Tag Archives: Literature

Jay McInerney’s 1990s Masterpiece Brightness Falls

Brightness Falls By Jay McInerney Paperback 432 pp. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. (New York) 1992 In his novel Brightness Falls, Jay McInerney pieces together all the important elements that make a great novel. The accuracy with which he depicts the … Continue reading

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Oscar Wilde: After Hard Labor

Although for some fifteen years Wilde enjoyed celebrity and critical acclaim, he became anathema to the world before his death—and posterity has been only a little kinder. Wilde’s development of Walter Pater’s aestheticism was discredited, just as Wilde was relegated … Continue reading

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Book Review of Michael Holroyd’s Revised Biography of Lytton Strachey

Lytton Strachey: The New Biography By Michael Holroyd Illustrated. 780 pages. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Also available in paperback from Farrar, Straus & Giroux’s Noonday Press. Holroyd has at least two good reasons for rewriting Strachey’s biography. (The … Continue reading

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Book Review of Henry James’ Lesser-Known Novel Confidence

Confidence By Henry James 347 pp (Houghton) Houghton, Osgood and Company (Boston) Image: 1962 Universal Library edition. For one who appreciates Henry James’ deeply developed psychological conflict but also likes a fast-paced story, James’ lesser-known novel Confidence (1879) has both. … Continue reading

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The Two Daisy Millers of Henry James

Daisy Miller By Henry James 126 pp Penguin Classics, Penguin Books (London) (other editions used in the collation and analysis as cited in the bibliography) Introduction to the Article Henry James did not merely conform an earlier work (“Daisy Miller: … Continue reading

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Book Review of John Cheever’s Stories

I picked up the Cheever collection that’s been on my shelf most of my lifetime and read another twenty or so of the stories. I didn’t remember much of an impression from my dabbling in Cheever thirty or more years … Continue reading

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On T. S. Eliot’s poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock was an early favorite of mine as a teenager reading poems, stories, and novels getting my literary feet wet. I must have read it a hundred times during the next few days after … Continue reading

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Book Review of Thomas Wolfe’s novel Look Homeward, Angel

In my 50s I finally got around to reading Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel. I can only conclude that it took a massive intellect and a massive artistic talent to write this book. It shows on every page. Look Homeward, … Continue reading

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