William Deresiewicz is the author of The Death of the Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech, coming out July 28.
With its lack of art and absence of thought, the blockbuster Norwegian novel disappoints.
The task of a critic has to do with the nature of the knowledge we call art.
Kurt Vonnegut sought to fool us with his eyes wide open.
Ann Beattie is an artist of the things we don’t say, or can’t, and that find expression anyway.
Vulnerability was what made David Foster Wallace so beloved, but it often led him to surrender too much in his fiction.