Literary Criticism
Contemporary Literature
Faith Hahn and
Literary Criticism
Nabokov — Speak, Memory.
I’ve been mainlining Le Guin’s non-fiction writing. It strikes me reading this passage again that she’s bumping up against Harry Frankfurt’s definition of “bullshit.” To paraphrase, that bullshit doesn’t concern itself with the truth—it’s objective is outside the realm of information. I don’t think fiction is bullshit, obviously. But now I’m curious about the qualities of fiction as they relate to the qualities of bullshit.
One thinks of Amit Majmudar, Christian Wiman, Tracy K. Smith, Ryan Wilson, and many others. These poets are only rarely published in prestigious publications (or, at least, publications with a prestigious legacy), and the group that should be the biggest supporter of these poets—conservatives—has tended to ignore poetry and the arts. When... See more
Micah Mattix • The Integrity of Poetry | Micah Mattix
Literary texts tend to distort the linearity of narrative sequence, and to reproduce the coexistence and simultaneity of interiorized events that resist conventional linear chronology. The narrative thread unravels freely between past and present, between different temporal planes, combining high and low registers, erudite literary references,... See more
Translation as a Practice of Acceptance - Asymptote
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
Brandon • emotional support trauma plot
The inhabitants of /lit/ see themselves as the victim of anti-canon efforts, as the academy has sought to “decolonise” and expand the curriculum over the past decade. And /lit/’s reaction is hardly unreasonable: there’s a difference between great books (well-written, perhaps undiscovered) and Great Books, which stay in the accepted canon because... See more
How 4chan became the home of the elite reader
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
How 4chan became the home of the elite reader
“The writing of the pose is the literary product of the MFA system and of Instagram in equal measure—it brings writing into the ordinary grueling business of the curation of the self which dominates advanced capitalist culture today.”
GD Dess • On the Cult of Craftism
It’s hard to talk about “masterpieces” because the concept trades on a theory of aesthetics that is controversial when spelled out (aesthetic value realism; maybe even a kind of Platonism about beauty) and difficult to defend, but which we all nevertheless subscribe to intuitively.