Book Reviews

The story as a whole is consistently compelling; it is witty, thoughtful, and in the end quite moving.

Three fateful choices were made for the modern world during the 1800s; and those choices can be represented by three exceptionally brilliant writers: Marx, Nietzsche, and Dostoyevsky. 

“Light in August” (1932) is set in the American South during the era of racial segregation and is focused chiefly on a protagonist named Joe Christmas.

Nikolai Gogol published his great novel, “Dead Souls”, in 1842. The plot concerns a man named Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, who buys dead serfs from various landowners; not the cadavers of these serfs, rest assured; only their names.

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

James Joyce (1882—1941) was one of the greatest literary geniuses of the twentieth century.

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

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.

Published in 1962, A Clockwork Orange might soon have been forgotten had it not been made into a celebrated and notorious Stanley Kubrick movie.

Not as well-known but more authoritative are three books by two real-life FBI profilers, John Douglas and Robert Ressler.