America's Most Critical Journal since 1999
by Sarah Totton <The Council of Elrond contemplates the ring.> BOROMIR: There is evil there that does not sleep– FRODO: What, it doesn’t even take a nap? BOROMIR: No. FRODO: I could never get through the day without taking a nap. BOROM... More »
The Simpleton a novel by Alex Bakhtin (Pigeon Classics, 2022), 612 pages Reviewed by James Fable It is almost a truism by now that Postmodernism is obsessed with adaptations. Whether feminist retellings of Greek myth or barely digestible mashups of anglophone ... More »
Warning: Sarcastic Spoiler Alerts! The Sun Also Rises An impotent American, a slutty Englishwoman, and their questionable expatriate friends drink and fuck their way around Europe. (For a generation referred to as “lost,” they don’t seem to have much t... More »
by Mary Cappelli, MFA, JD, PhD Recently at my very liberal high school in West Los Angeles, I was called into the Administration because a student complained about the use of derogatory descriptions of the Congolese people in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darknes... More »
By David Galef “The beauty of the world which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.” Trying afternoon yesterday with Lady Ottoline Morrell in her stupid new frock at her stupid garden party.... More »
In an unprecedented move, the Nobel Literature committee gave its Literature award to Mitt Romney, praising his six-year campaign for the White House as “Dadaist performance art” and “theatre of the absurd of the highest order not seen since ... More »
By David Alpaugh Millions of contemporary readers are ignoring great books, turned off by titles that strike them as inaccessible, politically incorrect, or hopelessly retro. The classics can remain relevant to the Facebook generation—but only if editors mus... More »
The Western Canon by Harold Bloom Review By Dan Geddes 11 February 2001 See also reviews of Bloom’s The Book of J, The Anxiety of Influence, and Omens of Millenium. Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon reads like a work a desperation; a work from a man con... More »