I have become an outlier in my own book club. It's an occupational hazard, I suppose, just the lot of the novelist. While the rest of the club read for entertainment and enlightenment, I'm always teasing out plot inconsistencies and dangling modifiers.
What does it mean to have a voice, one that from the first line grabs you and remains with you long after the last one? A strong, unique voice aligned with all the elements of life? Such is the question I have been mulling over of late.
I'm not sure why I love reviews so much and find the reading of criticism so difficult. Maybe it's because reviews are more fun. But it's been helpful to think of criticism not as the enemy of creativity, but as its complement.
There's something rather satisfying about using the Huffington Post, a venue built on blogging, to respond to Peter Stothard's alarmist claim that book bloggers are ruining literature.
The paratextual content in modern Bibles goes far beyond basic features, of course, and there appears to be no limit to the marketing creativity of publishers who continuously repackage the Scriptures.
The trouble with creative writing classes in the modern university is they do not teach writing. Pop-cultural analysis, pop-psychology, and pop-philosophy are discussed, while how to write a compelling sentence is not.
Literature as an experiment engages both the reader and the text in an equal synthesis of interpretation. In this sense, literature becomes an experience, which experimentation must be used to understand it.
A flaw makes for a good character but a flaw also make for a terrifying, if entertaining, politician. The Republican contest is with us for a while longer so to help understand the candidates better, let us turn to comparisons from literature.
From barnesandnoble.com Bad reviews are a fact of literary life, even for the most successful writers. Take Steig Larsson -- perhaps the hottest ...
The flaws of customer criticism notwithstanding, the ability of readers to offer their feedback into the great public discussion of literature contributes significantly to an interest in reading, and writing.
Summer heralds many important things: 3D movies, involuntary camping trips, and sidewalk distribution of ice cream samples in tiny disposable cups. Bu...
What idea of Hitchens' could a man possibly grapple with? What new perspective has he introduced that can be pondered, analyzed, defeated or accepted?
For grown-ups who want to know more about the books kids read there's a great new resource --- A Family of Readers: The Book Lover's Guide to Childre...
If so, Myers would have a lot to answer for. But in the real world, instances don't yield general truths with anything like the haste of a typical Mye...
Just as the guild structure was socially conservative--and hence easily superseded when the more progressive market system, flourishing along with the industrial economy, came along--so is the present MFA credentialing system.
What American reviewers have missed is that satire and history are coming together for the first time in McEwan's career.
And how would I characterise this "best"? By all the means that sound familiar, but make their material strange. Good writing (adventurous as well as ...
Following our spotlight of independent literary presses, here is a special feature devoted to the most exciting university presses in the country. ...
The 44 year-old Australian, author of the most divisive book chosen for Britain's most highly regarded literary award in recent memory, also criticise...
When Ferris speaks, he does not come across as a rock star, an object of literary affection, or someone who has grown a large head from his success.
I know readers are supposed to mourn the loss of book review sections in newspapers and magazines across the country, but at this point -- well, in fa...
The most ambitious and more successful mash-ups often involve either a creative reimagining of one half of that equation or, perhaps even more ambitiously, of entire musical ideas from both sources.
Having stood by her good mate's side as he walked two bestsellers to the altar, Mrs. Obama is hip to the power of the pen, both in economic and political terms.
