Author: Jay Ruud
Maggie Smith’s “Good Bones”
Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple”
There are a number of strong voices that don’t want you—or me—to read Alice Walker’s best-known novel, The Color Purple. The American Library Association lists it among the 100 most often banned or challenged books in the U.S. in the decade 1990-99 (17th), 2000-09 (17th), and 2010-19 (50th), and shows it cracking the top ten in… Continue reading Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple”
Michael Hettich’s “The Angels”
Edward Arlington Robinson’s “Miniver Cheevy”
Christina Rosetti’s “Echo”
Jericho Brown’s “Aerial View”
William Butler Yeats’ “When You Are Old”
Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five”
On the title page of Kurt Vonnegut’s modern classic Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade, Vonnegut remarks that the novel is “somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamadore.” This means nothing to you as you read the title page, but as you get into the book and it strikes you how there… Continue reading Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five”
John Updike’s “Rabbit Run”
“[L]ooking around me at American society in 1959,” John Updike once said in an interview, he could observe “a number of scared and dodgy men….This kind of man who won’t hold still, who won’t make a commitment, who won’t quite pull his load in society, became ‘Harry Angstrom.’ I imagined him as a former basketball… Continue reading John Updike’s “Rabbit Run”