literature
What Explains Women's Fascination With BDSM Fiction?
Every generation or so (i.e., roughly every 25 years) a woman (it’s always a woman) writes a book about kinky sex—and a very specific type of kinky sex.
At 400, Molière Still Matters
Over the years, Le Tartuffe ou l’Imposteur has been one my favorite Molière plays to study and direct with my undergraduate students at Princeton University. I find it to be the best point of origin from which to discover his body of work. As often with Molière, the plot
Anatomy of a Murder
On New Year’s Eve 2021 news of my killing began to circulate on Twitter. holy shit this is a murder https://t.co/CwsF0sZ9sZ — Julia Carrie Wong (@juliacarriew) January 1, 2022 I scrolled through scores of posts before I could stop myself, pausing to read replies and retweets.
A World of Waste, Stripped of Transcendence: James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ at 100
Few novels become institutions, to have departments rigged up around them, whole constituencies and spheres of scholarship, as works of lifelong study, fascination and confusion. Ulysses, whose publication centenary will be observed on February 2nd, is one such book. Like Marx’s Kapital, Joyce’s door-stopping opus has kept academics
Reading James Joyce Amidst Winter Snow, ‘Where Dwell the Vast Hosts of the Dead’
Many people no doubt roll their eyes in scoffing dismissal when they hear the commonly expressed—and almost as commonly crooned—wish for a White Christmas. But there are sound spiritual reasons for longing to see one’s environs blanketed with snow. Silent in its approach and accumulation, snow can
Cancelling the Beat Generation
Almost from its inception, the Beat Generation seemed to be doomed to failure. In and around Columbia University, a ragtag group of bohemians coalesced based upon an odd array of mutual interests. Two of them were homosexuals, one bisexual, and all were interested in drugs and subversive literature. William S.
Mrs. Dalloway: Secularism and Its Enchantments
1922 is one of those spooky years in the history of literature, when several revolutionary things seemed to be taking place at once. At the time, Virginia Woolf was still a minor figure in the publishing scene, but she was in the beginnings of her literary chrysalis. She had recently
There's (a Lot) More to George Orwell than Nineteen Eighty-Four
It’s been more than 70 years since George Orwell (1903–50) published Nineteen Eighty-Four. Of his nine books (six of which were novels), it is by far the most famous and influential. In detailing his oppressively dark vision of social manipulation and political tyranny in late 20th century Britain,
