The comedian Steve Martin once quipped that the problem with studying philosophy in college is that later in life one always remembers just enough of it to make one rsquo s conscience uncomfortable In his new novel The Cave Nobel laureate Jos eacute Saramago hearkens back to perhaps the best kno

In his new novel Umberto Eco semiotics professor and the author of a number of essays and novels offers a stylistic tour-de-force set in the latter part of the reign of Frederick Barbarossa Holy Roman Emperor from 1155 to 1190 The core of the novel is Baudolino mdash an unreliable narrator with

The novelist Iris Murdoch died only two years ago at the age of 79, but already a memoir, film and biography have appeared to preserve her memory for devoted fans and to introduce her to new audiences. In Iris Murdoch: A Life, Peter J. Conradi offers a wide-ranging look at the life of a writer and philosopher who had a remarkable “hunger for the spiritual in a post-theistic age.”

Laurence Sterne was a novelist a clergyman and briefly a farmer in the rough-and-tumble 18th century an era when the remedy for cattle plague was thought to be a pint of gin for the cattle not for the beleaguered farmer In his letters sermons and above all in his comic masterpiece The Life a

Carson McCullers described her distinguished novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter as the story of five isolated lonely people in their search for expression and spiritual integration with something greater than themselves This thematic preoccupation combined with the fact that McCullers lived for a

Saul Bellow rsquo s literary career has stretched over so many years that at least one commentator has distinguished Late Bellow from Even Later Bellow Works such as The Adventures of Augie March Seize the Day Henderson the Rain King Herzog and Humbolt rsquo s Gift earned Bellow the triple crown

Samuel Clemens rsquo s birth in 1835 and his death in 1910 coincided with successive appearances of Halley rsquo s comet providing an apt image for the periodic reappearance of Mark Twain on the U S literary cultural horizon Two recent books on Clemens adopt different approaches in order to provi

Samuel Clemens rsquo s birth in 1835 and his death in 1910 coincided with successive appearances of Halley rsquo s comet providing an apt image for the periodic reappearance of Mark Twain on the U S literary cultural horizon Two recent books on Clemens adopt different approaches in order to provi

When the poet Hart Crane jumped from a ship to his death in the waters of the Caribbean on an April morning in 1932 alarmed crewmembers threw life preservers into the water after him Their rescue effort was not only futile but also ironic since Crane rsquo s father had invented the Life Saver can