The etiology of consciousness is Henry James’s subject. He is called “psychological,” probably because the epithet was invoked long before a wide public familiarity with Freud, and the now widespread idea that the brain is host to competing objectives and peculiar susceptibilities. Taking that familiarity for granted, I have always wondered what is so particularly …

Continue reading ‘A Note on “Psychological” Novels
Henry James and Colm Tóibín’ »

What is the most interesting thing you have learned from a book recently? This question is routinely asked — by a chatbot, I’m convinced — in the “By the Book” feature of the New York Times Book Review. Like the fatuous and idiotic final question about ideal literary dinner-party guests, it is designed to interest …

Continue reading ‘Not Really About Sylvia Plath’ »

One of my great pleasures in life has been lunch, alone, with a book, at some local downscale restaurant that approximates a café. There aren’t many left. I loathe Greek diners/coffee shops, not only because the food is bad but because of the noisy, fluorescent-lit atmosphere. Music in the background is okay, as long as …

Continue reading ‘The Upstairs Delicatessen
by Dwight Garner’ »

The entries that will appear on this Web log are not book reviews. Since its beginnings in the early Nineteenth Century,  modern (or mass-produced) literary journalism has had a firm grip on the word “review.” The first really successful literary journal, which ran from 1802 to 1929, was the Edinburgh Review. Its background was the …

Continue reading ‘Critical Comment
An Introduction’ »