America's Most Critical Journal since 1999
Outer Dark Cormac McCarty Review By Dan Geddes Cormac McCarthy’s Outer Dark draws from the long tradition of existentialist literature from Eccliesiastes to King Lear to The Stranger.[1] It creates a world devoid of God, purpose, causality; a world where man... More »
Omens of Millennium Harold Bloom Review By Dan Geddes See also reviews of Bloom’s Book of J, Anxiety of Influence, and Western Canon. See also Elaine Pagel’s The Gnostic Gospels. Omens of Millennium – Key Passages Epigraph Introduction Prelude: S... More »
Review by Dan Geddes See also: A Prayer for Owen Meany, A Son of the Circus, The Fourth Hand and an imaginary review of Irving’s The Third Leg A Widow For One Year by John Irving John Irving’s A Widow for One Year chronicles the history of the Cole... More »
The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka Review By Dan Geddes For the would-be writer, the chief lesson of Kafka’s Metamorphosis is the effectiveness of fairy tale surrealism. Rather than submerge us in cries of despair, or the new Freudian psychology, Kafka expres... More »
By Dan Geddes NEW YORK—Capitology, a religion founded in 1987 by Anton Leday, is now the fastest growing religion in the U.S., according to CultWatch, a mainstream Christian publication. Capitologists worship a powerful force, called variously “The For... More »
The Gospel According To Jesus: A New Translation and Guide to His Essential Teachings for Believers and Unbelievers by Stephen Mitchell Review By Dan Geddes Stephen Mitchell’s project in The Gospel According to Jesus is to present and interpret the authentic... More »
Modern Times: The World From the Twenties to the Eighties Paul Johnson Review By Dan Geddes Nearly of all of Paul Johnson’s books now achieve best-seller status in America, thanks largely to the initial success of Modern Times: The World from the Twentie... More »
Citizen Kane (1941) Directed by Orson Welles By Dan Geddes Update 4 August 2012; Originally 14 April 2001. I venture to guess, nonetheless, that Citizen Kane will endure as a certain Griffith or Pudovkin films have “endured”—films whose historica... More »
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll Essay By Dan Geddes 13 March 2001 Summary Introductory Poems Chapter I—Down the Rabbit-hole Chapter II—The Pool of Tears Analysis Chapter III—A Caucus-Race and a Long Table Chapter IV—The Rabbit Sends in... More »
Our society should consider TV watching to be a guilty pleasure, but it really doesn’t. Although educators bemoan the TV time spent by our children, and moral crusaders scold Hollywood for sex and violence, these critics of television are generally regarded ... More »
The Western Canon by Harold Bloom Review By Dan Geddes 11 February 2001 See also reviews of Bloom’s The Book of J, The Anxiety of Influence, and Omens of Millenium. Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon reads like a work a desperation; a work from a man con... More »
LIFE AFTER GOD. By Douglas Coupland. Review By Dan Geddes From Douglas Coupland, author of Generation X, comes Life After God, a slick and very readable collection of stories, whose only common thread is the same generational angst of the earlier novel. About ... More »