To President Dalva,
As you know, for twenty glorious years the tri-state area, and its resident bibliophiles, has basked in the vestige of the recreational summer months thanks to the Brooklyn Book Festival—a nine-day, treasure-filled adventure bestowed by former Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz, his arts advisor Liz Koch, special events director Carolyn Geer, and Johnny Temple, the publisher of the independent press Akashic Books, when they launched the event in the fall of 2006.
This past Friday, September 25, 2026, I ventured over to Community Bookstore in Park Slope, Brooklyn, for my second Bookend Event of the season: your National Book Critics Circle discussion on literary criticism—a discipline that was allegedly ignited by a kerfuffle between Plato and Aristotle regarding the artistic value of poetry during the 4th century BCE.
The topics of discussion, according to The Brooklyn Paper, were to be “on both the craft of literary criticism and new opportunities for book critics in today’s challenging environment,” and would also “range from practical tips to the art of the review,” and featured what appeared to be a quintessential cadre of panelists:
Joanna Biggs — Writer and Contributing Editor of the Yale Review, and author of the intriguing nonfiction book, A Life of One’s Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again.
Joumana Khatib — Senior Staff Editor and Columnist at The New York Times Book Review.
Zoe Hu — Managing Editor at n+1 (who could not attend).
Emily Greenhouse — Editor of the illustrious New York Review of Books (and daughter of the prominent labor journalist, Steven Greenhouse).
And you, Mr. Dalva (President of the NBCC, Contributing Editor of The Yale Review, and Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Rutgers University), were the event’s organizer—a man who decided to relinquish a lot of the spotlight and relegate yourself to moderator—a selfless gesture that I’m sure derived from a genial place. But selflessness can be misconstrued as a concession, and Immanuel Kant forewarned unassuming souls long ago when he asserted:
“He who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards if people tread on him…”
Perhaps it was the dismal mood I was in after witnessing the new film American Doctors earlier that day, or maybe it’s my disillusionment with the trope-driven, clickbait-crazed, AI-challenged, hyper-gatekept publishing industry—but I felt an ominous sense of dread on the way over to the bookstore, a feeling that, I’m sorry to report, was unfortunately actualized.
To your credit, President Dalva, you asked all the imperative questions that evening, one of which was (and I’m paraphrasing): is the review still a vital tool in the marketing of a novel or a nonfiction book?
The first responses were already the kind of mealy-mouthed replies that would’ve made the 20th-century critic Edmund Wilson despair. But when Ms. Biggs rightfully mentioned that the reviews of the new Marlon James novel (The Disappearers) seemed to be attracting lots of interest in the book (the New York Times review by the critic Dwight Garner in particular), a darting-eyed panel of otherwise articulate literary mavens went mute—and aroused the first hint of the discrepancy I sensed that night regarding the contemporary utility of literary criticism.
Another one of your enticing questions asked (and again I’m paraphrasing): who are some of the more prominent literary critics publishing reviews today?
This is the moment I was expecting to hear some reputable names, astute critics like Andrea Long Chu, Michael Dirda, Merve Emre, Adam Kirsch, and the always insightful James Wood. But again, the bookstore went painfully quiet, as all three panelists tried to conjure a name (other than their own or the critic sitting to the left or right of them, of course).
What I found intriguing was that Michael Dirda and Adam Kirsch both published reviews in the NYRB in 2026, and their well-regarded names still escaped Ms. Greenhouse. To be fair, on one occasion, while elaborating on NYRB’s approach to reviews, Greenhouse did mention that her personal interest (and expertise) was always centered on politics, but if that’s the case, why wouldn’t someone like the sagacious critic Daniel Mendelsohn, who is the Editor at Large for NYRB, represent the magazine instead?
If literary criticism is dying a slow, protracted death, and the panelists were asked to show up and gleefully break that awful news to an audience of lettered millennials and zoomers, in an effort to usher in a paradigm shift, one where literary criticism is no longer essential, then your event was a successful affair.
But if you feel that literary criticism is, and will always be, a crucial artery in the overall health and progression of literature as a pillar of our global society, then the discussion was unproductive and depressing. One of the last inquiries of the evening, and the horrible response it received, exemplified those feelings when, during the Question-and-Answer segment, a young female attendee asked how one should go about learning the art of literary criticism and who and what they should study.
Again, there was another uncomfortable pause—and again, to save the life of dear Hind Rajab, I could not understand why.
There is no other element in the landscape of literature easier to map than literary criticism. Feeding pigeons is more arduous. Anyone could, for example, point a finger back in time and cite sources like Plato and Aristotle, then leap forward to Dr. Samuel Johnson—or they could stay relatively current with figures like Edmund Wilson, Dame Helen Gardner, Elaine Showalter, and the late Harold Bloom. But for some disturbing reason, the panelists seemed either ill-prepared or uninterested in offering the young woman an encouraging, instructive answer. I guess being the most exalted member on the tiny makeshift stage was the reason Emily Greenhouse finally raised her microphone and offered her opinion.
I somewhat remember her saying, with an indifferent air, that there was no need to study anything or anyone—and that if you want to pursue literary criticism, you should just rely on your own feelings and opinion about a book. Your authentic voice is all you need and what will resonate most—or something to that unscholarly effect. Excuse my imprecision, but I remember the awful feeling in my gut more than what Greenhouse specifically stated.
What I vividly recall, however, is the vacant look in the young lady’s eyes as she tried to reconcile the lukewarm information she was given with the blaring silence that was about to resurface if not for the buzzer-beating quip, executed by Ms. Greenhouse, with the comedic timing of a Joan Rivers punchline.
Well, the event finally ended, and while gathering my things I was preparing to make my way over to the young lady who had asked the question. I wanted to privately push back on Greenhouse’s unfavorable recommendation. I wanted to tell her there was a sea of nonfiction books waiting for eager greenhorns if she was truly interested in exploring literary criticism. I was going to suggest she take a small step forward by reading a book I enjoyed two weeks ago called Axel’s Castle by Edmund Wilson—and that if she felt inspired when she finished it, there was more in Wilson’s oeuvre that might interest her. But just as I was about to approach her, she started a conversation with a young woman who was probably the bookstore manager—an apparent friend who, from what I heard in passing, was already offering her some sound alternative advice.
Although I left the store amid a clamor of young, contented voices, everyone—I’m certain, as the bookstore manager’s intervention confirms—heard and felt all the sour notes that were played. But young people haven’t been around long enough to assess the gravity of that disharmony. And young people, at the end of an event, are more concerned with the next Bookend discussion circled on their ink-stained newspaper guides. But I, President Dalva, am not of the younger generations. I am old enough to witness hypocrisy and feel obligated to confront it. And that, I suspect, is at the crux of a lot of this in-vogue indifference I see in literature and the world of publishing today: there are very few loyalists left who are willing to hold people like Ms. Khatib and Ms. Greenhouse philosophically accountable.
Anyway, after the two-stop train ride home, I headed straight for my laptop. I have always had an affinity for NYRB and was eager to try and understand why Ms. Greenhouse, who sits at the helm of such a prestigious vessel, could be so insouciant while dispensing flagrant literary advice—the kind of advice that does not reflect the name of the critical journal she curates; the kind of empirical advice that her mentors (co-founders and co-editors of NYRB) Robert Silvers and Barbara Epstein would have endorsed; and the kind the literary critic and novelist Elizabeth Hardwick (also an NYRB co-founder) surely gave her student and protégé Darryl Pinckney, who went on to become a fine novelist, playwright, and literary critic for NYRB as well.
Coincidentally, Ms. Hardwick penned a legendary essay in Harper’s Magazine titled “The Decline of Book Reviewing” back in 1959—a polemic that sparked the germinal impression that gave her allies the incentive to launch and establish The New York Review of Books.
After reading a couple of fruitless articles about Ms. Greenhouse, I decided to shift my objective over to the NBCC, where I hoped to find an opposing outlook that would dispel the colorful pessimism some of the panelists seemed all too eager to convey. Surely an organization that branded itself the National Book Critics Circle had to be imbued with a sense of commitment regarding the value and lasting endurance of literary criticism. And what I discovered filled me with an overwhelming sense of hope, a feeling that countered all the dread I acquired from the discordant event I had fled hours ago:
There’s a page on the NBCC website titled “Emerging Critics” that highlights your organization’s 2025–2026 class of ten promising reviewers—each flashing a wry or Duchenne smile—all mentored by NBCC board and committee members dedicated to the art of literary criticism.
From what I sampled, the class members are exhibiting delightful reviews, essays, and narrative control, all with the kind of clarity that belies the pejorative aesthetic assumptions associated with their age. Two critics, however, are already (in my opinion) venturing toward what an unknown Greek rhetorician defined as sublimity: Diya Isha of New Delhi, India—and Mary Karmelek of Buffalo, New York.
Ms. Isha’s review (published October 10, 2025, in The Swaddle) is titled, “We’re Reading Arundhati Roy Badly,” and opens with the patient charm of an alluring psychological novel:
“You don’t have to read Mother Mary Comes to Me to take in the force of Arundhati Roy’s literary enterprise. The physical copy of the book is spectacle enough: Its hardback, clothbound red cover; its dust jacket, with Roy smoking a cigarette, indisputably à la mode; its smooth, thick paper, the custom bookmark. Much of the cheer around the memoir fusses over its beauty and lavish production. Conveniently overlooked are two clear influences on the design: the Holy Bible, invoked by the title’s scriptural play, and The Communist Manifesto, the bright red cover an impish nod to the writer’s politics.
Roy (and, by extension, her memoir) plays two contradictory roles in contemporary India: literary god and political renegade. It is telling which self her readers and critics have chosen to sanctify.”
Conversely, Ms. Karmelek’s review of the debut novel Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash, published in the February 2026 print and online editions of The Brooklyn Rail, finishes with the kind of fair yet unsentimental analysis that made Harold Bloom a distinguished literary critic for sixty prolific years:
“Literature has always presented a means of escape, and the novel in particular comes with the expectation of an elongated trip. Though it’s easy to bemoan the lack of depth in Cash’s story and characters, her ability to mirror contemporary consumption habits and touch on so many headline issues with humor is laudable. I suspect my frustration with Lost Lambs arises from the same part of me that refuses to download TikTok, the same part of me that has set a fifteen-minute a day limit on Instagram—it’s a fear that I’m wasting time, missing something more worthwhile, more meaningful, than sponcon and celebrity soundbytes [sic] and reposted footage from a political protest. But this is the stuff of life, and the meaning is there to be made from it, the stories there to be written.”
I formed two distinct suspicions during and after my fruitful research: one evolved into a structured conclusion, and the other is of the proverbial nagging variety that will never be resolved.
What I concluded was that despite all the apathy conveyed that evening—at the expense of literary criticism and the unrequited passion brought to the discussion—the art form is still being taught in academic spaces, explored for pleasure and with autodidactic intention, and practiced by young, talented critics, trotting toward posterity with the requisite literary doctrines wrapped around an umbilicus, doubling as a makeshift baton.
As for that nagging suspicion: I can’t help but think if Ms. Zoe Hu (that I discovered is an NBCC board member like Joanna Biggs) had been able to make it to the event that night, your questions, President Dalva, and the ones asked during the Q&A segment, would have been answered with the kind of balance and enthusiasm befitting a National Book Critics Circle discussion on literary criticism.
Quite frankly, NBCC deserved better, President Dalva. You appear to be an affable man, leading an honorable organization that tried—like all Bookend partners—to present an event in good literary faith. What you offered looked great in The Brooklyn Paper and on the BBF websites—but contrary to the post-event buzz, the discussion did not deliver the kind of vibe and inspiration I can only assume you and your organization were hoping to radiate.
What I learned from that night is that a lot of what ails the world of literature is a kind of abjuration that is taking place. A philosophy, one that has carried people all the way to the influential offices they now occupy, is being discarded without a sense of respect, appreciation and fealty to the past.
President Dalva, I hope the young critics apprenticed to you and others don’t eschew the ardent principles written in the NBCC’s mission statement, or the electric zeal taken from the Algonquin Hotel back in 1974, which still flows throughout the organization today. And I truly hope before your next discussion you consider moving from the moderator’s seat over to one of the panel chairs, because although chairs are pragmatic commodities, relinquishing them to the wrong people can reduce the promise of an insightful, thought-provoking event to the prosaic, Kantian application of… commercial carpet.
Yours for the abiding prosperity of literary criticism,
Elliott Miller
