After Such Knowledge

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,...
Everything Stays the Same

Everything Stays the Same

Dostoevsky in Love: An Intimate Life by Alex Christofi. Bloomsbury Continuum, 2021. Hardcover, 236 pages. $35. Reviewed by Albert Wald In an article on André Gide’s Memories of the Assize Court in the May 2020 issue of The New Criterion, former prison doctor Anthony...
The Literature of Wisdom and Enjoyment

The Literature of Wisdom and Enjoyment

On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Booksby Karen Swallow Prior. Brazos Press, 2018.Hardcover, 272 pages, $20. Reviewed by Daniel Buck Society needs literary critics. Time being a scarce resource, they help us to sift between the gold and the dross,...
A Singular Universal

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...
Have We Forgotten Solzhenitsyn?

Have We Forgotten Solzhenitsyn?

Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul and the West Edited by David P. Deavel and Jessica Hooten Wilson. University of Notre Dame Press, 2020. Hardcover, 400 pages, $60. Reviewed by Jeremy A. Kee The world is not changed by those whose voices are joined...