The new L.A. Review of Books website is live, and it's beautiful. You should spend some of your afternoon flipping around the site and seeing what you find. To get you started, I advise you check out:

Geoff Nicholson's meditation on swimming pools.

This interview with Kim Stanley Robinson.

This series of video interviews with Aimee Bender, Janet Fitch, and Seth Greenland about non-fiction writing.

And this essay about whether MFAs are necessary for writing, whether writing is inherently elitist, and whether modern fiction is mediocre.

Starting a serious review of literary criticism in this publishing climate is frankly a fool's errand, but I'm glad LARB is doing this. I'm also glad that they're west-coast-centric in their reviews. Nothing will ever be able to fully counteract the east-coast-centrism of American fiction, but it's heartening that people keep trying to remind New York that there's a whole, weird country out here, full of people doing good work and living our lives.