More than a Matter of Taste: The Moral Imagination and the Spirit of Literature

by Joshua Hren

What does it mean to be a reader of good taste? How can we inhabit the moral imagination in a way that avoids heavy-handed moralism? How can we grow in prudential judgment and spiritual discernment while delighting in the books we get lost in? And can looking at the world through the “million windows” of the “house of fiction” really elevate or transfigure the lives we lead?

In More than a Matter of Taste, Joshua Hren explores these questions and presents fresh takes that possess timeless significance. Surveying a selection of fictions old and new, Hren brings a Catholic theological and philosophical vision to bear on good and great books, opening up their moral and spiritual depths. More than a Matter of Taste shows how a robust engagement with the quality of fiction raises the stakes beyond aesthetics into ethics and metaphysical truth.

Readers of every persuasion, both devotees of literature and those who read for pleasure, will find this book a trustworthy guide for what it means to read with moral clarity.

396 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 11, 2026

About the author

Joshua Hren is an novelist and critic, a father and husband. He is founder and editor of Wiseblood Books and co-founder of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. Joshua regularly publishes essays and poems in such journals as The Los Angeles Review of Books and First Things, America and Public Discourse, New Polity and The Hedgehog Review, Plough and Commonweal, National Review and The University Bookman, and Religion and Literature and LOGOS.

Joshua is the author of ten books: the short story collections This Our Exile and In the Wine Press; a book of poems called Last Things, First Things, & Other Lost Causes; Middle-earth and the Return of the Common Good: J.R.R. Tolkien and Political Philosophy; How to Read (and Write) Like a Catholic; the novel Infinite Regress; and the theological-aesthetical manifesto Contemplative Realism. Joshua's More than a Matter of Taste: The Moral Imagination and the Spirit of Literature and Faith in the Furnace of Doubt: Dana Gioia's Poetics of Belief, are forthcoming. His second novel, Blue Walls Falling Down, was published in October of 2024.