History and criticism Archives

History and criticism

The Licentiate’s Children

by Juan Gabriel Vásquez,Translated by Phil Klay,

From a speech published in the book El arte de la distorsión. Vásquez is the author, most recently, of the story collection Songs for the Flames. Translated from the Spanish.…

Good Bad Bad Good

by Adam Wilson,

What was the Golden Age of TV?

American Expansion

by Helen Vendler,

The innovations of A.R. Ammons

Abandon All Hope

by Nat Segnit,

Hieronymus Bosch comes home

To Laugh That We May Not Weep

by Art Spiegelman,

A nearly forgotten cartoonist we need to look at — right now!

Counter Culture

by Caleb Crain,

Fighting for literature in an age of algorithms

The Torment and the Engine

by Elena Ferrante,

From an interview in the Spring 2015 issue of The Paris Review. Elena Ferrante is the pseudonym of an Italian novelist whose books include The Days of Abandonment, My Brilliant…

Ways of Being Silent

by Tillie Olsen,

from the archive 50 years ago in Harper’s Magazine Literary history and the present are dark with silences: the years-long silences of acknowledged greats; the ceasing to publish after one…

The Sharp Edge of Life

by Saul Bellow,

By Saul Bellow, from a previously unpublished essay written in 1951 and included in There Is Simply Too Much to Think About: Collected Nonfiction, edited by Benjamin Taylor and out…

Destroy Your Safe and Happy Lives

by Michael Robbins,

A poet’s guide to metal

What Is Literature?

by Arthur Krystal,

In defense of the canon