My post on ‘The Unexpected Feminism of Elena Ferrante’s Scorned Woman’ is available to read on the Ploughshares blog. Read an extract below, or find the full post HERE. Originally published in 2002, The Days of Abandonment sits uncomfortably in its
My post on ‘Epicurean Happiness in a Post-Post-Apocalyptic World’ is available to read on the Ploughshares blog. Read an extract below, or find the full post HERE. Philosophies for achieving genuine happiness and a good life are never intended to
My post on ‘Art and Power in Julian Barnes’ The Noise of Time’ is available to read on the Ploughshares blog. Read an extract below, or find the full post HERE. In The Noise of Time, Julian Barnes examines the relationship
This post originally appeared on the Ploughshares blog in January 2018. The Italian intellectual and novelist Umberto Eco died on February 19, 2016, just four short months before the surprise result of the British referendum on the European Union. During
This review was originally published on OperaWire Cecilia Bartoli’s latest album, “Antonio Vivaldi” (2018), comes almost twenty years after her historic recording, “The Vivaldi Album,” which was released in 1999 to wide critical acclaim and incredible popular success. The 1999
My post on ‘The Fiction of Genius’ is available to read on the Ploughshares blog. Read an extract below, or find the full post HERE. The “sexism of genius” has been well studied and widely reported. Male professors are more
My post on ‘George Eliot and Wagnerian Opera’ is available to read on the Ploughshares blog. Read an extract below, or find the full post HERE. George Eliot had a great interest in music. Her partner, George Henry Lewes, was
My post on ‘Difficult Novels’ is available to read on the Ploughshares blog. Read an extract below, or find the full post HERE. The supposed difficulty of Burns’ novel speaks to the relative paucity of working-class critics and journalists working
In her recent book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Kate Manne offers a framework for understanding how misogyny operates in contemporary Western societies, and a vocabulary (‘himpathy’, ‘herasure’) for discussing some of its more insidious aspects. Drawing on recent
1) Nightwood by Djuna Barnes Published in 1936, Nightwood is a haze of alcohol, glamour, sex, and love in all its desperate, unconventional, and painful forms. It tells the story of the mesmerising Robin Vote, who leaves a trail of cigarette ends and