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The Time Machine
H. G. Wells 1895 (A push on a lever, a blurry dizziness, a clap of thunder… and a veil falls away to reveal the world of our far distant descendants.) Breaking the rule that you have to proceed constantly forward in time at precisely one second per second is as old as the human imagination, […]
Twain’s stories
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) 1865-1890 (A champion of common sense and nonsense casually delivers his colorful yarns, witty satires, and twisty dramas.) Sitting with Mark Twain when he’s in a storytelling mood, we get to know the man—or at least he leads us to believe we get to know him. He lets us in on […]
Arnold’s early poems
Matthew Arnold 1840-1849 (A man of intellect and of spiritual sensitivity contemplates the purpose of life and its struggles.) “Unwelcome shroud of the forgotten dead,/ Oblivion’s dreary fountain, where art thou”. What a dark way to begin one’s poetical efforts, at 18 years of age! And we need read no further to suspect (correctly) that in Matthew […]
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe 1852 (Two slaves struggle mightily: one for her liberty, the other for his integrity.) This novel, the best selling book in the nineteenth century besides the Bible, is a remarkably forceful argument against the world’s most blatant form of widespread institutionalized violation of human rights. It is a collage of slave lives and […]
Madame Bovary
October 21, 2020 / Leave a comment
Gustave Flaubert 1857 (An unhappily married woman pursues a lifelong quest for the fulfillment of her romantic desires, by any means necessary.) When a novelist is said to rebel against romanticism, anyone with an imaginative, adventurous, passionate, chivalrous, or spiritual streak may be forgiven for wanting to give it a pass. Such a writer sounds […]
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