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.

What if our accounts of the way we read “now,” as well as our narratives of the discipline’s history, were to set out not from a catalog of eras or turns, but instead from more particularized, more fluid temporalities?

This selection of work by the Saint Petersburg experimental writer and artist Roman Osminkin includes A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, poems, and critical writings. 

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.