Doris Lessing was a well-known writer who died in 2013 after a very long life and many prizes, including a Nobel. I confess that I’ve never read a thing she wrote, although I tried a few times. It just didn’t … Continue reading →
Robert Louis Stevenson is one of those writers I connect with childhood, where he loomed large. A Child’s Garden of Verses and Treasure Island, of course (which I now see were published in the same year), and then the Strange … Continue reading →
Betrand Russell was a socialist, but he wasn’t impressed by the Communists: I am compelled to reject Bolshevism for two reasons: First, because the price mankind must pay to achieve Communism by Bolshevik methods is too terrible; and secondly because, … Continue reading →
Leo Tolstoy lived from 1828 to 1910, and was probably just as famous for his political and religious/social beliefs as he was for his writing (maybe even more so). Tolstoy was a Titan of energy and creativity who later in … Continue reading →
That Hillary Clinton might lie is no surprise at all, even to her supporters, who shrug it off or rationalize it. And on the topic of lies and the lying liars who tell them, there was mention in the comments … Continue reading →
Yesterday commenter “Nick” wrote this on the thread about Krystal Ball’s Animal Farm summary: OK, OK, I hate to be this guy, but Orwell would have been fine with Ball’s reading. Orwell was a socialist. His problem with the pigs … Continue reading →
…on the eve of the sort-of millennium makes for some fascinating reading in retrospect. I call it the “sort-of” millennium because it took place in late December of 1999, whereas the real millennium would have begun with the year 2001. … Continue reading →
[NOTE: This is another installment in my series on literary leftists.] You may know Will and Ariel Durant as the authors of a series of books on world history called The Story of Civilization, which I read one long-ago summer … Continue reading →
Perhaps you’ve heard of Edna St. Vincent Millay. She was a lyric poet of great renown during the 1920s and until her death in 1950, known mostly for her sonnets. Her fame as a poet was of a magnitude difficult … Continue reading →
David Mamet’s Village Voice piece on his political conversion—“Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal’”—has caused a minor sensation. To me, of course, it’s an old story, not only because I experienced something of the sort myself, but because … Continue reading →
[Part I: Reading Lolita in Tehran] [Part II: Hemingway and Dos Passos and the Spanish Civil War] We all know H.G. Wells. That is, we all think we know him. He’s the author of science fiction novels that seem to … Continue reading →
[The first part of this series on literary leftists can be found here.] The Spanish Civil War was famous for many things, including attracting the participation of some of the most well-known literary lights of the day. The October 31 … Continue reading →