspondence Faith & their works Evanston, 111. To the Editors: Frank McConnell's review of Waugh's Letters and Greene's Ways of Escape [Jan. 16] is an engaging one, but I wonder if the...

Still Life with Woodpecker (March 1981)

Should we trust a cuddly novelist? STILL LIFE WITH WOODPECKER Tom Robbins Bantam, $6.95, 288 pp. Frank McConnell IF Thomas Pynchon were a Muppet, he would write like Tom Robbins. That may be,...

The Letters of Evelyn Waugh/Ways of Escape: (January 1981)

Books: TWO KINDS OF FAITH TRUST the tale, not the teller: D. H. Lawrence's advice is probably the best we are likely to get about reading fiction. And like most good advice, it is almost impossible...

Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party (June 1980)

Books: EVERYTHING BANISHED BUT LOVE DOCTOR FISCHER OF GENEVA OR THE BOMB PARTY Graham Greene Simon and Schuster, $9.95, 156 pp. Frank McConnell I N a rare—and rarely frank—interview with his...

McConnell, Michael

McConnell, rank

McConville, Ed

McCool, Francis

McCord, David

McCord, David Frederick

McCORKELL, EDWARD

McCorkle, Pope

McCormack, Arthur

McCORMICK, BENEDICT

McCormick, Brian

McCormick, F. J.