In the period that marked the end of Imperial Russia, Fyodor Dostoevsky was an ardent defender of the old Empire. Despite his undying devotion to Russian liberalism and his complete rejection of Western influences, Dostoevsky did not see his work as a platform for his own political diatribe. Unlik
The poet Karl Shapiro, in his introduction to the 1961 American publication of Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer," said, "Morally I regard Miller as a holy man'Gandhi with a penis."
This was Miller's first book, and its pages were rife with full, frontal descriptions of sexual joy and despair. He ha
Unfortunately, little is known about the personal life of Thomas Pynchon, the man behind such innovative texts as "The Crying of Lot 49" (1966) and "Gravity's Rainbow" (1973). Carefully guarding his privacy ever since the 1961 publication of his first novel, "V.," Pynchon has nevertheless dazzled cri
In 1984, the publication of William Gibson's first novel, "Neuromancer," single-handedly gave birth to a new, revolutionary subgenre of science fiction: Cyberpunk. Looking into a near future when the interface between humans and their machines would achieve a life of its own, Gibson's dystopic vision