George Eliot: An Extraordinary Victorian
She herself was extraordinary, brilliant and tough enough to sustain ties that other rebels would have destroyed.
Living Virtuously and Writing Well
On the connection between moral character and artistic achievement.
Reading Like a Child
The rewards of approaching literature with a sense of our relative smallness.
American Men
American men — with few exceptions — treat you like a human being, in a free, natural way, because they’ve done it from the nation’s youth.
Walt Whitman Isn’t America’s Greatest Poet
Why Walt Whitman was more the father of empty celebrity than of the Democratic spirit.
My Possessions
‘Like sterile seeds cast among weeds: cheese boards and socks, earrings and clocks… ’