While searching for a publisher brave enough to put out Lolita, and laboring under the burden of financial necessity, Vladimir Nabokov published Pnin in installments in The New Yorker, and it has lived in the shadows ever since. It is, admittedly, a much less ambitious […]
Alexander Pope’s Selected Poems
by on January 6, 2014
In a letter to a friend, Alexander Pope wrote, “My life in thought and imagination is as much superior to my life in action and reality as the best soul can be to the vilest body.” The metaphor is general […]
Richard Ellmann’s James Joyce
by on December 27, 2013
I first picked up James Joyce’s Ulysses when I was seventeen years old. I had read a New York Times article that divided the world into two camps, serious readers and non-serious readers, with membership into the former category granted only upon successful completion […]
Ian Kershaw’s Hitler: Profiles In Power
by on December 27, 2013
Glance, for a moment, at the face adorning the cover of Ian Kershaw’s Hitler: Profiles In Power. You’d be hard-pressed not to concede that this is the face of an evil man, a man without conscience or moral scruples, just the […]
Robert Hayden’s Collected Poems
by on December 23, 2013
Robert Hayden was born Asa Bundy Sheffey, but when his parents felt ill prepared for the responsibilities of raising a child, he was taken in by a neighboring family, the Haydens. His foster parents made an earnest attempt at raising […]
Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From The Goon Squad
by on November 30, 2013
I’m a little late to Egan’s party but, considering she only received notoriety with the publication of A Visit From The Goon Squad in 2010, when she was already in her late forties, perhaps so is she. However, given its status atop […]
Alice Munro’s Open Secrets
by on November 29, 2013
Canada’s international literary reputation rests on precious few writers: Margaret Atwood, Robertson Davies, Mordecai Richler, Michael Ondaatje, Yann Martel and Alice Munro make up the small handful whose reach extends beyond our borders. How fortunate for us, then, that this […]
F. A. Hayek’s The Road To Serfdom
by on November 25, 2013
The 21st century began poorly for those who care about liberty. The September 11th attacks ushered in an era of paranoia and fear marked by warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention and a state of near-permanent war. Worse still, cynical opportunists in […]
C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity
by on November 20, 2013
On November 22nd, 1963, John F. Kennedy was assassinated. On that same day, Alduos Huxley and C.S. Lewis breathed their last as well, but the media storm created by a presidential assassination all but obscured the deaths of these great […]
Zadie Smith’s NW
by on October 30, 2013
Zadie Smith’s latest novel NW, named for the postal code of the northwest London neighborhood in which it is set, follows the lives of four children of the fictional Garvey project buildings: Leah Hanwell, Felix Cooper, Keisha (renamed Natalie) Blake and […]
Lionel Trilling’s The Liberal Imagination
by on October 21, 2013
Lionel Trilling was one of the 20th century’s most influential critics, in a time when criticism was not relegated to academic purgatory but enjoyed widespread esteem. Before we bemoan the age of Internet and social media, cultish consumerism and the […]
Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict Of Visions
by on October 18, 2013
In his book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial Of Human Nature, Steven Pinker praised Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict Of Visions as the best overview of divergent political philosophies yet provided. It is to Pinker I owe my discovery of Sowell, and to […]
Charles Dickens’ A Tale Of Two Cities
by on October 14, 2013
Dickens’ A Tale Of Two Cities begins and ends with some of the most famous lines in all of literature, ensuring that scarcely anyone over the age of maturity can expect to read it without at least some premonition as to its […]
Langston Hughes’ Selected Poems
by on October 10, 2013
Langston Hughes remains the most beloved and well-known poet of the Harlem Renaissance, a period spanning roughly from the end of the First World War to the beginning of the Great Depression. Hughes was concerned with promoting a positive black […]
John Barth’s Lost In The Funhouse
by on October 4, 2013
John Barth, like Donald Barthelme, is another writer whose influence has managed to outstrip his fame. Rightly acknowledged as a master of postmodernist fiction, he remains little read by the general public, probably because of his formal difficulty. And yet Lost […]