Goldfarb has a Ph.D. in English and has published two books on the Victorian author William Makepeace Thackeray. In the following essay, he discusses the way the protagonist copes with adversity in “Proper Library” and compares the story to modernist works such as Ulysses and The Great Gatsby.

Towards the end of Carolyn Ferrell's “Proper Library,” the schoolboy protagonist, Lorrie, decides to learn three new words to impress his mother. The words themselves are interesting, in that they seem to relate to Lorrie's situation as described in the story. The first is “soliloquy,” a word that implies being alone and unheard, among the most famous soliloquies being the sad solitary speeches made by Hamlet in William Shakespeare's famous play of that name. The word “soliloquy” means talking to oneself, and the whole story is one in which the reader enters Lorrie's thoughts and in effect overhears...