What are the intellectual and political conditions that permitted me to understand the word “critic” as an allegation?

A reflection on an influential figure in the genre-oriented criticism of the late twentieth century.

Auerbach's command of languages have often made him seem inimitable. But they did not always come easily to him, and they were not exactly a result of training. They were a result of his temperament: his urge to learn what he needed to learn in order to write what he wanted to write.

Old-fashioned literary appreciation tends to look—well, old-fashioned. But I begin to wonder whether it is perhaps actually “retro” and thus due for a comeback.

You know what kids need these days? Discipline. And heroes. And I am going to try to give them some of both.

Who will read a literary criticism engaged with the real world?

My approach to the set of fields known as the Humanities is rather different from that of most people I know.  I hesitate to assert the universal validity of my approach because it is, basically, a desire for everyone else to become more like me.  

In the past few years, I've noticed a surge of conversation about the growing irrelevance of literature in the academy.

With the help of Bonnie Tyler's 1983 #1 hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” I'm still trying to figure out what differentiates Adorno from what he calls cultural critics in "Cultural Criticism and Society."