October 15, 2018
Was Philip Roth a White Male Author?
It’s been four months now since Philip Roth died, long enough in our fast-paced media world that all the eloquent and moving obituaries have largely dissolved into a broader consensus […]
August 13, 2018
On “Ethnic Fiction”
Mark McGurl’s The Program Era is a wonderful book, and I’ve mentioned it several times before on this blog, but it does use the problematic label “ethnic fiction” to describe […]
May 31, 2018
Should Fiction Writers Study Literary Theory?
In her 2010 review of Mark McGurl’s The Program Era, Elif Batuman makes the following observation: a schism has opened up between literary scholarship and creative writing: disciplines which differ in […]
April 6, 2018
In Defense of “Show Don’t Tell”
Part One of Mark McGurl’s The Program Era (2009), the now-classic history of the influence of writing programs on twentieth-century American literature, uses as its title two of the hallmark […]
September 21, 2010
Wishes and Whips
What is wrong with books? What is wrong with me that I so love reading about what’s wrong with the stuff I love? When I see links cropping up on […]