At Long Last

by | Feb 8, 2016

The Poems of T. S. Eliot, edited by Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015. Hardcover, 2 volumes, 1344 + 688 pages, $45/$40. When T. S. Eliot died in 1965, his writings were left in the care of his young widow, Valerie Eliot. She proved...

Risking Literature in the Obama Era

by | Oct 25, 2015

Bearings and Distances by Glenn Arbery. Wiseblood Books, 2015. Paperback, 335 pages, $13.To those who desire to think the same way others think, who long to crush dissent and to be on the right side of history, real literature is an oddity, an affront, the relic of an...

The Uncozy Christie

by | Oct 18, 2015

A reflection on the underestimated Dame Agatha Christie at 125. Eve Tushnet Agatha Christie’s name is practically synonymous with comfort reading. Her publishers used to promise readers “a Christie for Christmas,” and her works are the inspiration for the mystery...

Writings after Empire

by | Sep 27, 2015

A conversation with Michael Hofmann about Joseph Roth.Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the Austrian novelist Joseph Roth travelled extensively throughout Europe, leading a nomadic life in the various hotels he called home across the continent. Roth wrote in an...

A Literary Bloodhound Tracks Eliot

by | Aug 16, 2015

Young Eliot: From St. Louis to The Waste Land by Robert Crawford. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015. Hardcover, 493 + xvi pages, $35. As I finished this prodigious tome about “Tom,” a painful question came to mind. What American could have pulled it off? The ideal...