The summer is winding down now and it may be time for some of you to head back to school or college, or to knuckle back down to work after exciting vacations. But it’s never too early to start planning your next big adventure. ...

I have a little theory that all of the new contenders for the title of ‘Great American Novel’ are required to include an episode of scatological humor. Think of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom (2010), in which a young man must sift ...

According to Roland Barthes, the laziest form of literary criticism is that which focuses purely on enjoyment. In a famous passage from Roland Barthes (translated here by Richard Howard) he questions the validity of an aestheti...