"Criticism isn’t a search for an absolute, what some might regard as perfect taste. It’s an experiment in aesthetic experience." www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Selected reviews from The Reading Experience and beyond: readexperience.net/additional-r...

Read "The Art of Disturbance: On the Novels of James Purdy" at the new version of The Reading Experience: readexperience.net/the-art-of-d...

Read "The Art of Disturbance: On the Novels of James Purdy" at the new version of The Reading Experience: readexperience.net/the-art-of-d...

Check out my selection of reviews/essays "On Experimental Fiction" on the new version of The Reading Experience: readexperience.net/on-experimen...

Check out my selection of reviews/essays "On Experimental Fiction" on the new version of The Reading Experience: readexperience.net/on-experimen...

Please note that the URL of The Reading Experience has changed to: readexperience.net

Beaming up The Reading Experience: readexperience.net

Beaming up The Reading Experience: readexperience.net

Some sad news about an important contributor to and booster of early online indie literary culture and small press publishing.

RIP, Rosalyn Drexler. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/03/b...

The service that hosts my blog (Typepad) is shutting down, so that on or about September 25, it seems that The Reading Experience will disappear unless I can migrate it elsewhere. I've successfully exported it, but can't decide where/ if to migrate it. Suggestions?

RIP, Ryne Sandberg. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/s...

"And that’s the point of reviews: the future. With perspective on the history of an art form and an awareness of its current state. . .critics see in new works their implications, their promise, the possibilities that they expand...." www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Dalkey Archive is republishing Stanley Elkin's The Franchiser this fall. There are few writers I admire more than Elkin, and this is one of his best books. If any editorial type would like to cover this book, I am available 😀for such an assignment. static1.squarespace.com/static/5dc9a...

On the persistent misreadings of Philip Roth: hedgehogreview.com/issues/lesso...

How "ethical criticism" canceled literature. (Warning: long-ish) www.thereadingexperience.net/tre/2025/07/...

"Booth's The Company We Keep has in retrospect become the harbinger of the profound shift of scholarly perspective that has occurred over the past 50 years, by which the academic study of literature has all but banished the aesthetic" www.thereadingexperience.net/tre/2025/07/...

How "ethical criticism" canceled literature. (Warning: long-ish) www.thereadingexperience.net/tre/2025/07/...

Greatest hits: www.thereadingexperience.net/tre/2025/06/...

I am not virtuous. www.thereadingexperience.net/tre/2025/06/...

I am not virtuous. www.thereadingexperience.net/tre/2025/06/...

Me on Joe Darlington's The Experimentalists: The Life and Times of the British Experimental Writers of the 1960s. www.thereadingexperience.net/tre/2025/06/...

Me on Joe Darlington's The Experimentalists: The Life and Times of the British Experimental Writers of the 1960s. www.thereadingexperience.net/tre/2025/06/...

Summer is now permanently over. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tyt...

What is complexity in a novel? In what sense are Agathe Christie or Ellery Queen complex? What literary fiction is the most complex? On Substack substack.com/@jameselkins...

(1) These are completed chapters of my book-length career study of Gilbert Sorrentino, tentatively titled Gilbert Sorrentino: An Introduction. In finished form, the book will consist of critical analysis of all of Sorrentino's fiction, www.thereadingexperience.net/gilbert_sorr...

A link to my reviews publication, Unbeaten Paths: Reviews of Adventurous Fiction. Reviews of 35 works of experimental/adventurous fiction published by (mostly) independent presses since 2021. More coming. www.unbeatenpaths.net

Fresh reissues of Harry Mathews from Dalkey Archive: www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

I dove into John Trefry's nearly abstract novel Plats and resurfaced with a few things to say. sebald.wordpress.com/2025/04/21/t... Plats summons the reader to conjure up images and situations that can only be constructed in the mind, to use the infinite plasticity of our own imaginative processes.

"And I fully understand the impulse behind any form of 'use' argument; we can’t very well just tell people we’re noodling around with novels and poems, can we?" Yes, of course we can. I proudly noodle away. 3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily...

RIP, John Domini, a great explicator of postmodern/experimental fiction. My review of his The Sea-God's Herb: www.thereadingexperience.net/criticism/20...

John Trefry's Massive makes no concessions to conventional reading habits and challenges the authority of narrative and character creation as the default mode of writing fiction. www.thereadingexperience.net/tre/2025/03/...

John Trefry's Massive challenges our notions of what it means to read a book: www.thereadingexperience.net/tre/2025/03/...

My review of John Trefry's experimental meganovel, Massive: www.thereadingexperience.net/tre/2025/03/...

Think I'll skip the State of the Reich address.

RIP, Badfinger. ultimateclassicrock.com/joey-molland...

RIP, David Johansen. RIP, New York Dolls. apnews.com/article/davi...

Eight notes on Stephen Dixon's novel Interstate biblioklept.org/2025/02/23/e...

My exciting (if long overdue) discovery for this week's WSJ Fiction Chronicle is Rikki Ducornet, courtesy of Dalkey's reissue of her first novel, 'The Stain.' It's gorgeously written and surpassingly strange, but I hadn't known that it's also deliriously funny. Gift link: www.wsj.com/arts-culture...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0Nx... RIP

RIP, Garth Hudson. RIP, The Band.

Loving Literature? www.thereadingexperience.net/tre/2025/01/...

I've been subsisting on the hope there would be a Twin Peaks Season 4. Fuck.

So far, I have found 15 titles of fiction & poetry published in 2024 that use photographs. Some really great examples. Poetry books were half the titles. What did I miss? sebald.wordpress.com/2025/01/13/p...

RIP, Peter Yarrow. apnews.com/article/pete...

For those seeking a taste of Daniel Green's critical acumen, we point you to his thoughtful survey of Evan Dara's body of work (published prior to Permanent Earthquake): www.thereadingexperience.net/tre/2020/05/...

New year seems a good time to make this last-ditch pitch: I have mostly given up on writing reviews for external publications and moved entirely to the blog. Other opportunities seem to have disappeared. Any editors who might still consider something from me, kindly DM.

Visit THE READING EXPERIENCE Reviews of new and adventurous fiction. Essays on criticism. 20 years and counting. www.thereadingexperience.net

What's distasteful here is not that Substack is favoring a right-wing publication but that it is increasingly aligning itself with big-volume writers and "media organizations," crowding out smaller-scale writers. A left-wing version of TFP would be just as obnoxious. on.substack.com/p/the-new-me...