Category Archives: Literature

Tolkien’s Beowulf

Posted on March 19, 2014 by Max West

JRR Tolkien’s translation of Beowulf is finally going to be published, 90 years after being completed.

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Marooned In One’s Own Skull

Posted on February 12, 2014 by Max West

David Foster Wallace, from an 1993 interview with The Review of Contemporary Fiction: I guess a big part of serious fiction’s purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, … Continue reading →

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Cronenberg on Kafka

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Max West

In The Paris Review, filmmaker David Cronenberg has a very well-written meditation on Franz Kafka (“The Beetle and the Fly“). Cronenberg begins his piece: I woke up one morning recently to discover that I was a seventy-year-old man. Is this … Continue reading →

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Thomas Pynchon’s Moral Fiction

Posted on January 20, 2014 by Max West

Cassandra Nelson writes on the moral character of Thomas Pynchon’s fiction: Don’t be fooled by the slapstick comedy and the silly names, the labyrinthine plots that careen around and veer maddeningly toward irresolution and paranoia, the playful gags and the … Continue reading →

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Blue Jasmine & Philip Roth

Posted on January 11, 2014 by Max West

Having just watched Blue Jasmine last night, Woody Allen’s riff on A Streetcar Named Desire, I came to realize the extent of Mr. Allen’s longstanding dislike of WASPs. While he’s largely incapable of depicting Jews (and to a lesser extent … Continue reading →

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Tolkien’s Artwork

Posted on January 4, 2014 by Max West

Beyond being a reknowned philologist and iconic literary giant, J.R.R. Tolkien was also a talented artist. Here’s an article featuring some of his sketches and paintings, done from the age of 12 and forward.

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Saul Bellow & Jewish Consciousness

Posted on January 4, 2014 by Max West

James Santel has an excellent article on Saul Bellow’s novel Humbold’s Gift (1975). Among Bellow’s recurrent themes of Jewish identity, the novel contains an overarching theme of mortality. Here’s a wonderful quote from the novel: “The human being, more and … Continue reading →

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Philip Roth

Posted on January 2, 2014 by Max West

Ian Thomson, reviewing the book Roth Unbound: A Writer and his Books by Claudia Roth Pierpoint, notes the thread through Roth’s oeuvre is “the theme of America and the vagaries of American Jewish life.” Of particular interest have been the … Continue reading →

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T.S. Eliot: The Cultivation of Christmas Trees (1956)

Posted on December 19, 2013 by Max West

Casey Cep reflects on one of Eliot’s last published poems: I think of Eliot’s Christmas trees every year around this time: when firs, pines, and spruces appear in living rooms, storefronts, and town squares around the country. Eliot wrote the … Continue reading →

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Odysseus’ Journey

Posted on December 13, 2013 by Max West

Here’s a very cool map of the locations (some of which are pure speculation, of course) referenced in Homer’s Odyssey.

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