Grim reading: Will Self surveys the literary landscape and collapses in a slough of despond
Self's surpassing hauteur and in-your-face grandiosity have a propulsive charm in themselves
“The best that is known and thought”: On rereading Matthew Arnold in 2023
Today, Arnold's ideas seem deeply unfashionable. They also seem pressingly relevant.
Saving criticism from the critics
John Guillory is best known for his 1993 book Cultural Capital. That book, which was published at the height of...
Tell me a story: Two recent books examine the human impulse toward narrative, for better and worse
"Never trust a storyteller," Gottschall warns, although he also points out that we do, all the time, and it's probably inevitable.
In It Came from the Closet, queer writers reflect on the horror movies that have influenced, enticed, or repelled them
Together, these essays provide a justification and rationale for queer readings of what may in fact turn out to be one of the queerest genres around.
“This will cut down on my reading”: The three types of books Dorothy Parker never wanted to encounter again
"When the author gives me a scene of wild young passion, then I can no longer slog through the immediate follow-up of a tender description of the bendings of wheat in the breeze."
Flight paths: Susan Glickman’s selected essays address poetry, criticism, and taking up art study in her sixties
Glickman’s focus on technique on a granular level reveals her to be a deeply knowledgeable and highly erudite reader of a wide range of poets.
“Trauma-creep” and literature: does a single minded focus on trauma diminish literary characters?
The reduction of literary characters to a history of trauma is too often used as convenient shorthand, robbing us of the pleasure found in complexity and ambiguity.
“Seriously flawed and morally questionable”: Guillermo del Toro, German expressionism, and the nature of noir
A noir sensibility finds its origins in German expressionism and creates a neurotic environment in which the borderline between good and evil is nonexistent.
The subtle art of selling out: Adam Hammond investigates DIY gaming culture in his new book The Far Shore
Hammond has written a text that is frankly unclassifiable: part biography, part critical exegesis, part hipster manifesto.