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WITH A PEN OF IRON AND THE POINT OF A DIAMOND

URL: http://www.jewishjournal.com/twelvetwelve/item/with_a_pen_of_iron_and_the_point_of_a_diamond_39100620

The latest book from Bible scholar Robert Alter, “Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible,” is something of a jeremiad, and Alter himself is not unlike a biblical prophet, speaking truth to the power of popular culture and exhorting us to be better and more discerning readers. Alter traces the impact of the Bible on American literature, ranging from Melville to Hemingway and Faulkner and all the way down to Marilynne Robinson and Cormac McCarthy. "The essential point for the history of our literature is that the resonant language and the arresting vision of the canonical text, however oldentime they may be, continue to ring in our cultural memory,” Alter concludes.

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