Krystal has written for publications including The American Scholar, Harper's, The New Yorker, the The New York Times Book Review, the Times Literary Supplement, The Wall Street Journal, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Washington Post Book World, New York Newsday, the Village Voice, the New Criterion, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Sports Illustrated, Art & Antiques, the Encyclopædia Britannica, and Collier's Encyclopedia. His first book of essays, Agitations: Essays on Life and Literature was a finalist for the 2003 PEN Award for the "Art of the Essay." The essay, "When Writers Speak," which appeared in the New York Times Book Review, was included in The Best American Essays 2010, edited by Christopher Hitchens. Many of Krystal's essays have stirred up controversy for their insistence that intellectual work not be limited or defined by sociopolitical concerns when executed in good faith. Krystal was co-writer of the HBO film Thick as Thieves and writer of the documentary Secrets of the Code.
Books
This Thing We Call Literature. Oxford University Press. 2016.
Except When I Write: Reflections of a Recovering Critic. Oxford University Press. 2011.
The Half-Life of an American Essayist. David R. Godine, Publisher. 2007
Agitations: Essays on Life and Literature. Yale University Press. 2002.
As editor
A Company of Readers: Uncollected Writings of W. H. Auden, Jacques Barzun, and Lionel Trilling from The Reader's Subscription and Mid-Century Book Clubs. The Free Press. 2001.
Jacques Barzun, The Culture We Deserve. Wesleyan University Press. 1989.
Selected essays
“Closing the Books”, recounting Krystal's disaffection with reading, generated many irate responses and was the occasion of a lecture by Sven Birkerts at the New York Public Library : “The Time of Reading: A meditation on the fate of books in an impatient age.”
“H. C. Witwer and Me”. Reprinted in "Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love," edited by Anne Fadiman.
“Who Speaks for the Lazy?” was a clarion call to those who find it hard to get any work done. Reprinted in "The New Gilded Age: The New Yorker Looks at the Culture of Affluence," edited by David Remnick
“Why Smart People Believe in God”, anticipating the “New Atheism” of the twenty-first century.
“Easy Writers”, a highly controversial piece about the distinctions between literature and genre fiction, elicited a notable response from Lev Grossman in Time Magazine : “Literary Revolution in the Supermarket Aisle: Genre Fiction Is Disruptive Technology: How science fiction, fantasy, romance, mysteries and all the rest will take over the world.”
"What is Literature” took issue with "A New Literary History of America," edited by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors, and came down firmly on the side of the literary canon while recognizing the socio-cultural biases that inform it.
“The Shrinking World of Ideas.” or how postmodernism and neuroscience have influenced the teaching of the humanities.
“Is Cultural Appropriation Ever Appropriate?” questioned the validity of the debate itself.
