Literary Criticism

The redemption arc, in clumsy hands, becomes cheesy and unbelievable, offending good taste more often than not. Granted. But literature has, in the past, found ways to handle this sort of plot delicately, and to great effect. After all, the question of how a person changes ought to absolutely possess a novelist – as a matter of philosophical... See more

A reading revolution is taking place on this notorious message board, most famous for alt-right memes, anything-goes chatter, and large-scale coordinated pranks (several hoax bomb threats organised by the site have led to arrests and mass evacuations). Users operate under total anonymity and are subject to bare-bones moderation. Most of the... See more

"Prose-forward,” though, goes a long way toward explaining what books are counted as literary in the real world. Not just as a term that explains what unites the surrealism of Donald Barthelme, the Kmart realism of Ann Beattie, the lush prose of Toni Morrison, and [insert infinite other examples here]. But also what genre authors are counted among... See more

To be honest, my appetite for this sort of online blowup diminishes hourly. Though I’m as prone to schadenfreude as any other media professional trying to hold onto relevance in an increasingly winner-take-all economy, there’s something about watching extremely online people have noisy meltdowns that makes me feel like I’m inhaling my own body... See more

In some ways, book reviewers, critics, book club hosts, readers, and even the writers themselves, are engaged in a long war against the idea of fiction itself, involving the reverse-engineering and geolocation of various hurts and harms in the psychology of the writer. We are, at least in America, a nation trained in the arts of literary analysis,... See more