Old Iron – By Peter Barrett
The routine was always the same. Winters, usually; summers occasionally. The search for a new car always occurred in the extremes of each season.
Dad,...
I’ve Come to the End – By Kenny Chumbley
With this essay, I conclude my series on fairy tales. I’ve not discussed everyone I could have (E. Nesbit and P. L. Travers, for...
C. S. Lewis and Narnia
By Kenny Chumbley
It is often the case that children are introduced to the genius of C. S. Lewis through his fantasy series, The Chronicles...
J. R. R. Tolkien: The Lord of Fantasy
By Kenny Chumbley
In October 1936, a manuscript for a children’s book arrived at the office of the London publisher Allen & Unwin. Stanley Unwin,...
L. Frank Baum and the Wonder of Oz
By Kenny Chumbley
He saw his story as a “modernized fairy tale,” but he put no fairies in it. He meant it to be without...
Andrew Lang, The Master of Fairyland
By Kenny Chumbley
In the late 19th century, fairy tales had fallen out of favor with the general public; some educationalists even attacked them as...
J. M. Barrie and The Pan
By Kenny Chumbley
“You see, Wendy, when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all...
H. Rider Haggard: Northern Lights and Valkyries
By Kenny Chumbley
Before Indiana Jones, there was Allan Quatermain; before The Last Jedi, there was King Solomon’s Mines;and before the 1958 swashbuckler, The Vikings,...
The Eight Memes of the Postmodern Mystery – By Ted Gioia
What do postmodern writers have against the mystery novel? For reasons that perhaps only a Lacan or Derrida could deconstruct, they have turned to it again...
When Jean-Paul Sartre Cured Existential Angst with a Jazz Record – By Ted...
A Look Back at Sartre's Nausea
Philosophers can be incisive storytellers—and have been since the earliest days of the discipline. The most memorable passages in...
