The recent death of Sandra M. Gilbert at the age of 87 sent my mind reeling back decades to the first time I came across her name. With Susan Gubar (who still lives), Gilbert wrote The Madwoman in the Attic:…
This week at Thales College, my students encountered T. S. Eliot’s broken epic of social, spiritual, and intellectual fragmentation, The Waste Land. I asked them to imagine the aftermath, in Europe, of that “war to end all wars,” which saw…
Muse of Fire: World War I as Seen Through the Lives of the Soldier Poets By Michael Korda (Liveright Publications, 381 pages, $30) The First World War saw an outburst of poetic creativity unmatched in European history. Fueled by bitter…
This semester at Thales College, I am teaching a survey course focusing on literature, most of it English poetry, from the Renaissance to the 20th century. I have two auditors in the class. One of them is still in high…
A Woman Underground By Andrew Klavan (Mysterious Press, 288 pages, $27) Sometimes it takes several entries in a fiction series to strike gold. There were three terrific James Bond movies before the ultimate, Thunderball (Sorry, Goldfinger aficionados). And Hercule Poirot…
Foolsburg: The History of a Town By Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin (Vintage, 304 pages, $17) In the spring of 2022, as Russian armored columns plunged into the Ukrainian heartland, and as 152 mm artillery shells and Iskander missiles rained down upon Ukrainian…
A Refiner’s Fire: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery (The Commissario Guido Brunetti Mysteries, 33) By Donna Leon (Atlantic Monthly Press, 288 pages, $22.00) Donna Leon’s 33rd installment of her immensely popular Commissario (detective inspector) Guido Brunetti series shows that at 82…
Every year when the school season starts I remember that I was a lousy student in school until I got to college and was finally able to study what I wanted. The fundamental reason was disinterest and my youthful eagerness…
Literary Journeys: Mapping Fictional Travels Across The World of Literature Edited by John McMurtrie (Princeton University Press, 256 pages, $29.95) John McMurtrie introduces Literary Journeys: Mapping Fictional Travels Across The World of Literature with the famous Robert Frost quote: “Two…
