New Takes on the classics. Throughout our centennial year, we’re revisiting notable works from the archive. Sign up to receive them directly in your inbox.

When I am stuck on a sentence or trying to wrestle an idea into shape, I turn to Joan Acocella. As a critic, I admire the sophistication of her thought; as a reader, I love the funny, unpretentious plainness of her language. Criticism can be gruelling to write—all that explication! all that judgment!—but it should be a pleasure to read. This may be one reason that Acocella, who got a Ph.D. in comparative literature, left academia for magazines, arriving at The New Yorker in 1992, at the start of Tina Brown’s tenure as editor. It may explain, too, why one of my favorite Acocella pieces is “ The Frog and the Crocodile ,” which takes

See Full Page