Literary critic and author who wrote The Novel: An Alternative History. His book Chromos became a finalist for the National Book Award in 1990.
He played bass for the band Earthquake Moving Company and wrote poems for college literary magazines.
He published The Letters of William Gaddis in 2013.
He was born near Los Angeles and grew up in Littleton, Colorado.
Jonathan Franzen called him a "scholar whose criticism is a model of clarity and intelligent advocacy."