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........

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