Thor's Day: The sense of life...

Hugues de Montalembert

...is life

By Morris Dean

Struck as I have been by Hugues de Montalembert, whose book Invisible: A Memoir I reviewed Sunday (and from which I shared a quotation in last week's "Thor's Day" column), I have continued to meditate on his writings and try to learn more about him.

Thor's Day: The courage not to pray

Primo Levi in Konzentrationslager Auschwitz

By Morris Dean

In 2007, Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) dedicated The Portable Atheist to Primo Levi (1919-1987). Levi spent a year as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, where, Hitchens comments, he "had the moral fortitude to refuse consolation even while enduring the 'selection' process."