If only she weren't so prolific, the thinking goes, that Nobel would be hers.  And Joyce Carol Oates – with the aid of her pseudonyms Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelley – is nothing if not prolific, having written well over fifty books in her lifetime.  But this is not for lack

Christopher Marlowe led perhaps the most widely unconfirmed life of any major writer.  The numerous ascriptions that have met him over time – petty thief, secret agent, homosexual, general sybarite – are the cream of the crop among the tame many that are given to practically all t

The back jackets of much of Thomas Bernhard's English-language translations are burdened by such qualifications as "near genius" or "second only to Kafka and Beckett."  This, of course, is no small praise: there is no shame in being second to Kafka or Beckett; there is no shame in being a "ne