Enthusiastically aided by Academia, the late 20th century saw such English Lit stalwarts as Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and the Lake Poets dismissed as passé. In their place came the likes of Alice Walker, Rigoberta Menchu and Amy Tan, some talented, others fraudulent, but all with impeccable credentials: they were neither dead nor […]
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By Stefan Kanfer In full-page newspaper ads, the Kindle displays the first page of an e-book. Its opening is famous: “I am an invisible man.” Or is it famous anymore? How many high school seniors—or for that matter college undergraduates—can identify Ralph Ellison’s novel? True, the author was an African-American, but he was a male […]
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“I expect you’ll be becoming a schoolmaster, sir. That’s what most of the gentlemen does, sir, that gets sent down for indecent behavior.” – Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall, 1928 Those were the days. A novelist could teach for a year or two and emerge with enough satire to fill a library. Alas, the Academy […]
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