Writing about Zora Neale Hurston is a bit of a challenge. She began publishing her short stories in periodicals during the Harlem Renaissance, but didn’t publish her major novels until the 1930’s. Her age varied according to what she felt like saying at the time. She was bold and outspoken at a time when it wasn’t considered proper, particularly for a woman, and even more so for an African-American woman. In general she was fiercely independent, and didn’t feel obligated …

When I was around 9 years old my grandma and grandpa suddenly got heavily into transcendental meditation. This was funny because it didn’t seem like either of them. She was an intellectual and high-minded person, but also somewhat appearance-conscious and high-strung, and the whole Eastern spirituality thing seemed very earthy-crunchy for her.

But it was clear that she was the one who was all fired up about this new thing, whereas grandpa was just going along for the ride. It wasn’t easy to …

Humbert Humbert’s passion for the young girl, Lolita, in the novel of the same name by Vladimir Nabokov, has many similarities to the story of Messr. Swann’s passion for the young woman Odette in the Marcel Proust novel “Swann’s Way,” the first book of his epic “Remembrance of Things Past.” First, the similarities in these two relationships and then the only major difference I can see.

In both instances the man’s love–Messr. Swann in Swann’s Way and Humbert Humbert in …