i've spent the last year and a half writing a procedural thriller. most of the feedback i've received focuses on the fact that we never get invested enough in the characters. the message came in different forms. some said i hadn't developed my characters enough, some said they weren't sympathetic en...

            Charles Olson’s The Maximus Poems was dedicated to Robert Creeley who was born in Arlington, Massachusetts, in1926. He entered Harvard in 1943 but left school to serve in the American Field Service in Burma and India dur...

Shockingly, a novel about a Nazi officer who abets murder squads, transports Jews to Auschwitz, has sex with his twin sister, possibly kills his parents and then dies rich, old and reflective has caused a trans-Atlantic controversy among literary critics. Published in the original French three years...

State capitalism is defined as an economic system that is primarily capitalistic but in which there is some degree of government ownership of the means of production. With the huge stimulus packages being passed by Congress, the topic of state capitalism has made surprising inroads into the news -- ...

Republican congressional leaders yesterday called President Obama's budget proposal wasteful and his plan to rescue the nation's banks unrealistic, urging the administration to "make hard choices" and allow some major financial institutions to fail....

Republican congressional leaders yesterday called President Obama's budget proposal wasteful and his plan to rescue the nation's banks unrealistic, urging the administration to "make hard choices" and allow some major financial institutions to fail....

Meet the "Royal Caribbean Champions," a group of fifty prolific posters to popular online communities that Royal Caribbean rewards with special access and free cruises in exchange for their frequent and positive commentary. The Champions were outed by their creators, the Customer Insight Group, whic...

Eric Boehlert didn't buy the Washington Post's claim that Limbaugh's ratings have doubled since he became head of the GOP. Usually a journalist would base the evidence on facts, but... Yesterday I raised doubts about the claim in a Howard Kurtz article that Limbaugh's ratings have "nearly doubled" s...

Northanger Abbey (Image from Wikipedia ) If Jane Austen is right (and she most certainly is), then my past 25 years as a sort-of 'historian' have been . . . well judge 'sort of' for yourself based on how the young Miss Eleanor Tilney responds when the equally young Miss Catherine Morland, heroine of...

So how is this biggest-movie-ever Watchmen superhero flick? Well, not so good if many critics are to be believed. Should have been kept in holy reverence as a comic book (or graphic novel or whatever). A.O. Scott at the New York Times think it's about time devotees of the dystopian tale grew the F u...