Of straw men and bureaucrats

Over at The Mumpsimus , Matthew Cheney registers his dissent from Elif Batuman’s essay “Get a Real Degree” in the London Review of Books ....

Why awful writing is tolerated

Over at Lit Drift , Jessica Digiacinto asks , in a fed-up voice, why awful writing is tolerated. The proximate cause of her despair is last ...

Jews Without Money

My critical essay on Michael Gold’s 1930 novel Jews Without Money is the main feature this morning at Jewish Ideas Daily . My argument is ...

Who thinks or writes like this?

In a short essay on Ethan Frome over at Interpolations , Kevin Neilson quotes two passages by the novel’s narrator, who says about himself...

George Hitchcock, 1914–2010

The news has only now reached me that George Hitchcock has died at the age of ninety-five after a long illness (h/t: Mark Athitakis ). Geor...

Politics and literature

My comment Sunday on the news that President Obama is reading Jonathan Franzen’s novel Freedom was not intended to be a political comment,...

Obama and Franzen sittin’ in a tree

When President Obama was “spotted” on Martha’s Vineyard (as if he had not planned to be seen) with Jonathan Franzen’s new novel Freedom , he...