Elizabeth Bowen: as good as Henry James
Tessa Hadley in the Times
Culture
The Common Reader.
Nerdy literature newsletter. Helping you make the most of your reading.
Recent essays
30 of 50Does it matter if you don't like the characters?
I cannot reconcile my heart to this unlikeable approach to literature
Manuel M. Novillo interviews me
Bob Dylan, the reading crisis, children, happiness, and more
Homer Haunted, by Henry Power
Splendid literary criticism, dull politics
My review of Nolan's Odyssey in GQ Australia
with spoilers
No Spanish reading crisis?
66% of Spaniards read for pleasure; 75% of 14-24 year olds
The Odyssey is about sons questing for their fathers.
REPOST from August 2025
Et in Arcadia Ego
London, Arcadia, and the end of civilization
Citizen Kane, Orson Welles
It took all my restraint, while everyone else was collecting their things and getting out of their chairs, not to start yelling out, “Play it again!
Will Imagination be the Key to Thriving in the Age of AI?
David Brooks in the Atlantic
America Should Love Itself Again
Happy Birthday to a very great nation
The 2026 Hyperstition Unslop AI fiction writing contest
You can find the winner and runners-up here. I am just starting to read the results. My impression so far is that this is not slop, but it’s also not especially good. The same is true of much human fiction! Consistent with my earlier prediction that AI will ha…
Is an English degree good preparation to become Prime Minister?
Not on its own...
Perpetual Summer in the "feminine middlebrow"
My ongoing love of twentieth century "women's writing"
How to write a take-down
Leo Robson in the ideas letter
Two poets talk about the stock market
from the comments
A.R. Ammons and arts patronage
plus his hatred of travel
Who was America's Homer?
Surely it was Hollywood...
Memorising Shakespeare's sonnets
NADWORNY: What made you want to memorize so much Shakespeare?
Was Mill anti-traditional?
And was Hayek suffering from the burden of the past...?
Childhood days, lemonade, romance
St. John's College, Maryland, Catherinites, and the idea of America
Disclosure Day
spoilers!
Marilyn, Transcendence, Durham, Novels, Dulles, Amis, Proust, Lost Lambs
Some new books and some old books
Gordon Wood Reading Proust
For Wood, to encounter Proust at all was the most important thing.
What it is like to daydream about Proust
This is the second piece in a series of experiments about reading Proust.
Should there be a Library of Britain?
Yes and it should be as broad as possible.
Zena Hitz: Gulliver's Travels and the Failures of Human Understanding
Science, literature, philosophy, the humanities
What it is like to read Proust
an experiment
Oscillating at the zoo
No-one reads the exhibits.
Ice storm
The water all stopped and the rivers ran still, the icicles were long enough and sharp enough to kill