On this page you will find links to reviews, essays, and explications of various topics that I have written since 1991. They are listed in alphabetical order by title.

If you are relatively unfamiliar with some of the topics, I suggest that you start with the first entry, "Acquainted with the Night." This essay will probably give you the best flavor of how I write and of my thought process.

"Acquainted with the Night," Robert Frost (essay)

Adrienne Rich Poems (critical analysis)

Are Red-Light Runners Trying to Get a Power Fix? (essay)

Antisemitism in The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway (essay)

Beloved, Toni Morrison (essay)

China Men, Maxine Hong Kingston (essay)

Cultural Literacy, E.D. Hirsch (essay)

Death in Venice, Thomas Mann (explication)

Divorce and Realism (essay)

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Nonviolent Direct Action Programs (essay)

"Dream Song 140," John Berryman (explication)

Excellence, John W. Gardner (review)

Face, Cecile Pineda (essay)

Fraud in Scientific Research (essay)

Grease Paint Rebels (op ed)

"Hanging Fire," Audrey Lorde (essay)

"In a Station of the Metro," Ezra Pound (explication)

Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert (explication)

Malory and Gottfried on Love Themes in the Tristan Story, A Comparison (essay)

McTeague, Frank Norris (comparison to the movie "Greed")

"Memories of West Street and Lepke," Robert Lowell (explication)

Misplaced Morality, A Study of the Argument for Drug Prohibition (essay)

Modernism in Art and Literature (essay)

Obasan, Joy Kogawa (essay)

Organizational Structures in Literature of Flannery O'Connor  (essay)

Paradise Lost, Book VIII, John Milton (explication)

Savage Inequalities, J. Kozol (review)

Sexual Abuse (an interview with a victim)

Shakespeare's Creative Use of Holinshed's Facts in The First Part of King Henry IV (essay)

Sula, Toni Morrison (essay)

Television and Fraud: The Quest for Art, Beauty, and Truth in TV Land (essay)