Who could have guessed when academic Robert B. Parker introduced Boston private eye Spenser in The Godwulf Manuscript in 1974 that the entire landscape of American detective fiction would shift? Although Spenser (last name only, please)... Read More

The novelist David Foster Wallace took his own life on September 12, 2008. This single fact colors virtually everything written about his work since then, a fact acknowledged in this collection of critical essays focusing on Wallace’s... Read More

“Was there any?” was the response of a film historian when Tom Stempel, a professor of cinema, mentioned that he was researching writing in American television. Film and television screenplays usually do not appear on lists of great... Read More

“The critic,” writes Eric Ormsby, “must stimulate curiosity but he or she must also appeal to our innate sense of justice. Like it or not, the critic is a judge…We may flinch from the ‘judgmental’ but at the same time, I... Read More

For every great writer there need to be equally great readers. Jonathan Yardley may be just that, willing not only to read a work once, but also to re-read it seven or eight times. Yardley has been a columnist and book critic for the... Read More

In an article entitled “Muriel Spark’s Definition of Reality” in the journal Critique, Ann B. Dobie states, “The basic intention of Muriel Spark’s novels has not always been clear to critics….” Linette Bruno, an English... Read More

If a university offered an English course on the changing perception of military valor throughout history as shown through great literature, this book would be its syllabus. Not coincidentally, Alfredo Bonadeo is a professor of languages... Read More

It is fitting that the title of a book that examines the suicide motif in Shakespeare’s works is inspired by Act 4 Scene XV of Shakespeare’s tragedy Antony and Cleopatra. In this scene, Mark Antony has died in Cleopatra’s arms... Read More