Author: Jay Ruud

The selfless and tireless new teacher who comes into a new school with unorthodox methods that challenge the old, ineffective ways of other educators and succeeds in inspiring underachieving students to find the potential within themselves to rise above their unpromising condition and grow into successful adulthood is, basically, the clichéd “teacher as hero” story.… Continue reading Muriel Spark’s “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”

Mary Shelley was only eighteen years old when, having eloped with the already-married Romantic poet who ultimately did make an “honest woman” of her, she took seriously the challenge of Shelley’s friend Lord Byron to write a “ghost story” and produce what was ultimately to become the most successful Gothic horror story ever published. Some… Continue reading Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”

Sir Walter Scott’s most popular novel is one that does not appear on many of the most common lists of “Greatest Novels.” The book does have some acknowledged flaws: though a historical novel, there are places where an alert reader might discover an anachronism or two. Further, the prose style is somewhat turgid for contemporary… Continue reading Sir Walter Scott’s “Ivanhoe”

Paul Scott, the British author of thirteen novels, only began writing seriously in his forties, when he quit his job as a literary agent (he had represented such stars as Arthur C. Clark and Muriel Spark) and received a stipend to return to India (where he had served in the British army during the Second… Continue reading Paul Scott’s “The Jewel in the Crown”

When I think of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, one of the first things that comes to mind is how often people have tried to ban it. I suppose that’s because when I first read the novel in high school, it was the number one banned book in schools and libraries in the United… Continue reading J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye”