Banning The Grapes of Wrath in 1939 California
The Kern County, CA Board of Supervisors got a lesson in the Streisand Effect back in 1939, when they banned The Grapes of Wrath from their libraries and schools.
Batman: A Hero or a New ‘Mr. Hyde’?
The parallels between Bruce Wayne/Batman and Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde are examined through the lenses of Gothic literature and psychological symbolism.
Are Video Games Like Novels?
Video games as interactive storytelling? Maybe not at first glance, but as Eric Hayot explains, the interplay between game and narrative is real.
How Social Upheaval Gave Rise to the Picaresque Novel
How did the arcadian shepherd and chivalric knight-errant, centuries-old fixtures of European literature, give way to this witty rascal, the pícaro?
The Power of Sibling Bonds in The Brothers Karamazov
In the year of Dostoevsky's bicentennial, a revisiting of familial relationships in one of his most popular works.
Science and Slavery in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko
In one of the first novels written in English, a West African prince, fascinated with navigation, boards a ship for a fateful journey.
How a Forbidden Russian Epic Finally Got Published
Soviet dissident Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate was "arrested" by the KGB in 1961. Here's how it finally saw the light of day.
Sick of Streaming? Try This Really Long Cult Novel
Marguerite Young's Miss MacIntosh, My Darling is a dense fusion of poetry and prose. One critic says it's unjustifiably forgotten.
Who Really Wrote The G-String Murders?
Gypsy Rose Lee, the most famous burlesque star of the 1940s, wrote a series of letters published by Simon & Schuster that may prove her authorship.