Criticism category: 58377 books

The first fully annotated edition of Raymond Chandler’s 1939 classic The Big Sleep features hundreds of illuminating notes and images alongside the full text of the novel and is an essential addition to any crime fiction fan’s library. A masterpiece of noir, Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep...

The evolution and manipulation of language from the celebrated author of After Babel. “A keenly discriminating literary mind at work on what it loves” (The New York Times Book Review). Language and Silence is a book about language—and politics, meaning, silence, and the future of literature....

"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." This ancient Greek aphorism, preserved in a fragment from the poet Archilochus, describes the central thesis of Isaiah Berlin's masterly essay on Leo Tolstoy and the philosophy of history, the subject of the epilogue to War...

J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951) is a twentieth-century classic. Despite being one of the most frequently banned books in America, generations of readers have identified with the narrator, Holden Caulfield, an angry young man who articulates the confusion, cynicism and vulnerability...

Three books in one volume: Advice and reflections on modern fiction from “one of the greatest creative writing teachers we’ve ever had” (Frederick Busch). In On Becoming a Novelist, John Gardner advises the aspiring fiction author on such topics as the value of creative writing workshops,...

**The acclaimed second collection of poetry by Patricia Lockwood, author of Priestdaddy, named a best book of the year by The New York Times Book Review SELECTED AS A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times * The Boston Globe * Powell’s * The Strand * Barnes & Noble * BuzzFeed *...

This definitive poetry collection, originally published in 1954 to honor Stevens on his 75th birthday, contains: - "Harmonium" - "Ideas of Order" - "The Man With the Blue Guitar" - "Parts of the World" - "Transport Summer" - "The Auroras of Autumn" - "The Rock"

The debut collection of a poet whose savage, hilarious work has already received extraordinary notice. Since his poems first began to appear in the pages of The New Yorker and Poetry, there has been a lot of excited talk about the fresh and inventive work of Michael Robbins. Equal parts hip-...

No art has been denounced as often as poetry. It's even bemoaned by poets: "I, too, dislike it," wrote Marianne Moore. "Many more people agree they hate poetry," Ben Lerner writes, "than can agree what poetry is. I, too, dislike it and have largely organized my life around...

A masterpiece of Old English literature, the alliterative epic poem ‘Beowulf’ was written between the 8th and 11th century and narrates the eponymous hero’s battles against the monster Grendel, Grendel’s avenging mother and finally a terrifying dragon that threatens Beowulf’s homeland. Blending...

Written over the course of Leskov’s career, each story in The Enchanted Wanderer elucidates the very essence of the human condition; themes of love, despair, loneliness, and revenge are explored against the backdrop of nineteenth-century working-class Russia. Leskov deftly layers social satire and...

In The Descent of Alette, Alice Notley presents a feminist epic, a bold journey into the deeper realms. Alette, the narrator, finds herself underground, deep beneath the city, where spirits and people ride endlessly on subways, not allowed to live in the world above. Traveling deeper and deeper, she...

“Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?” —Mary Oliver This luminous anthology brings together great poets from around the world whose work transcends culture and time. Their words reach past the outer divisions to the universal currents of love and revelation...

In this gripping short play, David Mamet combines mercurial intelligence with genuinely Hitchcockian menace. The Cryptogram is a journey back into childhood and the moment of its vanishing—the moment when the sheltering world is suddenly revealed as a place full of dangers.            ...