»  Considerations

Thinker

 

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Not being very well-read, I am not much of a literary critic. Like everyone else, though, I have my literary enthusiasms, and occasionally get the opportunity to express them in print.

Some of the pieces here are rough surveys of writers whose works have impressed me in some way, or of some broad field of literature. Others were published as book reviews, the book under review usually being a literary biography. There are a couple of movies in there, too.

A fair definition of these pieces would be:  "Articles based on a book, a movie, or a writer that attempt to go deeper than a journeyman review."  Since these pieces don't really rise to the level of academic lit. crit., I have called them "Considerations."

Date Place Title Considered
September 2016 The New Criterion The Goulash Archipelago Miklós Bánffy's Transylvanian Trilogy
October 2011 The New Criterion Alexandria, Durrell & the "Quartet" The Alexandria Quartet
Fall 2010 Claremont Review of Books Meeting the Goose Arthur Koestler
June 12, 2010 The Wall Street Journal Five Best Five books of, for, or by curmudgeons.
May 10, 2010 Taki's Magazine The Voice of the WASP James Gould Cozzens
Summer 2009 Claremont Review of Books Rudyard's Adventures
in Wonderland
Kipling again
November 17, 2008 National Review The Emperor of Common Sense Samuel Johnson
October 2008 The New Criterion Hazlitt's Philocaption William Hazlitt
April 26, 2007 NRO Dancin', Yeah Saturday Night Fever
March 5, 2007 National Review Huxley's Period Piece Brave New World
September 2006 The New Criterion Divine Love, Divine Order Charles Kingsley
August 30, 2006 NRO A Triumphant Misfit John Betjeman
May 15, 2006 National Review Online February Fooled the Forsythia Lolita
April 19, 2006 National Review Online Sculpting with Dust Samuel Beckett
Spring 2006 The New Atlantis Father of Science Fiction? Jules Verne
February 2005 The New Criterion Alfred Duggan's Past Alfred Duggan
December 22, 2004 The New York Sun What To Make of George Crabbe George Crabbe
July 28, 2004 NRO Oh, the Songs! Cole Porter
Summer 2004 Claremont Review of Books On a Green Knoll Apart W.B. Yeats
February 2003 The New Criterion What Happened to Aldous Huxley? Aldous Huxley
February 15, 2002 NRO The Kindly Race of Men Sinclair Lewis
March 2001 The New Criterion The Life and the Life James Boswell
February 2001 Parnassus: Poetry in Review All the Way to Chang Feng Sha Medieval Chinese poetry
    and its translations.
December 2000 The New Criterion In the Bivouac of Life Henry Wadsworth
    Longfellow.
March 2000 The New Criterion Rudyard Kipling and
the God of Things As They Are
Rudyard Kipling
February 18, 2000 National Post (Canada) A Writer of Craft Patrick O'Brian
September 1999 The New Criterion Sub specie aeternitatis. J.F. Powers
August 30, 1999 National Review Swift Kicks Jonathan Swift
September 14, 1998 National Review A Writer All Through Kingsley Amis
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