For the last month, I’ve been thinking about this blog post by Katy Derbyshire “Richard Kämmerlings: Das kurze Glück der Gegenwart”. Despite the pedantic sounding title, Derbyshire’s posting is in praise of the first person in critical writing about books. She uses Kammerling as a an example of how German book critics are beginning to spice their criticism with the personal, using the first person to express how the literature interacts with their own life.
This resonated with me as a reade...