Robert Lowell’s Selfish Determination
The Dolphin (Two Versions, 1972–1973) by Robert Lowell, edited by Saskia Hamilton. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019, Paperback, ix + 195 pages, $18. The Dolphin Letters, 1970–1979: Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell, and Their Circle edited by Saskia Hamilton. Farrar,...
After Such Knowledge
Sergeant Salinger: A Novel by Jerome Charyn. Bellevue Literary Press, 2021. Hardcover, 288 pages, $28.50. Reviewed by Carl E. Rollyson Biographical novels trouble certain readers. What is true? What is made up? Why isn’t biography enough? Why not just read Salinger,...
A Singular Universal
The Unquiet Englishman: A Life of Graham Greene by Richard Greene. W. W. Norton, 2021. Hardcover, xvi + 591 pp., $40. Reviewed by Adam Schwartz Jean-Paul Sartre once classified Gustave Flaubert as a “singular universal.” For Sartre, such a writer’s oeuvre becomes a...
Putting Burke into Action
Metternich: Strategist and Visionary by Wolfram Siemann. Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2019. Hardcover, 928 pages, $40. Reviewed by James Baresel Few nineteenth-century statesman are as famed for their positive contributions to Europe’s practical politics as...
There are metaphorical hills on which I would be willing to die. The Oxford comma is one of them.
So easy to forget that the best way to educate yourself is to read great works of literature and philosophy, then talk about them. Bring back the salon!