Literary Criticism
Charles Dickens and Music
This is a detailed exploration of the references to music in the novels of Dickens: songs, instrumental pieces, performers, composers, and m…
On Reading The Bible
These are three lectures (numbers 8, 9, 10) excerpted from the author’s 1920 book On The Art Of Reading. The lectures were delivered to stu…
The Spirit of Brazilian Literature
One of the many Little Blue Books published to make learning available to all. These were short, informative, and inexpensive books that dis…
Essays on Modern Novelists
A collection of essays on 19th century novelists, both famous ones and those largely forgotten now. Among the writers presented most wrote i…
The American Newspaper
The American Newspaper is a critical study of journalism conducted by Will Irwin from 1909 to 1910 spanning fifteen articles that discuss th…
Laddie's Magical Glowing Balls Of Colored Gas
Laddie is a schizophrenic inmate who lives in the violent, obscene environment of a maximum security prison. Delusions swirl in his mind li…
Gossip in a Library
A collection of informal essays about books in his library. He combines commentary, translations, and humorous asides about authors and thei…
The Scars
Peter Everett is a man stained with grief, his life becomes a struggle of decisions as he watches the lives of the people around him dissolv…
An Essay on Criticism
The title, An Essay on Criticism hardly indicates all that is included in the poem. It would have been impossible to give a full and exact i…
The Sins of the Fathers
This is a story about life. This is a story about light. This is a story of how some men are the product of their lives, and some are the pr…
Pushing Leaves Towards the Sun
When Oso gets yanked off his motorcycle and killed by a closed parking lot chain, Billy feels guilty for having taught him to hop curbs and …
Infamy
Infamy is a difficult thing to live with. It removes privacy, infects every aspect of daily life, and even causes the people it encounters c…
The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac
Do you love books? No, I mean REALLY love books? These series of sketches on the delights, adventures, and misadventures connected with bibl…
Prayer At Rumayla
Nineteen year-old Chet Brown arrived home from the Gulf War in the spring of 1991 and found that, for him, the war was only beginning. Betra…
White Nights
Blood, sex, or family. Which is stronger? Aging founder Bill Lear finds out when he divides his tech company between two ungrateful sons.
Sh…
Arthur Wing Pinero, Playwright
A discussion about the life and works of the playwright Arthur Wing Pinero. The perfect accompaniment to the plays by Pinero available here …
The Secret of Charlotte Brontë
Twenty years ago, now, I attempted (but was not especially successful in the task) to establish upon the personal knowledge that my own resi…
A Long Way from Disney
It's the 1980s in Boston: the Celtics are rolling, the Patriots got crushed by the Bears, and the Sox are the Sox. Adam Berkman is learning …
Casa Del Queso
A group house of twenty-somethings in Pittsburg, Kansas is suddenly rocked when jealousy turns to grief and grief turns to streams of water …
The Birth of Tragedy
In this famous early work of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, he investigates the artistic characteristics of Apollonian (reason) and…