Theodore Solotaroff

I was really too young to have been influenced by the New American Review during the main part of its run, but I remember in the mid-seventies picking up copies in used bookstores & feeling nostalgic for a scene I was never a part of. Ted Solotaroff is dead at 80. Those beat-up paperbacks, for [...]

More on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Finished my read-through of the novel for next term. I’m going to be using Frankenstein to focus several issues — education, which I mentioned previously, will be central, especially as it contributes to our idea of what makes us human. Oddly, the book has hardly anything to do with science, as such, because Shelley glides [...]

Nasty, Brutish & Long

James Hynes’ The Lecturer’s Tale is one of the nastiest & meanest books I have read in a long time, though it is well-plotted & tells a kind of low truth about academia. Or about a certain elite segment of academia. Every character in this 388 page novel is at least unpleasant (including children) but [...]