I recently spent a semester teaching writing at an elite liberal-arts college. At strategic points around the campus, in shades of yellow and green, banners displayed the following pair of texts. The ...

What a sensible idea of Ashbery’s, I thought, and modest—to direct attention away from himself. It also worked to his own benefit; he was more interested in exploring these other poets and ...

Wilson came to dislike the “all too conscious American literary self-glorification which is a part of our American imperialism.” He caustically noted the behavior of onetime radicals rushing to ...

Techno-thrillers are the rose-colored glasses through which the national-security state sees itself. Ronald Reagan so admired Tom Clancy’s novel The Hunt for Red October (“my kind of yarn”) that he ...