Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Coles, Robert - Kenneth L. Woodward (review date 6 September 1987)

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Kenneth L. Woodward (review date 6 September 1987)

SOURCE: "Two Paradoxical Saints," in New York Times Book Review, September 6, 1987, p. 10.

[In the following review of Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion and Simone Weil: A Modern Pilgrimage, Woodward discusses Coles' depiction of the "life of the spirit".]

Few of us really like saints. Admire them, yes, but the demands they make on themselves inspire us to keep our distance. Simone Weil and Dorothy Day aspired to the kind of intimacy with God that is typical of saints, and each tried "to live in such a way that," as Emmanuel Cardinal Sunard of Paris said, "one's life would not make sense if God did not exist." Both women lived and identified with the underclass; both experienced religious conversions; both were thinkers who became suspicious of the intellect; both rallied against violence and war; and if either had had her way, we would all live simpler, more communitarian...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Melvin J. Friedman (review date Fall 1982)
   2. Neil Postman (review date 19 January 1986)
   3. Katherine Paterson (review date 2 February 1986)
   4. Jonathan Kellerman (review date 9 February 1986)
   5. New Yorker (review date 10 February 1986)
   6. John Leo (review date 17 March 1986)
   7. Kenneth L. Woodward (review date 6 September 1987)
   8. Jeff Dietrich (review date 13 September 1987)
   9. Fitzhugh Mullan (review date 8 May 1988)
   10. Helen Bevington (review date 26 February 1989)
   11. Francis X. Rocca (review date March 1989)
   12. Iain Bamforth (review date 7-13 July 1989)
   13. Sanford Pinsker (essay date Summer 1989)
   14. Herbert Mitgang (review date 21 November 1990)
   15. Laura Sessions Stepp (review date 23 December 1990)
   16. The New Yorker (review date 7 January 1991)
   17. Virginia C. Hoch (review date 26 August-2 September 1992)
   18. A. J. S. (review date 1993)
   19. Michelle Huneven (essay date 3 October 1993)
   20. Robert A. Sirico (review date 15 November 1993)
   21. Gail Russell Chaddock (review date 9 December 1993)
   22. Ed Walraven (essay date 1994)
   23. Paulina F. Kernberg (review date October 1994)
   24. Richard Bernstein (review date 27 January 1997)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright