“By challenging anthropocentricism and temporal provincialism, science fiction throws open the whole of civilization and its premises to constructive criticism.” WholeChallengesFictionCivilizationCriticismScience FictionConstructivePremisesConstructive CriticismProvincialism Author:Alvin Toffler
“... if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us to break her and bullyher, as well as honour and love her, for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured.” IfsWellsArtFictionBreakAliveImagineYouthStandingCriticismAnd LoveMidstHonourSovereigntyAssuredLiterary Criticism Book:Selected essays Source: Selected essays
“The most striking fault in work by young or beginning novelists, submitted for criticism, is irrelevance--due either to infatuation or indecision. To direct such an author's attention to the imperative of relevance is certainly the most useful--and possibly the only--help that can be given.” HelpingYoungGivenAttentionFictionDirectCriticismFaultsDuesNovelistsInfatuationImperativesRelevanceIndecisionIrrelevance Book:Pictures and conversations Source: Pictures and conversations
“A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige throughbeing mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.” DoeRealStoriesFictionNovelNegativeCriticismCalmFakeWorking ItShort StoryGood WorkMistakenCalamityPrestigeLiterary Criticism Book:The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews Source: The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews
“Borges was unapologetically smart and equally sentimental; a proto-geek, blind to distinctions between low pulp fiction and high criticism, experimental but never arch, and always playful, with a humor as dry as dust.” FictionSmartLowsCriticismBlindDustDryDistinctionSentimentalGeekArchesPulpBorges Author:John Hodgman
“Experiments with the "as if" of fiction are often more lively in poetry and criticism and other modes of writing than in weak short stories or novels.” IfsWritingStoriesFictionNovelCriticismWeakExperimentsShort StoryLively Author:Ben Lerner
“Fiction writers have their own world, and poets have their own world, and literary criticism has sort of passed over into cultural studies in the university, and so on. They seem more disconnected from each other than they did when I first began to write.” WorldWritingFirstsSeemsFictionStudyPoetCriticismUniversityFiction WritersDisconnectedLiterary Criticism Author:Robert Hass