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Literary Theory
Anne Lamott and Neal Allen join us to discuss why embracing constraints can be the best way to find freedom in the craft.
Reading isn’t just writing prep; together, reading and writing help writers think and generate original ideas through extended cognition.
A tour of the literary cover-ups, extraterrestrials, and cryptids lurking in the bookish backwoods.
The Japanese practice of "tsundoku" bestows joy and lasting benefits to those who make books an important part of their lives.
These short books offer insights and meditations on timeless themes, without the time commitment.
Why some of philosophy’s strangest scenarios are more than mental games.
Some books are remembered for their lyrical prose or engaging stories. Others are remembered for simply being weird.
A thesaurus isn’t for finding fancy words; it’s a resource to help you keep your rhythm.
In the tears and laughter of a single life, you find the grief and joy of humanity.
Barthes is dead — long live the artist.
When you enter someone's home, you learn how life is lived elsewhere.
From acclaimed novels to heretical treatises, sometimes a writer just doesn't want to put their name on the cover.
Self-help often distills philosophical ideas for the modern ear. Sometimes, its better to go back to the source.
From Nick Carraway to Charles Marlow, these side characters offered truths their scene-stealing protagonists couldn't.
Step back from the AI maelstrom and explore Lem’s "Summa Technologiae" for a detached look at technology’s role in human evolution.
Fantasy, meet statistics: The census comes to Middle-earth!
These hard-to-finish books are still worth the effort.
From "The Castle of Otranto" to "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, these books changed the literary landscape.
Individuals and organizations can maintain a strong and enduring identity by repeatedly remaking themselves.
A new book envisions an encounter of minds between the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, the physicist Werner Heisenberg, and the philosopher Immanuel Kant.
The author of Frankenstein had an obsession with the cemetery and saw love and death as connected.
Ignoring the legacy of William Shakespeare is difficult for any writer, let alone one as quintessentially English as "Lord of the Rings" author J.R.R. Tolkien.
Try writing a novel without using the letter "e."
What is Captain America doing in ancient Mesopotamia?
Would you want to live in any of these places?
Art criticism is inherently subjective. Still, many critics have tried to make a case for why some of the world’s most celebrated books are in fact terribly written.
“Block. It puts some writers down for months. It puts some writers down for life.”
Because Dylan “samples and digests” songs from the past, he has been accused of plagiarism. But imitatio isn't the same.
Between 30% and 50% of the US population says they believe in ghosts.
When you're a genius, how do you make ends meet?