Love and Criticism -- Thom Donovan I have noticed a lot of interest in criticism—what criticism is, how it should function—at Harriet/Poetry Foundation. And especially interest in the function of ‘negative’ criticism. Throughout the past couple years I have had a few different answers to the question of what criticism does. Or rather, what it can do. Criticism, not unlike poetry Submitted: on 16th Jan 2010 Tags: · The · What · Answers · Criticism · Foundation · Poetry · WhatThe Duty Of Harsh Criticism A little grave reflection shows us that our first duty is to establish a new and abusive school of criticism. There is now no criticism in England. There is merely a chorus of weak cheers, a piping note of appreciation that is not stilled unless a book is suppressed by the police, a mild kindliness that neither heats to enthusiasm nor reverses to anger. via tnr.c... Submitted: on 15th Feb 2010 Tags: · The · Criticism · UnlessJC Hallman on The Denver Post's Best of List David Milofsky of the Denver Post has a year-end list with a good bit of nuance to it. It includes the short story collection with perhaps my favorite title from all year, The Hospital for Bad Poets, by writer JC Hallman. You might remember the name since we published Hallman's essay on creative criticism in our fall issue and championed the anthology of literary criticism that it prefaced. So we'... Submitted: on 14th Dec 2009 Tags: · The · Criticism · Essay · Literary · Literary Criticism · Poets · Published · Short Story · The · WriterOMNIVORE: Little time to partake Does arts criticism have a future? Submitted: 4 days ago Tags: · CriticismOMNIVORE: The written word Our first duty is to establish a new and abusive school of criticism Submitted: on 22nd Jan 2010 Tags: · The · Criticism · Word · WrittenThe DNB and Dickens #1: Leslie Stephen’s Life in Letters: A Bibliographical Study, by Gillian Fenwick I’m glancing at The Dickens Industry, by Laurence W. Mazzeno. I had a reason to look at this book that I’ve forgotten, though perhaps I had wanted to get a digest of the commentary and criticism of A Christmas Carol. I also might have been curious about the status and story of Dickens’s Submitted: on 23rd Feb 2010 Tags: · Christmas · The · Christmas Carol · Criticism · Forgotten · Letters · Story · Study · WantedWriter as magician (Books - The Magicians by Lev Grossman) Lev Grossman's The Magicians might be called the anti-Harry Potter. It is at once a fantasy novel and criticism of the fantasy novel, an entertainment and a tragedy. In reading it, one is diverted but it is not escapist. It might be the love-child of J. K. Rowlings and Herman Hesse. This is the first book in a long while I was compelled to read late into the night until I had finished it. The prot... Submitted: on 17th Jan 2010 Tags: · The · A Fantasy Novel · Criticism · Fantasy · First Book · Harry Potter · Herman Hesse · Into the Night · Lev Grossman · Novel And · Reading · WriterTwo more Best of 2009 lists and associated problems Read two more year-end posts. The first, an expansion of an earlier list posted over at Pat's Fantasy Hotlist, is...well... I guess the word for it is "defensive." While I can understand to some extent why he'd be defensive in his opening comments, with each passing year in his Hotties posts, he has come across to me as taking criticism a bit too much to heart in all the wrong ways. Yes, I'm... Submitted: on 27th Dec 2009 Tags: · The · Criticism · Fantasy · I Can · Opening · Passing · WordOn Roth, Houellebecq, and Hedonism Most of the time when I see something about Michel Houellebecq, I sigh deeply, read the first couple paragraphs, and then completely lose interest. He’s always seemed like the kind of writer that would interest me, but most of the criticism concerned with his writing tends to follow the same cliches and make the actual . . . continue reading On Roth, Houellebecq, and Hedonism Submitted: 4 days ago Tags: · The · When · Always · Criticism · Michel Houellebecq · Reading · When · Writer · WritingChanging My Mind, By Zadie Smith Since the colossal success of her debut novel White Teeth in 2000, Zadie Smith has shown a refreshing reluctance to be pigeonholed as merely a novelist, producing articles and essays, teaching courses and giving speeches, publishing everything from memoirs to literary criticism. This collection of "occasional essays" groups together a disparate array of such pieces into a whole which, although dem... Submitted: on 3rd Jan 2010 Tags: · The · Articles · Criticism · Essays · Literary · Literary Criticism · Memoirs · mind · Novel · Novelist · Publishing · Together · White Teeth · Zadie Smith
