“I only wished it were a thousand pages longer.”
- Michael Chabon on Pynchon’s Against the Day
“Rather than worrying out loud over the state of literary criticism, he shows a commitment to it through practice.”
“Someone with an interest in the internet’s effects on literature and the rise of the blogosphere might naturally appreciate the 18th century English pioneers of the newspaper and essay (Addison and Steel’s The Spectator, for one) and maybe read a little bit of Jurgen Habermas’ Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, which resemble nothing so much as the ultimate fulfillment of quintessentially 18th century ideas about the periodical press as a virtual space for rational debate on subjects of public interest, a space in which all who desired to participate, regardless of class, were allowed.”
– Emily Colette Wilkinson on the benefits of looking backward in literature
