Critiquing the critics: Parul Sehgal on 125 years of the New York Times Book Review
The New York Times literary critic surveys the history of the newspaper’s book review to discover what has, and what hasn’t, changed in the last century.
Situation critical: a justification for robust literary criticism
The dearth of serious literary critique in contemporary society is concerning, because a robust literature depends on robust criticism.
The Horror Show: Joyce Carol Oates on “the psyche’s deepest and most profound revelations”
In a brief survey of some core Western texts, Oates asks the key question, why do we want to experience fear in an aesthetic context?
No, the novel is not dead
Arguments that insist on the centrality of the western canon are most frequently a veil for the politics of exclusion.
Harold Bloom, proponent of the literary sublime, dies at age 89
Harold Bloom antagonized academics and cultural theorists, but remained a staunch advocate of transcendence through literature.