Ellison’s “Invisible Man” and Nabokov’s “Lolita” both challenged basic 1950s assumptions. The former changed public perceptions on what it meant to be black while the latter violated a tacit agreement not to go digging under neatly manicured lawns bordered by white picket fences.
A recent issue of “New Literary History” explores a number of ways that literature is useful.
Nabokov’s aestheticism in the 1960s tried to separate literature from history.
A new bibliomemoir on “Middlemarch” shows a book shaping a life.
Novels have an inherently liberal dimension in that they get us to identify with people very different from us.
“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” warns us that we are in danger of becoming monsters ourselves if we don’t hold on to our humanity when responding to monsters like alleged child molester Jerry Sandusky, close associate of Coach Joe Paterno.
Today we head home after having spent a delicious week in our Maine cottage with our sons Darien and Toby, along with our daughter-in-law Betsy and Toby’s girlfriend Candice. We immersed ourselves in memory and tradition while we were here. Portraits of my great-great grandparents John and Remember Berry Swett, are on the wall, as […]
