John Dugdale
High-School Jihad
It’s striking how often America’s senior novelists have recently chosen education as a theme, as if identifying the way the country’s youth are taught and socialised as the key to its current malaise. In Saul Bellow’s Ravelstein, Philip Roth’s The Human Stain or Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons, it’s a university that comes under scrutiny; but the latest work by John Updike, a teacher’s son, centres initially on a school.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Only in Britain, perhaps, could spy chiefs – conventionally viewed as masters of subterfuge – be so highly regarded as ethical guides.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-spy-who-taught-me
In this month's Bookends, @AdamCSDouglas looks at the curious life of Henry Labouchere: a friend of Bram Stoker, 'loose cannon', and architect of the law that outlawed homosexual activity in Britain.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-gross-indecency
'We have all twenty-nine of her Barsetshire novels, and whenever a certain longing reaches critical mass we read all twenty-nine again, straight through.'
Patricia T O'Conner on her love for Angela Thirkell. (£)
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad