Category: words

Throughout the 19th century, novels were regarded with the same suspicion with which we treat, say, Eli Roth’s ‘torture-porn’ Saw movies today. They were dangerous not simply because of the stories they might contain – the romantic expressions of wish-fulfillment, for example, that led Emma Bovary down the garden path of adultery – but also because reading itself was seen as a kind of possession: an encroachment of the ‘other’ upon the self.

Linguist John McWhorter talks to Scott Timberg about ‘black bodies and the ‘blaccent’, gender and the pronoun ‘they’, and heated rhetoric and social media.

Now publishing 1,500 pieces a year, with several new reviews, essays, and interviews on its main page each day, it has made its mark on criticism, spawning an “LARB style,” as Brian T. Edwards, a professor of English at Northwestern University, put it at a standing-room-only forum on the state of criticism at last year’s Modern Language Association convention.

“It seems to me that socioeconomic class is a tougher sort of diversity to bring to writing. Unlike the other varieties, it’s at odds with what readers are used to and what they’re likely to want—namely wealthier, more glamorous, or just less drudgery-having versions of themselves.”

“What can we say? We messed up. Our list of ’80 Books Every Man Should Read,’ published several years ago, was rightfully called out for its lack of diversity in both authors and titles. So we invited eight female literary powerhouses, from Michiko Kakutani to Anna Holmes to Roxane Gay, to help us create a new list. Each participant made 10 picks.”

“This list is an olive branch to the poetry skeptics. Prose is great for fiction, essays, and belabored introductions to lists, but poetry has its own place in this world. … Many wonderful poems exist, but the following selections will appeal to readers of prose: work that is approachable, funny, smart, but still verse. Take a chance on these 10 poems.”

“How is it possible that the New Yorker of 2016 remains to this day the readily identifiable descendant of a magazine that came into being in the same year that F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby and Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five cut their first records—and how does it retain so much of its editorial vitality 91 years later?”

“We asked a number of writers across the board – from Eileen Myles to David Mitchell to Chuck Palahniuk to Alexander Chee to leading genre authors – about the books that changed their lives. Here’s what they had to say, in their own words.”

I was 21 years old, I was brand new to being a critic, and I was desperate to get attention, to have “interesting” and “provocative” opinions. I didn’t even know how to write a book review, much less write one that was “interesting” or “provocative.”

“These days there is more pressure on editors to acquire best-sellers, and they are much more involved in marketing a book. And that, he says, leaves precious little time for actual editing.” (audio and text)