In an early review of Rabbit, Run David Boroff of The New York Times wrote, “The author’s style is particularly impressive; artful and supple, its brilliance is belied by its relaxed rhythms. Mr. Updike has a knack of tilting his observations just a little, so that even a commonplace phrase…

On some website Jonathan Franzen says two of his favorite books are Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Desperate Characters by Paula Fox (1970). Franzen’s novel Freedom has a couple references to Gatsby and Franzen’s last chapter begins with the rumored death of a cat, recall that Fox’s book starts with…

Norman Rockwell’s illustration Beyond the Easel (BTE) is a strange image. First it is a portrait of the artist as an old man, and as a scout dignitary or leader. From what I read, Rockwell was never a member of the Boy Scouts, (I can’t make sense of the writing…

Let’s be realists for a moment.People voted against Donald Trump did so because of and only because of personality.

They’ll claim they voted against what Trump did (not really a viable defense in 2016 because he hadn’t been in office yet). They know this. They know their vote was only…

The 16th Century writer John Lyly wrote in his book Euphues — An Anatomy of Wit, “Fish and guests in three days are stale,” which Benjamin Franklin turned into “Fish, like guests, begin to smell after three days.” …

Film footage exists of Graham Greene when he visited what was then known as The Belgian Congo. He sits on a cheap deck chair, legs crossed, the lower ankle bent so the side of his foot rests on the ground. He reads. Greene visited in 1959, arriving at what is…

I was interested in the media frenzy about this document (I’m loathe to call it a dissertation) and so I looked it up. There are two litmuses that I use when first considering a thesis, exegesis, or dissertation: I look for a clear research question and I check methodology. What…

I’ve obtained a copy of a strange book independently published by John Ebert, Brian Culkin (and with a preface by Michael Kamins) that stylistically aligns with many books I’ve run across lately, in that I find them more confusing and exasperating than edifying.

I suspect these projects are written by…