Author: Jay Ruud

“ In his own day, William Makepeace Thackery was considered the one great Victorian novelist who could be mentioned in the same breath as Dickens. Both had a string of highly admired novels and were well-known public figures on the lecture circuit, and each grudgingly admired the other’s work in print. So admired was Thackery… Continue reading William Makepeace Thackery’s “Vanity Fair”

I remember as a young child seeing the 1939 American animated film of Gulliver’s Travels at a local movie theater, I suppose as a 20th anniversary “re-release.” Though dealing only—and not very faithfully—with Gulliver’s first voyage, to Lilliput, it made a tolerably entertaining children’s story. Indeed, the book is often put forward as a children’s novel, presenting… Continue reading Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels”

I had deliberately avoided this book for forty years. Sure, it was  a huge bestseller in 1979 and won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1980, and yes, it was honored with a spot on Modern Library’s famous “100 Greatest English Language Novels of the 20th Century” (not to mention ranking 57th on Radcliffe’s “100 Best… Continue reading William Styron’s “Sophie’s Choice”