Science has not fulfilled its promise, and new fiction provides no more solace than reality television. We desperately need myth again. Can Canongate's new publishing venture provide it?

Kazuo Ishiguro's story about clones is more Henry James than Aldous Huxley. The unspoken dilemmas of our technological age have Victorian echoes

David Foster Wallace's reputation is as spectacular as his fiction is execrable. And yet, as an essayist, he could be one of America's leading writers

The Olympics were, and remain, rehearsals for state combat

The literary magazine "McSweeney's" is re-defining the US short story. Its editor, Dave Eggers, says it is not ironic. Yeah, right.