“Man passes … through forests of symbols,” Baudelaire wrote in “Correspondences,” a poem considered the touchstone of the Symbolist literary movement. Baudelaire owed much of his macabre ...

I have no idea if he’s right about the symbolic value of fairy tales, but I know this: Defang the wolf from the start and the story loses all its power. Saint Francis of Assisi tamed the ...

Located on the still-gritty stretch of downtown that abuts Skid Row, The Last Bookstore is a potent symbol of the resurgent literary fortunes of Los Angeles. It has also become one of the finest ...