Twenty Years Later: B. R. Myers, A Reader’s Manifesto

See the “Twenty Writers, Twenty Books” home page for more information on this series.

Twenty years ago this month, The Atlantic published a critical essay on the then-current state of American prose. As dry and dusty a topic that sounds—doubly so when published by an august New England monthly—it improbably became a cultural sensation, leading to op-eds in international newspapers, vitriolic letters-to-the-editor, screechy denunciations from professional reviewers across the media sp...