The new issue

of the Columbia Journal of Literary Criticism is now available (click on the link and scroll down to the bottom of page, and you can download it as a PDF file).

The CJLC was founded in 2002 by a group of Columbia undergraduates with a serious interest in literary criticism, with the first issue appearing in spring 2003; I was the faculty advisor that year, and am looking forward to serving in the same position again during the coming school year.

This issue's got lots of good stuff (including interviews with Slavoj Zizek and Elaine Scarry); it also makes me terribly nostalgic looking back to the table of contents for the first issue, it happened (and all essays were considered anonymously, this is not fishy at all!) that a large number of the authors were former students particularly precious to me--of course I love all my students, it is the same way I feel about novels & they each have something special & enjoyable about them, but some students (just like certain books) loom larger than others in your life & imagination (it's more that they choose you than that you choose them).

I also highly recommend the exceptionally good essay in Volume 3 by Ramsey McGlazer, "Primo Levi's Language Lesson." You will have to download the whole issue but I assure you it's well worth it.