David Thorburn

Dr. Thorburn provides an entertaining, no nonsense overview of a well-selected group of early 20th century novels. In the short time he has at his disposal, he provides some good insight into what makes "modern literature", showing how the narrative style differs from novels of the past, such as those of Jane Austen. Perhaps Dr. Thorburn's greatest accomplishment is to make forbidding works such as Ulysses seem approachable. He also skewers some of the overboard literary criticisms and interpretations of that work and others. While his approach is still intellectual, it is grounded in common sense and a love of reading for the sake of reading--not for the sake of writing another in an endless series of unreadable academic papers. As a lecturer, Dr. Thorburn is not the smoothest. His thoughts frequently get ahead of his tongue and he stumbles over some words, even when reading passages from the text. However, after a couple of lectures, that wasn't a problem for me, since I found him so endearing. I was fortunate as an English major to have a few professors who made reading fun. Dr. Thorburn's many students, past, present, and future, are lucky to have him.… (meer)