Modern Library Revue
March 17, 2011
Modern Library Revue: #4 Lolita 7
by Lydia Kiesling
(A signal event in English, by a Russian, about sex with children, published by a French purveyor of mostly-filth of a pretty banal sort.)
December 30, 2010
Modern Library Revue: #96 Sophie’s Choice 18
by Lydia Kiesling
There are two main narratives at work in this sad and sensational story: Sophie’s Auschwitz horrors, and Stingo’s penile travails.
November 23, 2010
Modern Library Revue: #48 The Rainbow 5
by Lydia Kiesling
D. H. Lawrence’s books are not, on the surface, about anything, and they are full of poetic flights, everyone alternately feeling a deadness inside and flinging himself down to rub his parts on the grass.
October 22, 2010
Modern Library Revue: #14 I, Claudius 4
by Lydia Kiesling
I confess: all I know about Alexander the Great I learned from Mary Renault (and how).
September 17, 2010
Modern Library Revue: #11 Under the Volcano 9
by Lydia Kiesling
While Dante urged me to strive up, up, up toward heaven’s crooning saints and brightly-lit pinwheels, Malcolm Lowry lit my cigarette and told me it’s always nighttime inside the bar. It was a confusing period in my life.
August 13, 2010
Modern Library Revue: #58 The Age of Innocence 4
by Lydia Kiesling
Were Ellen Olenska on Jersey Shore, she would be the pasty, sober blonde in a ruffled one-piece.