Critical Notes

Tom Wolfe’s new novel about Miami, Back to Blood, is having a tough time with critics: Collette Bancroft in the Tampa Bay Times says it feels “back of the times”

Daniel Mendelsohn, an NBCC Balakian Citation winner, talks criticism shop with the Millions. The New York Times’ “Room for Debate” blog hosted a discussion on the question “Do we need

Gregg Barrios interviews Junot Diaz at the Los Angeles Review of Books. Robert Birnbaum interviews Martin Amis for the Morning News. Mary Ann Gwinn interviews Sherman Alexie for the Seattle

The amount of attention paid to book critics’ opinions may have hit its high point last week, with the release of J.K. Rowling’s first novel for adults, The Casual Vacancy.

Heller McAlpin reviews Junot Diaz’s short-story collection This Is How You Lose Her, for the Barnes & Noble Review. Colette Bancroft reviews Dennis Lehane’s novel Live by Night for the

Lia Lee, the subject of Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, the winner of the NBCC’s 1997 nonfiction award, died last month. The New York Times'

Seven-time NBCC finalist (and one-time winner) Philip Roth took to the New Yorker’s Page Turner blog to ask Wikipedia to correct its entry on his novel The Human Stain. On

We can’t enter the fall without at least two more essays about the role of the critic and the obligation to be unflinchingly honest: Daniel Mendelsohn’s “A Critic’s Manifesto” at

How polluted are online review sites with paid positive notices? The New York Times takes a look at one site that turned $28,000 a month that way; an expert estimates

The discussion about harsh reviews continues apace: On the heels of Jacob Silverman’s “Against Enthusiasm,” Dwight Garner writes “A Case for Critics Who Are Actually Critical” for the New York