Author: Jay Ruud

There is no question that James Joyce is the most significant and influential English language writer of the twentieth century. As the preeminent stylist in English, with the uncanny ability to adopt style to situation, the premiere example of the use of “stream of consciousness,” the creator of a new kind of short story that… Continue reading James Joyce’s “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”

When I was in graduate school, some time back in the Jurassic period, I was assigned Henry James’ The Ambassadors to read for a seminar in literary theory. I remember slashing my way through the morass of James’ language like Henry Morton Stanley macheting his way through the thickest jungles in his search for Dr. Livingstone, he… Continue reading Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw”

Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the most respected and influential writers in the world, particularly in the English-speaking world, alive today. His 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature is a fairly significant indication of that, but he also won the Booker Prize in 1989 for his third novel, The Remains of the Day, and has been short-listed… Continue reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go”

John Irving is sometimes dismissed by literary snobs as merely a “popular” writer—like a  Stephen King, say, or a Dan Brown. Unsurprisingly, King himself reviewed A Prayer for Owen Meany, supplying a blurb for the front cover: “Readers will come to the end feeling sorry to leave [this] highly textured and carefully wrought world.” Irving does rank… Continue reading John Irving’s “A Prayer for Owen Meany”