The Oxonian Review | An Interview with Parul Sehgal

Part of the pleasure of reading Parul Sehgal’s book reviews when she served as a critic for The New York Times was the impression that her prose had slipped past the censors.

This is the third installment of New Critics, a series of interviews with contemporary critics about criticism. Part of the pleasure of reading Parul Sehgal’s book reviews when she served as a critic for The New York Times was the impression that her prose had slipped past the censors. Some of her sentences had the crispness of newspaper copy but others were much more blurred and atmospheric. You could watch her trialing an idea, circling it with adjectives, letting it rise with the sound of the words. Here I sit, having just completed a novel that lines up these pieties and threatens to…

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