The Last Inkling

The Last Inkling

A farewell to Christopher Tolkien. By Michael Toscano By the time Christopher Tolkien was called up, His Majesty’s Royal Air Force had already been chased off the continent of Europe, losing nearly five hundred fighters over Belgium and France; had turned around and...
Practice Makes Virtue

Practice Makes Virtue

How to Be Unlucky: Reflections on the Pursuit of Virtue by Joshua Gibbs. CiRCE Institute, 2018. Paperback, 239 pages. $16. Reviewed by Elizabeth Bittner If we were to judge a book by its cover, we would likely steer clear of Joshua Gibbs’s latest work. Titled How to...
Prin’s Original Fictions

Prin’s Original Fictions

Original Prin: A Novel by Randy Boyagoda. Biblioasis, 2019. Paperback, 224 pages, $15. Reviewed by Joshua Hren Toward the end of Original Prin our protagonist Princely St. John Umbiligoda sifts through the Duty-Free shop in the Dragomans airport only to find the...
Musket Before the Ax: Howells and Ohio

Musket Before the Ax: Howells and Ohio

Stories of Ohio by William Dean Howells. Belt Publishing, 2019. Paperback, 256 pages, $14.95. Reviewed by Jacob A. Bruggeman The year 1860 was a predictably good one for William Dean Howells, an up-and-coming man of letters from Ohio. In the four years prior, Howells...
Passing through the Gathering Dusk

Passing through the Gathering Dusk

Winesburg, Ohio at 100 By James E. Person Jr. Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life by Sherwood Anderson. W. W. Norton & Company, [1919] 1995. Paperback, 256 pages, $12.64. The life of reality is confused, disorderly, almost always without...