The greatest satirist in our language here richly represented by the best of hisEssays, Poems, Letters, Journalsand, complete,Gulliver's TravelsEdited and with an introduction byCarl Van Doren
Carl Clinton van Doren, a United States critic and biographer, won Pulitzer Prize. He was the brother of Mark van Doren and the uncle of Charles van Doren.
Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal are unforgettable, but a large part of the remaining makes the reader feel like he is seeing glimpses of the authors thoughts through chinks in a wall composed of displaced distance and time. I wonder how many of the words and phrases in The Portable Swift are actually double-entendres, sneaking past the censors, as well as a reading audience nearly 400 years later.
What a man Swift was and what a collection of poems, letters, novel that the book had offered us! Learning about him and what he did during the time he was on Earth was fascinating. His sharp mind and sharp tongue surely gave him and his friends so much troubles in England and Ireland back to the time 400 years ago (hence all the censors in the book!). But whatever he mentioned in the book sadly are still really relevant to many things are happening now in politic and our society.
Learning that his grave is at Saint Patrick's church in Dub 8, I actually want to visit his grave sometimes soon to study about the man and his legacy. Without him and his money, Ireland would not have the first mental health hospital so early at that time - one of the first in the world too.