Book Reviews

Gerard Manley Hopkins was born in Essex in 1844 and died in 1889. Since the publication of his work in 1918, he has been recognized as one of the greatest poets of the nineteenth century.

Anyone who has spent a night or two in the wilderness knows that there is always a potential for danger.

In a sense, then, Melville’s most famous work (published in 1851) is made up of two different books: the one is the novel proper, which is a great and unique work of American literature; the other is a long-winded and pedantic study of whaling and whales generally.

Francis Marion Tarwater, a fourteen-year-old hillbilly, is the main protagonist of O’Connor’s second novel (published in 1960).

“Naked Lunch” was the first thing I read by any of the beat writers.

But Yeonmi Park, the young author of While Time Remains, confronts us with the fact that the menace of totalitarianism, especially the leftist variety, is all around us, right here in America!

In short: “What does this have to do with the world that I know?”  But after delving into it, I came to realize just how relevant it is; and not only in the negative sense.

Evil is vividly depicted in “The Big Sleep”, but the author never lapses into excess.  The result is a very enjoyable read, even for readers who are not big fans of mystery or detective fiction. 

“The Brothers Karamazov”, Dostoyevsky’s last novel (1880), is generally considered to be his masterpiece. Its central theme is arresting and provocative: if there is no God and no life beyond this life, then morality is non-existent; ANYTHING goes.

Poe shared with Nathaniel Hawthorne a distinctively American vision of darkness.  And yet this vision was rendered artfully, not in a merely negative or pessimistic manner.