Karl Stevens

Karl Stevens is a writer and an Episcopal priest in Ohio.

Articles by Karl Stevens

Books

Witness to an Extreme Century

A Memoir

by Robert Jay Lifton

Witness to an Extreme Century, by Robert Jay Lifton

Feb 17, 2012 reviewed by Karl Stevens

Near the end of his memoir, Robert Lifton writes about Victor T., a Jewish doctor who had been an inmate at Auschwitz. While at Auschwitz he acted heroically, tending to patients in one of the camp's infirmaries and often endangering his own life in order to save theirs. Yet when Lifton went to interview Dr.

Books

A Syllable of Water: Twenty Writers of Faith Reflect on Their Art

Emilie Griffin, ed.

A Syllable of Water: Twenty Writers of Faith Reflect on Their Art

Aug 25, 2009 reviewed by Karl Stevens
In her chapter on novel writing in this collection, Doris Betts decries writing teachers who ask their students whether they really have anything to say. It’s the wrong question for a writer. As Betts asserts, “Only allegorists start from that end and work backward.
Film

Old dogma

Dec 15, 1999 by Karl Stevens

Dogma (1999), directed by Kevin Smith

Director Kevin Smith's 1997 film Chasing Amy focuses on people in their early to mid-20s who are at a crossroads between adolescent sexual experimentation and the possibility of mature relationships. He shrewdly notes these characters' hip mannerisms and Gen-X obsession with mass culture.