Afterword

Author Webpage When John Cheever's character of Lemuel Sears asks “Is nothing sacred?” he means the question rhetorically, to deride those who would tolerate ruining a lovely pond for profit. And yet, in the current cultural climate, the question must also be entertained in earnest. It is no longer clear to what extent society at large recognizes any space, time, or being as authentically sacred—that is, as inviolately preserved from ordinary human manipulation. In contemporary America, even the indoor architecture of worship sites may not be constructed or apprehended as sacred space. Many newly built or renovated churches are staged to resemble talk-show settings rather than temples of the numinous. So it is perhaps symptomatic of our time that the elderly, reclusive artist whom John Updike makes the central consciousness in his recent novel Seek My Face (2002) should feel an indefinable loss over what she takes to be evidence of God's...

Aesthetics · Art · Character (mathematics) · Consciousness · Epistemology · Face (sociological concept) · Linguistics · Nothing · Space (punctuation) · Theology · Visual arts · Worship · American Jewish Fiction Analysis · Architecture · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · History · Philosophy · Poetry Analysis and Criticism