[The Hidden God, a] casual discussion of the works of Hemingway, Faulkner, Yeats, Eliot, and Warren, is an attempt to indicate the religious relevance that these works may possess for the contemporary Christian reader. At times Brooks seems to be apologizing for the success of these writers and for his own interest in them. His cursory investigations are surely more sharply focused on the potential uses that they may be put to by one uneasy in his Christian faith than on a reading of the texts within a more stringent aesthetic frame. Brooks's style is admirable, his sincerity is warmly apparent without being zealous, but the value of his excursions is sharply limited by the narrowness of his aims. In our age, at least, one would suppose that all serious writing is "religious" in some sense, but to go beyond that is either to claim too much or...