Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus
Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe My rating: 4 of 5 stars I am neither a Marlovian scholar in particular nor an early modernist in general, but as far as I … Continue reading
Samuel Johnson, Selected Essays
Selected Essays by Samuel Johnson My rating: 4 of 5 stars This Penguin Classics collection of essays by the great English critic and moralist Samuel Johnson is devoted largely to … Continue reading
Morten Høi Jensen, A Difficult Death: The Life and Work of Jens Peter Jacobsen
A Difficult Death: The Life and Work of Jens Peter Jacobsen by Morten Høi Jensen My rating: 4 of 5 stars I decided to pick up this appealing brief recent … Continue reading
Gerald Murnane, The Plains
The Plains by Gerald Murnane My rating: 3 of 5 stars Gerald Murnane is in vogue. Every few years, it seems, a new writer or handful of writers is coronated in … Continue reading
Against Celebration: Bloomsday vs. Dallowayday
Two years ago, Elaine Showalter suggested that we balance Bloomsday (June 16, the day whereon Joyce’s Ulysses is set) with Dallowayday: Like Joyce’s Ulysses, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway is set … Continue reading
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun
The Marble Faun by Nathaniel Hawthorne My rating: 4 of 5 stars The Marble Faun (1860) is Hawthorne’s last completed and longest romance—his term for the type of non-realist, symbolic, … Continue reading
Albert Murray, The Hero and the Blues
The Hero And the Blues by Albert Murray My rating: 5 of 5 stars Albert Murray is, as the fashion journalists say, having a moment. His collected non-fiction and fiction/poetry … Continue reading
Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy My rating: 4 of 5 stars All the Pretty Horses is apparently to Cormac McCarthy’s corpus what The Crying of Lot 49 is … Continue reading
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon My rating: 5 of 5 stars A summary of this classic 1965 short novel’s unsummarizable plot: California housewife Oedipa Maas becomes executor … Continue reading
Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro My rating: 5 of 5 stars Never Let Me Go is a contemporary realist novel about a friendship and eventual love triangle among … Continue reading
