Bemoaning the perceived implosion of the university-level English department has been a favorite pastime for humanities scholars for 20 years or more — for so long, in fact, that there are almost no fresh arguments about its causes or its implications. ...
Earlier this month English novelist Zadie Smith closed the competition for the Willesden Herald Short Story Prize, for which she acts as judge, without naming a winner. Her reason for doing so – We dutifully read through hundreds of [submissions]. But ...
That fact is at the core of a recent interview in The Australian with McEwan, the author most recently of the novel On Chesil Beach. But his reason for disliking criticism as it’s practiced in academia today is not that its language is ...
Unlike the ongoing flap over who should be credited with Raymond Carver’s early work, this week’s controversy – as reported by the New York Times – has a harder edge to it, revolving as it does around the accusation that the work of a scholarly ...
If local communities, authors, broadcasters, celebrities and employers come on board we can really bring about a long-term change in the nation’s attitudes to reading. What those attitudes might be isn’t entirely clear, nor is it obvious how they ...
There are two conspicuous silences in the excerpted correspondence between Raymond Carver and Gordon Lish, his editor at Knopf, that appears in the 24 & 31 Dec. issue of the New Yorker. The first surrounds Lish. The letters’ introduction gives an ...
Can reading novels change the world? For Amos Oz, the answer is no. That’s an unexpected answer, coming as it does at the end of a speech (adapted and reprinted in yesterday’s LA Times) in which Oz suggests that reading books is essential ...
It’s a messy spat, revolving as it does around the insoluble question of authorial intent. That a lawsuit may be in the air — a Knopf spokesman told the NYT that “we have spoken to counsel and are considering all of our options†— only further ...
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