Tag: literary criticism

You never stop learning how to read — probably because you also never stop forgetting how to read.

Assessing Joan Didion’s legacy reveals a fascination with the nature of narrative that often supersedes the author’s subjects.

In Vulture, book critic Christian Lorentzen suggests we dispense with terms like “postmodern” and “postwar” when discussing novels, and instead analyze them relative to the presidential administrations under which they were released. What will we mean when someday we refer to Obama Lit? I think we’ll be discussing novels about authenticity, or about “problems of […]

When does fact become fiction? William Deresiewicz on essays, embellishment, and the slippery slope of “truthiness.”

At The Walrus, Casey Plett calls for more depth in transgender characters in contemporary literature, arguing that cisgender authors writing sympathetic, yet trope-laden transgender narratives might be doing more harm than good. To get it out of the way: the Gender Novels fail to communicate what it’s actually like to transition. Their portrayals of gender-identity […]