False Priests, False Prophets, False Patriots : Charles Dickens – “Barnaby Rudge”

"All good things perverted to evil purposes, are worse than those which are naturally bad. When religion goes wrong, she is very wrong, for the same reason." It may have been George Carlin who said that people who fight over religion are like: "My imaginary friend is better than your imaginary friend." In practice, the …

Monte Cristo on a Gondola: Michel Zevaco – “The Bridge of Sighs” and “The Lovers of Venice”

"I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; a palace and a prison on each hand." -Lord Byron, "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"                         Alexandre Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo" has inspired almost two centuries of pastiches. There's several less-than-authorized sequels, (with titles like "The Countess …

The Accidental Satanist : John Milton – “Paradise Lost”

 "Lucifer" has just reminded me: I was due to revisit John Milton's "Paradise Lost." I'd gone through it in college, but it was a rushed read, part of a course  that also expected us to inhale, in a few months, half of the Norton Anthology of Poetry. I recall "Beowulf," John Keats' "Endymion," William Blake's …

Man of Understanding : Ezra Pound – “ABC of Reading.”

The Greek-loving students in Donna Tartt's "The Secret History" must have run into Ezra Pound's "ABC of Reading" at some point, and rejoiced at Pound's appreciation for Homer's melodious inventiveness, (or been upset by Pound's dismissal of Greek drama as Homer-influenced stage business.) But "ABC of Reading" (1934) has dripped its wisdom upon far less sophisticated heads, …