Hello there. This is Mark Bauerline with another conversation. Before we get to it, a word about one of our sponsors.

You may have seen a recent article in Insidehiread.com that began, Wyoming Catholic College has a lot of

unusual things about it, each enough to merit a story in itself. Wyoming Catholic is a conservative

Catholic college that educates students in the great books and Catholic tradition.

It also teaches horsemanship and banned cell phones on campus. I love that.

And it turned down federal funding.

President Glenn Arbery describes the mission this way.

This college is engaged in deep ways with the agony of a culture that has lost its

spiritual center. We're adventurous and poetic and deeply Catholic. He likes to cite Dostoevsky

in crime and punishment. Low ceilings are bad for the soul. The ceilings rise at Wyoming

Catholic, which is located in the foothills of the Wind River Mountains,

the curriculum centers in the Western tradition. Its Catholic identity builds upon Thomas

Aquinas and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church and engaging with God in the wilderness.

Find out more at Wyoming Catholic.edu. Our editor, Rusty Reno, has a little volume out with

Wise Blood books entitled, Duty, the Soul of Beauty, Henry James on the Beautiful Life, our topic for today. Welcome, Rusty. Thank you for joining us.

Great to be with you, Mark. Well, first question is a little bit autobiographical. I know you've been thinking about Henry James for a long time. You've written a few things in the magazine for us. What drew you in

to Henry James? Maybe when and why?

When I was a college student, I tried to read the Golden Bowl. I think I had been to

a lecture and some visiting scholar was singing the praises of Henry James,

one of the great stylists, very modernist, pioneering the modernist style.

And I thought, well, gosh, I should read Henry James.

So I tried to read the Golden Bowl.

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