Critical Notes

Last week’s news that there would be no Pulitzer Prize awarded in fiction produced an avalanche of commentary. Here’s a sampling of what people were saying last week: Laura Miller,

“It’s not a question of liking or disliking him. I’m trying to explain how political power worked in America in the second half of the 20th century, and here’s a

What impact has Amazon had on the publishing industry, from taxes to indies to employees? The Seattle Times takes a look in a four-part series. Denise Low launches a new

“The truth is, women who write literary fiction frequently find themselves in an unjust world, even as young single women are outearning men in major American cities and higher education

Are book critics too mean? Should authors at the receiving end of a negative review stop biting their tongues and respond? Arthur Krystal considers the matter in the Chronicle of

What obligations do reviewers have to self-published books? Joseph Peschel talks to a variety of critics and authors for “Another 100,000 Galleys” at the Los Angeles Review of Books. New

Last Thursday’s National Book Critics Circle awards attracted plenty of coverage, including reports from the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and other outlets. At Commentary’s website,

Last week the nonprofit organization VIDA released its report on the gender gap at literary magazines: With one exception (Granta), coverage at the New Yorker, Harper’s, the Paris Review, and

The appreciations for Barney Rosset, who died last week, rolled in over the weekend from the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

Adam Kirsch reviews Nathan Englander’s story collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank at Tablet; Parul Sehgal reviews the book for NPR.org. George de Stefano reviews