The Man Who Read Everything: The Literary Letters of Harold Bloom Edited by Heather Cass White. Yale University Press, 2026. Hardcover, 248 pages, $30. Reviewed by Oliver Spivey. Harold Bloom (1930-2019), with his preternaturally expansive intellect, stocked with...
Poetry as Enchantment: And Other Essays By Dana Gioia. Paul Dry Books, 2024. Paperback, 272 pages, $21.95. Reviewed by Oliver Spivey. In his essay titled “Reading,” W. H. Auden sets forth what he views as the special duties of the literary critic: What is the function...
Mark My Words: Profiles of Punctuation in Modern Literature by Lee Clark Mitchell. Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. Softcover, 166 pages, $15. Reviewed by Oliver Spivey Many literature professors have long expressed their embarrassment at simply professing literature. Not...
American Audacity: In Defense of Literary Daring By William Giraldi. Liveright, 2018. Hardcover, 462 pages, $30. Reviewed by Oliver Spivey William Giraldi, author of the critical prose collected in American Audacity: In Defense of Literary Daring, is that rarest of...
Have you read Russell Kirk’s fiction? My dad used to joke that ppl thought there must be two different authors by the same name—one who wrote serious political tomes and the other who wrote supernatural fiction. Story offer below.