It can be easy in these troubled and confused political times to dismiss Lolita, and effectively Nabokov, just as literary greats such as Neruda, Twain, Tolstoy, Harper Lee, and, I have seen, even Joseph Conrad, among many others, have been rather ridiculously subjected to what philosopher Richard Rorty calls a “subversive, oppositional discourse” — echoing… Continue reading

In ‘The Virginian’ you have the genesis of all fiction written in the 20th century within the realm of the ‘Western’ genre. It is a novel that is as ‘heroic’ as it is at times romantic, and intensely ‘Southern’; yet there is a depth and wit to it that comes across both loyal and indebted… Continue reading

While many have read (and studied) French literary giants such as Montaigne, Molière, Flaubert, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Proust, etc., it is easy to forget that there is a single pioneer within the French language (and in literary history in general) who came before them all, and who, like Chaucer is for Shakespeare and the English literary… Continue reading

Praise of Folly is a satirical project worthy of Pope and Rabelais. Like Pope, Erasmus in his philosophical essay attacks several aspects of human existence, and I think especially in the age of what Prof. Harold Bloom has labelled ‘the School of Resentment’, Erasmus some 500 years before was in agreement: “Now for the charge… Continue reading

The Guest is gold and crimson –An Opal guest and gray –Of Ermine is his doublet –His Capuchin gay – He reaches town at nightfall –He stops at every door –Who looks for him at morningI pray him too – exploreThe Lark’s pure territory –Or the Lapwing’s shore ‘The Guest is gold and crimson’ is… Continue reading