Gene Wolfe, living though Severian, re-experiences via Thecla’s characterization of him as not being worth enough to value highly for being what he thought he could only amount to her when he first met her, that is, simply a boy at hand, his own once being lured into the attentions’ of his mother and then dismissed by her when she was done usi…[Read more]

This autoethnographic exploration, describes and reflects upon my attempt to crowdsource a modern myth on the origins of racism in America. It draws on my work in narrative studies with a special focus on stories and their role in human development. Part one is analysis of the ‘functions’ of story as both plot variables and sociological act…[Read more]

This essay examines the relationship between modernist formal experimentation and rehabilitative futurism, the modern cultural fantasy of a hygienic future in which all illness and disability have been eradicated. Through a reading of Kenneth Burke’s early essay collection Counter-Statement (1931) and his first and only novel, Towards a Better…[Read more]

Full collection of four essays on J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” comprising “Lord of the Rings: the anti-adventure,” “Reader’s Guide to the Fellowship of the Ring,” “Reader’s Guide to the Two Towers,” and “The (True) Lord of the Ring.” Emphasis throughout is to suggest that it is not just wise but essential to encounter very, very…[Read more]

This essay serves as a guardian, as a true friend of the reader, encouraging them to recognize that if they identify with the hobbits in this book, to be wary of the text trains the reader to become someone who would mistake their actual proud moments of self-decision, self-realization… of bravery, of the genuine kind, for something evil or bad,…[Read more]

Delineates how much of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Fellowship of the Ring” is about preparing Frodo especially so that if caught out alone, he’d never dare venture a decent listen to anyone who might attempt to sway him to consider the due fate for the Ring, other than according to Gandalf’s specifications. Positions the text as one that bates the reader…[Read more]

Explores how Max Vigne, from Andrea Barrett’s “Servants of the Map,” makes use of the dangerous Himalayan mountain environment as almost as Winnicottian “play space,” in which to recover from being requited to a life of obligation, rather than real-self discovery, after his mother’s death.

Explores the invisible man, in Ralph Ellison’s “The Invisible Man,” as borrowing upon associations of patriarchal maleness, in the sense Ann Douglas in her “Terrible Honesty” argues 20s modern’s did, to secure freedom from feelings of entrapment by maternal figures, whose near-proximity to him is expressed in the text as often incestuous, gross;…[Read more]

A review of Stanley Kunitz’s poetry, emphasizing how he used his poetry to both explore and manage his relationship with his dominating mother. Argues that none of Kunitz’s elegies work as conventional elegies, or as we traditionally understand or expect them to work, but more as working their way to the direction Peter Sacks advocates, as…[Read more]

Explores select works of Matthew Arnold, as well as Robert Browning’s “Caliban Upon Setebos” and Edward Fitzgerald’s “Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám,” for evidence that societal growth during the late 19th-century was done not entirely in hopes of leaving previous authorities behind, of accepting and dealing with felt feelings of being abandoned for…[Read more]

Explores Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” as a space-world where anxious Victorians might place the perhaps exciting but also anxiety-producing New to subsume its affect of disequilibrium within the sturdy, assured and predictable.

Explores Maureen Folan, in Martin McDonagh’s “The Beauty Queen of Leenane,” as a psychological borderline, someone who is afraid to achieve a man she can have a relationship with, and so defaults to using him as simply another object she can use in warfare against a mother she is only yet capable of playing at being able to leave behind her.

Explores how Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” encourages, more than identification with, but an impressing oneself within “the kid,” and makes all of his adventures with Glanton and his outriders a ride we thrill at, even if at times very much secretly — as with the slaughter of the indigenous camp. Glanton is a phallic “hero” for us; it is the…[Read more]

Challenges Robinson Crusoe’s ability, in “Robinson Crusoe,” to be honest with himself about how much he was actually glad Fortune stepped into remove him out of his father’s grasp. And, as well, Gulliver’s presumption, In “Gulliver’s Travels,” that he would really have preferred Fortune had not stepped in and removed him from endless more days in…[Read more]

Compares Evelina, from Frances Burney’s “Evelina,” and Werther, from Goethe’s “Young Werther.” Argues that though they could readily be made to seem opposite to one another, as they seek company with such disparate groups of people, the difference is superficial, and their motivations, the same — namely, to make use of their associations with…[Read more]