Made up and yet true
A piercing rationale for the arts, if a rationale is needed. They are made up, but ...
Frank impiety
An incisive summary of the effect of Irish writers on English literature; I liked the English-rose-pruning metaphor and the 'frank...
Shoe-button eyes
Banffy's trilogy of novels on the slow but certain self-destruction of the 19th century Hungarian aristocracy includes the figure of...
The richest of all soils
The use of 'rich soil' to represent fertile ground for writing isn't surprising but this reference to 'decayed literature' is. ...
Thick-witted world
Here's an example of the commentary being arguably more poetic than the poem.  Seamus Heaney's essay on Edwin Muir sums...
Quill-driving alien
A foreign writer? A spy reporting on his hosts? A literary martian? I liked this unusual triologism of George Eliot's. ...
5 years old today!
Dear Kind Readers,
When we launched WritingRedux on Shakespeare's and Cervantes' birthday five years ago, we had the freedom to...
Great grassy hills
A beautiful description of a large-hearted calming character, who has a benign influence on those around him. We need more...
Safe rendering
The Russian author Vasily Grossman here resists editorial efforts to render the first of his Stalingrad novels, For a Just...
Why read literature?
‘Why read literature? Because it enriches life in ways that nothing else quite can. It makes us more human.’
I'm...
On memorizing poetry
A few years ago I wrote this piece on memorizing poetry. I still memorize poems and regularly revisit those I...
Of frantic birds and free human beings
A withering riposte to any attempt at ensnarement or wing-clipping. Mr. Rochester tries to bind Jane to him but soon...
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