Culture
Jumping on the Slow Reading Bandwagon
School programs and libraries often encourage reading by holding summer programs that offer rewards to top readers. For example, finish 10 books...
Culture
Why Don't More Writers Buy Books?
A new submission model—wherein writers must buy a book if they want their work to be considered for publication—is shaking up the literary...
Culture
The Very Long History of Emoticons
I used to be anti-emoticon. For years, I thought of smiley faces as the mark of an immature writer—the kind who punctuates a sentence with seven...
Culture
A Summer Reading Forecast
One can be assured of very few things these days. But I will hazard three certainties for the next three months. Tomatoes will ripen. People will...
Culture
Should We Care About Grammar and Spelling on Twitter?
Many people assume I am a guardian of grammar. The typical plane-ride conversation goes like this: “What do you do?”” “I am an English professor”...
Education
The Problem of Free Books
How The Fountainhead weaseled its way into the canon. Recently, a plea appeared on my twitter stream: “I'm begging for book money again: We are...
Culture
Whose Words Are These?
There are so many different definitions of plagiarism-and so much written about it-that it can be hard to separate original writing from things...
Culture
The Art of Forged Signatures
What one forgery scam can tell us about the tradition of author signatures-and where we go from here. This week's column comes from one of...
Culture
Death of the Author
With J.D. Salinger, how can we separate the author from his writing? And now that he's dead, should we even try? I have written about J.D....
Culture
Haiti: A Reading List
How we can help Haiti move forward, through understanding. By now we all realize that poverty, not just the Richter Scale, contributed to the...
Culture
Women Writers or Male Sex Scenes: Which Would You Read?
How Kate Roiphe silenced a serious discussion about sexism. We should be past this by now-it's 2010-but it appears the question of sexism amongst...
Culture
The Decade in Literature
Ten years of literary innovation, fudged memoirs, and digital reading. The Aughts saw the birth of readerly social networking, a flowering of...
Culture
Saving Poetry (and Poetry)
A holiday shout-out to the Tudors, independent magazines, and charitable giving. I have been going through a Tudor phase. It started when I...
Culture
Schoolhouse Rock and Beyond
What we don't know about early America Sometimes I think my conception of Revolutionary America was imprinted on my brain by Schoolhouse Rock,...
Culture
Off to the Poe Houses
Halloween + Literature = Edgar Allan Poe, right? If you would like to get to know the author better this weekend, you have an astounding number...
Culture
The SAT and Its Discontents
What could we gain by abandoning the test's timed essay? Better writers. "Although most people's goal is to be happy at all times, being...
Culture
The Culture of the Interrobang
Is the combination question mark and exclamation point a sign of the times? On Monday I discovered the interrobang, and I have been thinking...
Culture
Dictation and Generosity
Richards Powers wrote his new novel by dictation. Does that affect the quality? Richard Powers' new novel, Generosity, was published this week....
