A writer with John Updike’s (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) versatility and range, whose fiction reveals a virtual symphonic richness and complexity, offers readers a variety of keys or themes with which to explore his work. The growing… Read More ›
UNIVERSITY OF CALICUT I SEMESTER B.A. ENGLISH CORE READING POETRY Reading Poetry PDF Reading Poetry DOC
Often, what Robert Penn Warren (1905 – 1989) said about other writers provides an important insight into his own works. This is especially true of Warren’s perceptive essay “The Great Mirage: Conrad and Nostromo” in Selected Essays, in which he… Read More ›
The story of Alice Walker’s childhood scar provides the most basic metaphor of her novels: the idea that radical change is possible even under the worst conditions. Although she was never able to regain the sight in one eye, Walker’s… Read More ›
It is instructive to note that the most pervasive structural characteristic of Mark Twain’s (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910) work, of his nonfiction as well as his fiction, is dualistic. That observation is not worth much without detailed… Read More ›
The quest would seem to be the one indispensable element in the fiction of Thomas Pynchon, for each of his novels proves to be a modern-dress version of the search for some grail to revive the wasteland. Pynchon’s characters seek… Read More ›
In 1937, Vladeslav Khodasevich, an émigré poet and champion of “V. Sirin’s” work, wrote, “Sirin [Nabokov] proves for the most part to be an artist of form, of the writer’s device, and not only in that . . . sense… Read More ›
In all of her fiction, Toni Morrison (February 18, 1931- August 06, 2019) explored the conflict between society and the individual. She showed how the individual who defies social pressures can forge a self by drawing on the resources of… Read More ›
Beginning in 1970, Rolando Hinojosa (born 1929) published fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, primarily in small Mexican American presses and journals. His major work comprises a series of short novels that he titled The Klail City Death Trip series, after publishing… Read More ›
Oscar Hijuelos (August 24, 1951 – October 12, 2013) represents a new generation of Cuban American writers. His Latino roots enrich his chronicles of the immigrant experience. Latino writers often face quandaries when choosing the language for their literary expression… Read More ›
Critics have generally agreed that John Hersey’s greatest strengths as a novelist derive from two sources: the observational skills he developed as a journalist and his belief in the importance of individual human beings in difficult situations. Reviewers throughout his… Read More ›
At first glance, Joseph Heller’s (May 1, 1923 – December 12, 1999) novels seem quite dissimilar. Heller’s manipulation of time and point of view in Catch-22 is dizzying; it is a hilariously macabre, almost surreal novel. Something Happened, on the… Read More ›
Central to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s romances is his idea of a “neutral territory,” described in the Custom House sketch that precedes The Scarlet Letter as a place “somewhere between the real world and fairy-land, where the Actual and the Imaginary may… Read More ›
Grisham writes legal thrillers, a type of novel that has virtually become a genre of its own in recent years. Grisham credits writer Scott F. Turow’s Presumed Innocent (1987) for beginning the trend, but his own novels have served to… Read More ›
Turning away from a romanticized view of her own Virginia, Ellen Glasgow (April 22, 1873 – November 21, 1945) became a part of the revolt against the elegiac tradition of southern letters. Although she rejected romance, she did not turn… Read More ›
Unlike most of their predecessors in the genre, Dashiell Hammett’s detectives live and work, as did Hammett himself, in a world populated with actual criminals who violate the law for tangible personal gain. Significantly, Hammett did all of his creative… Read More ›
John Gardner (1933 –1982) is a difficult writer to classify. He was alternately a realist and a fabulist, a novelist of ideas and a writer who maintained that characters and human situations are always more important than philosophy. He was,… Read More ›
Before it became fashionable, Ernest J. Gaines ( (January 15, 1933 – November 5, 2019)) was one southern black writer who wrote about his native area. Although he has lived much of his life in California, he has never been… Read More ›
Critics have placed William Gaddis (December 29, 1922 – December 16, 1998) in the tradition of experimental fiction, linking him closely to James Joyce and comparing him to contemporaries such as Thomas Pynchon. Gaddis himself also indicated the influence of… Read More ›
“The test of a first-rate intelligence,” Fitzgerald remarked during the late 1930’s, “is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” At his best—in The Great Gatsby,… Read More ›
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