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The Critical Flame manages all submissions through Submittable. Categories and complete guidelines can be found by clicking the link below. There’s no fee.

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The editors of The Critical Flame welcome correspondence from readers. Send a note about reviews, opposing opinions, or corrections to info [at] criticalflame [dot] org.

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Early encounter with a comment section.

Pictured: encounter with a comment section.

Discussion and Debate

You may have noticed that there are no comment forms at the end of our essays and reviews. This is not intended to discourage debate. Quite the contrary. Our mission is to incite meaningful, reasonable, intelligent discussion of the merits of a given text and the values of our current age.

So let me ask: how often have you engaged in that kind of discourse in the comments section of a website? If you’re lucky, you can count the instances on one hand. It’s hard to say why comment sections encourage the worst in humanity. Whatever the reasons, we’re not interested.

But please, argue about our essays. Share them on Facebook and Twitter. Email them to your friends, your book groups, your classmates. Debate them over a cup of coffee or, as the CF staff prefers, over a neat single-malt scotch. Meet people in real life and have a real conversation.

A good essay is the beginning of a discussion, not its end.