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Joshua Grasso

Joshua Grasso

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May 25

If Myths Are a Lie Then I Want a Refund (Because Reality Doesn’t Make Any Sense)

Many summers ago, two young Mormon elders (meaning they were scarcely into their teens) arrived at my doorstep in unsoiled white…

If Myths Are a Lie Then I Want a Refund (Because Reality Doesn’t Make Any Sense)

Joshua Grasso

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Jan 24

Can AI Tell The Difference Between a Map and a Metaphor? (but I bet you can…)

In a classroom of the near future (or maybe even tomorrow or today), a Language Arts teacher struggles to prepare a lesson over metaphors…

Can AI Tell The Difference Between a Map and a Metaphor? (but I bet you can…)

Joshua Grasso

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Jan 9

Survival Is Insufficient: A Short Review of Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (2014)

Toward the end of Emily St. John Mandel’s post-apocalyptic, literary science fiction novel, Station Eleven, several characters contemplate…

Survival Is Insufficient: A Short Review of Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (2014)

Joshua Grasso

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Dec 26, 2025

Books That Resist Us — and How We Can Fight Back

In Christina M. Rau’s article entitled “How Moby-Dick Has Not Changed My Life” (2018), she boasts of her lifelong disdain for a ‘great’…

Books That Resist Us — and How We Can Fight Back

Joshua Grasso

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Dec 8, 2025

The Book of Might and Right— A Brief Overview of The Once and Future King by T.H. White (1958)

Most literary folk vaguely know the story of King Arthur: that he pulled a sword from the stone to become king of England…that the wizard…

The Book of Might and Right— A Brief Overview of The Once and Future King by T.H. White (1958)

Joshua Grasso

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Nov 25, 2025

Tarzan Still Rules the Jungle — But What Do We Do With His Books?

Edgar Rice Burroughs published Tarzan in 1914, after successfully serializing it in 1912, and it quickly became a modern myth: radio…

Tarzan Still Rules the Jungle — But What Do We Do With His Books?

Joshua Grasso

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Nov 16, 2025

Cleopatra, Content Queen: Shakespeare’s Viral Monarch in Antony and Cleopatra (c.1607)

In the final act of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, the famous queen contemplates the end of her storied career, as Octavius Cesar…

Cleopatra, Content Queen: Shakespeare’s Viral Monarch in Antony and Cleopatra (c.1607)

Joshua Grasso

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Oct 12, 2025

The Universal Particular — Why You Might Fall in Love With Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (1862)

Sometimes a work is so much a product of its times that, for all its genius, it no longer translates beyond those times. I’ve read many…

The Universal Particular — Why You Might Fall in Love With Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (1862)

Joshua Grasso

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Sep 22, 2025

The Fiction of Real Life — Reading Shostakovich’s ‘Fake’ Autobiography, Testimony (1979)

One of the most fascinating literary documents of 20th-century music has to be the alleged memoirs of Dimitri Shostakovich, known as…

The Fiction of Real Life — Reading Shostakovich’s ‘Fake’ Autobiography, Testimony (1979)

Joshua Grasso

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Sep 7, 2025

Enter the First Supervillain! — H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man (1897)

Strangely enough, the Penguin Classics imprint didn’t boast a single volume of H.G. Wells until 2005, when his four early novels entered…

Enter the First Supervillain! — H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man (1897)

Joshua Grasso

Joshua Grasso

English professor at East Central University (OK); PhD from Miami University (OH); eternal student and lover of books

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