“At his best, Joseph Campbell was merely one of the greatest popular writers on mythology who ever lived.”
Originally published May 24, 1988
“In so many ways and to so many people, Hughes was 'the Negro,' or at least 'Negro literature,' its public face, its spoken voice and cocktail-party embodiment as well as the source of its printed texts.”
Originally published June 13, 1989
“Hughes was the first black American writer many of us ever read... and his career remains an inspiring model for black writers determined to make a living solely from their work.”
Originally published July 1, 1988
“He brought his readers on a trip to a landscape that seemed not only made for them but made by them, a peculiarly visceral American place that practically none of them would ever really see.”
Originally published February 1, 1994
“During the ’50s, when little or nothing honest about gay male and lesbian lives was available culturally, how could a truth teller grab a niche? Not through high culture”
Originally published October 1, 1983
“As glam rock waned and disco had yet to wax, punk style provided the perfect cultural jolt, a new kind of 'No!' that brought together fashion, music, press, and politics to tell the world a story England still can't be too eager to bear”
Originally published March 1, 1992
Portrait of a New York intellectual
Originally published October 10, 1985
“In America, poetic truths have real-life consequences, and Mailer is one of the few American intellectuals to perceive this fact as both fundamental and fundamentally good”
Originally published February 14, 1983
“Despite his penetration of the national psyche, and his status as more or less the George Washington of American letters, the respect Cooper has received at home has rarely been more than grudging”
Originally published June 25, 1986
“Most vampire tales I’ve read lately read like little Kinsey reports, full of tasty trivia about vampire life, a subject that used to be shrouded in mystery and fear, like sex. Are you ready to open the forbidden curtain?”
Originally published June 25, 1982