One Older Reader of Young Adult Fiction

I have discussed various aspects of Young Adult (YA) fiction in a number of posts, which readers can find by clicking on the tag “young adult fiction” at the bottom of this submission.  The YA field is interesting in part because it has in recent years been one of the best, if not the best, performing genre for the publishing industry.

List Journalism Is Alive and Well

Literary Hub, an online publication created by the venerable independent publisher Grove Atlantic and the Internet-age publisher Electric Literature, describes itself as “an organizing principle in the service of literary culture, a single, trusted, daily source for all the news, ideas and richness of contemporary literary life.”

Sounds high brow, doesn’t?

Well, Lit Hub, as it is known, is not shy about being low-brow as well – in this case, list journalism. You know the type: 24 ways to entice HIM into bed (your favorite women’s magazine); the 12 best sports bars in … (fill in the name of your city), etc., etc.

Trump as a Character from a James Joyce Novel

President Donald Trump could be a character created by James Joyce based on the way he thinks and communicates.

That’s the view of an unnamed national security expert, as reported by General Michael Hayden, a head of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency under former president George W. Bush.

In an interview published in the May 6, 2018, New York Times Sunday Magazine, Hayden was asked what it was like for analysts to brief a president who ignores intelligence with which he disagrees and embraces information that suits his policy needs.

Street Haunting May Shed Light on Clarissa Dalloway

When a certain type of novel is published, readers often wonder, to what extent is it autobiographical? And if the author is or becomes a literary celebrity, entire industries can develop around such questions.

Virginia Woolf, because of her difficult childhood, her episodic mental/emotional instability, her apparently sexually sterile marriage and her unconventional friends, has been the subject of endless inquiries along those lines – facilitated by extensive diaries and letters as well as her fiction, essays and critical works. There’s no shortage of fodder upon which to chew.

What, then, about Clarissa Dalloway? Where did she come from and how does she relate to the author herself? 

"George & Lizzie" (This review gives the story away)

Warning: this review of “George and Lizzie” gives the story away. Please don’t read it until after you have read the book. Contrary views are welcome.

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 If, on a lark, a bet or a dare, or perhaps because nothing else in life much interests her, a girl decides to have sex with all the starters on her high school football team, what can she expect out of life?

That’s 23 boys by the way – 11 on offense, 11 on defense plus the kicker – and one a week, every week until the “Great Game” is won.

Talking White

Regular readers, to the extent that there are any, know that I have been amusing myself in recent months by writing about various skirmishes in America's on-going culture wars.

With respect to literature, the conflict is mainly an attack on the status of whites, and particularly white males, as being inappropriately in control of how writing should be crafted -- what is good, what is bad; what is noteworthy and what is not; what should be included in "the canon."

The other day, I stumbled on another skirmish, from which I will present an excerpt without comment.

The Purpose of Fiction -- Revisited

If asked, most people would probably say fiction is a form of entertainment -- in contrast to, say, non-fiction, which would probably be identified as a form of enlightenment.

But fiction is arguably other things as well.