Recent Books

Genesis of The Dead by James Joyce

December 31st, 2011

For “The Dead” James Joyce drew upon an incident in Galway in 1903. There a young man named Michael (“Sonny”) Bodkin was courting [[Nora Barnacle]] (Joyce’s eventual wife), but he had tuberculosis and was soon bedridden. When Nora resolved to leave Galway for Dublin, the boy stole out of his sickbed and in the rain under an apple tree sang to Nora . Later, in Dublin, Nora learned that Bodkin was dead. When Nora first met Joyce, as she told her sister, what attracted her to him was his resemblance to “Sonny” Bodkin. . . . Read More »

John Dos Passos' Three Soldiers

December 26th, 2011

The defining moment in the life of [[John Dos Passos]] came between August 16 and 20, 1917, when he experienced combat firsthand as an ambulance driver in France at the Battle of Verdun. . . . Read More »

Mountain Interval by Robert Frost (1916)

December 22nd, 2011

The first edition of [[Robert Frost]]’s third collection of poems, Mountain Interval, was published in 1916 by Henry Holt and Company and was dedicated “To you who least need reminding that before this interval of the South Branch under black mountains, there was another interval, the Upper at Plymouth, where we walked in spring beyond the covered bridge; but that the first interval of all was the old farm, our brook interval, so called by the man we had it from in sale.” . . . Read More »