The judges' decision, reached in two hours and 16 minutes, came after "a rigorous process of literary criticism", said Stothard, who edits the Times Literary Supplement.
In Updike's case it was William Maxwell, the New Yorker editor who was also an accomplished novelist, and in Mr. Lasch's, the Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter, who combined rigorous scholarship with literary brio.
The Casual Vacancy, her tale about the poisonous relationships behind the facade of an outwardly idyllic country town, I rather enjoyed however, complete with all its old-fashioned storytelling virtues – a stylistic aspect of the novel that seemed to rile the more rigorous type of literary critic.
This can be found in journals like American Poetry Review, and is fairly close in language and style to the "craft workshops" taught at conferences like Bread Loaf and Sewanee, getting into the nuts and bolts of fiction or poetry by popular contemporary masters without imposing any rigorous discipline of literary knowledge upon the learner.
Williams pooh-poohed the incessantly-made antithesis between the rigorous analytic and the literary continental styles of philosophising, saying you might as well compare a car with four-wheel drive with a Japanese car (a category confusion of methodology and geography).
We figured two mediocre heads were better than one, and got lucky, since creating text in the art world doesn't abide by the same rigorous quality controls as writing in the literary world.
"He brings impeccable literary credentials as well as a rigorous experience editing Harper's Magazine," Mr. Sabin said.
It was 1950 and the heyday of the New Criticism -- that rigorous, quasireligious devotion to "close reading" of the literary text.
A continuous narrative from the 2nd century ce to the fall of Constantinople in 1453, it is distinguished by its rigorous scholarship, its historical perspective, and its incomparable literary style.
Gradually, though, with lyric intensity, Smith's inventive storytelling overcomes these misjudgments and, as Molly enters the fussy but rigorous Gatewood Academy, her age catches up with her literary style.
