To sum up in a phrase the true and deepest character of Lawrence’s genius, it was given by his close friend Aldous Huxley in an introduction to the first collected letters shortly after his death: he was a mystical materialist. And thereon hangs the tale I shall unfold.

This article is filed under Literary Themes, Non-Fiction Reviews, Philosophy, Religion, Writers.

The notion of Art’s secular epiphany takes us to Vladimir Nabokov, a reader of Joyce. As I recall, it was about 1956 or so that an excerpt of his then unpublishable LOLITA appeared in an early number of Anchor Review.

This article is filed under Literary Themes, Non-Fiction Reviews, Writers.

R.K. Narayan

Narayan’s fiction rarely addresses political issues or high philosophy. He writes with grace and humor, about a fictional town Malgudi and its inhabitants; and their little lives. Narayan is a classic teller of tales; an enduring appeal springs from his canvas where common men and women of all times and places are joined [...]

This article is filed under Biography, India, Literary Themes, Non-Fiction Reviews, Writers.

The relativism that relishes diversity for diversity’s sake is one that eschews æsthetic judgment or choice. Both however are necessary.

This article is filed under Literary Themes, Non-Fiction Reviews, Sociology.

Paul Auster is a writer, who like Beckett is obsessed with identity and the way it is constructed out of and through the medium of stories, words, or even the thinnest of airs.

This article is filed under Biography, Fiction Reviews, Literary Themes, Writers.

Other writers such as Geoff Dyer and Alain de Botton have also established themselves as exponents of a similar type of hybrid writing style. Yet they are more obviously producing non-fiction and neither has written anything to rival Austerlitz, the best of Sebald’s work.

This article is filed under Biography, Fiction Reviews, Literary Themes, Writers.

I knew it occurred every Autumn. And every Autumn I intended to go. And after many trials and as many errors, I finally made it one August. It was the festival of the earth.

This article is filed under Biography, Environment, India, Literary Themes, Non-Fiction Reviews, Poetry, Writers.

The novel as a perpetually-remade form of high style and sophistication is, in our commerce, scarcely recognized, let alone understood.

This article is filed under Literary Themes, Non-Fiction Reviews.