It can be hard to find things on this site. Here is a list of all articles organized by category.
Literary Analysis
- Gravity’s Rainbow Guide
- What is Lost in the Funhouse About?
- Passion Narrative of Mark and Luke
- Biblical Topos in Sanderson’s Mistborn
- Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way
- If on a winter’s night a traveler
- Second Section of Franzen’s Purity
- Wallace Steven’s Two Letters
- Barker’s Imajica
- Maybe Infinite Jest is About Addiction
- Infinite Jest Preparation Guide
- The Nativity in Matthew and Luke
Essays on Reading and Writing
- Literature is for the Other
- When Art is Meaningless
- The Literature of Exhaustion and Originality
- Is Twitter Our Penal Colony?
- Literature, Genre Fiction, and Pulp
- 8 Mystery Novels to Break into the Genre
- Social Media’s Negative Effect on Prose Style
- 10 Thing I Wish I Knew Before Self Publishing
- A Guide to Worldbuilding
- Horror: A Genre of Literary Importance
- Reading for Comfort, Reading for Pain
- Break into Poetry with Milton’s Sonnets
- On Artistic Pacing
- Creative Writing Strategies for Fiction Writers
- Tips for Writing a Persuasive Essay
Review Articles
Book Reviews
- Letham’s Ecstasy of Influence
- Roth’s American Pastoral
- John Ashbery’s The System
- Atwood’s Cat’s Eye
- The Stories of Cheever
- Don Quixote
- Moby Dick
- The Way of Kings
- Ulysses
- Seveneves
- 2666
- The Eye of the World
- The Awakening
- Breakfast at Tiffany’s
- The Call of Cthulhu
- Cosmicomics
- Interpreter of Maladies
- Tenth of December
- The Three Body Problem
- The Name of the Rose
- Middlesex
- Dune
- Daisy Miller
- The Red Pony
Film and TV Reviews
- Upstream Color
- Lynch’s Inland Empire
- Whiplash
- Swanberg’s Easy
- Synechdoche, New York
- Arrival
- Mother!
- The Romanoffs
- The OA
Required Reading
- The Grapes of Wrath: Should it be Required?
- Looking for Alaska: Should it be Required?
- To Kill a Mockingbird: Should it be Required?
Philosophy of Writing
- Barthes’ Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives
- Room 237 and Postmodern Problems
- Rorty’s Pragmatism
- On Validity in Interpretation
- Sontag’s Against Interpretation
- Barthes’ From Work to Text
- Against Against Theory
- Replies to Against Theory
- What is an Expert?
- Lyotard’s Postmodern Condition
- Baudrillard’s Implosion of the Social
- Derrida’s Differance
- Artificial Intelligence Risks are Already Here
Writing Advice
- Elements of Weak Writing
- Verbs of Being and the Present Progressive Tense
- Narrative Voice vs Narrative Perspective
- Tonal Consistency in Fantasy Writing
- The Difficulty of Invisible Description
- Structural Analysis of Bag of Bones
- Commonly Confused Words
- Reduce Wordiness
- Sentence Length
- Showing a Scene
- The Character Caricature Balance
- Are the Self Publishing Gurus Out of Touch?
- Don’t Sacrifice Prose for Voice
- Using Psychology Podcasts for Character Development
Examining Pro’s Prose
- Examining Ian McEwan’s Prose
- Examining John Cheever’s Prose
- Examining Nell Zink’s Prose
- Examining Jonathan Franzen’s Prose
- Examining Philip Roth’s Prose
- Examining Ethan Canin’s Prose
- Examining F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Prose
- Examining David Foster Wallace’s Prose
- Examining J.M. Coetzee’s Prose
- Examining John Irving’s Prose
- Examining Graham Greene’s Prose
- Examining J.K. Rowling’s Prose
- Examining Michael Chabon’s Prose
Why it Works Series
Game Narratives
- Video Games as Solution to the One-Sided Problem of Art
- Why Play Roguelikes
- A Critique of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
- In Defense of Gaming
- Sirlin’s Codex
Book Recommendations
- Favorite Books from 2014
- 5 Best Places to Find New Books
- Best Books of 2018
- Contemporary Fiction Books that Changed My Life
- Best Books of 2016
- Best Books of 2017