TODAY: In 1858, Charles Darwin receives a paper by Alfred Russel Wallace that includes nearly identical conclusions about evolution as Darwin’s own, prompting Darwin to publish his theory.
- Annie Proulx revisits William Golding’s 1980 novel, Rites of Passage. | Lit Hub Criticism
- Does Netflix’s $100 million adaptation of George Saunders’s “Escape From Spiderhead” stand up on film? | Lit Hub Film
- Ada Calhoun does a deep-reading of Ouida, the most famous lady novelist you’ve never heard of. | Lit Hub Criticism
- “I do not like people whose principal aim is pleasure.” When James Baldwin went to Fire Island. | Lit Hub Biography
- Francine Prose, Marlowe Granados, and more writers muse on Joan Didion’s literary legacy. | Document
- A cognitive psychologist explains why we forget books we read. | The Guardian
- “At times, it is obvious how hard she is trying to build something beautiful, but most of the time it feels effortless.” Kelsey McKinney on Tove Ditlevsen writing of the beautiful mundane. | Defector
- “One wonders why a skinny, rebarbative marionette should be getting so much attention.” Joan Acocella on the many lives of Pinocchio. | The New Yorker
- Jo Livingstone considers “a slippery little genre”: the celebrity memoir. | SSENSE
- “The author of Lapvona is not an iconoclast; she is a nun.” Andrea Long Chu considers the work of Ottessa Moshfegh. | Vulture
- “We are all hostages on board a plane that has been hijacked by a madman.” Vadim Smyslov talks to writers and artists about Russia’s “cultural brain drain.” | GQ
- Clare Sestanovich, Alexandra Kleeman, and more consider the state of literary fiction. | The Drift
- Phil Klay explores the ever-growing power—both technical and cultural—of guns. | The New Yorker
- Megha Majumdar and Nicole Chung on obsessions, the editing process, and advice for debut writers. | The Atlantic
- “A Heaney poem carried its maker’s name on the blade, and often it cut straight to the bone.” Roy Foster discusses the life of Seamus Heaney. | Princeton University Press
- “In occupied cities, time doesn’t exist, it is gone.” Ilya Kaminsky collects testimonies from Bucha writers. | The Paris Review
- “For me, Paris was literature, its heart and its capital—the city of exiled writers, cursed poets and existentialist philosophers.” Leïla Slimani recommends books to read in Paris. | The New York Times
- “Polonius isn’t a good father. Good fathers don’t make good drama. But he is a good character, more complex than critics usually recognize.” Jeffrey R. Wilson writes in defense of Shakespeare’s “tedious old fool.” | JSTOR Daily
- No, novels aren’t supposed to fix society. | Counter Craft
Also on Lit Hub:
Here it is, your 2022 Ultimate Summer Reading List, in which we tally up the most talked about books of the season • Sometimes you really need to get lost to find what you need to write • How do we write about this vanishing world? • On legendary humorist Art Buchwald’s time in Paris • On delving into memories from anti-Jewish pogroms in Ukraine • Nnedi Okorafor on her comics journey from Garfield to the Black Panther • Sari Botton on the anxiety and elation of getting inked up later in life • Read letters from Ernest Hemingway to his young son • Fariha Róisín on how yoga carries its own legacies of violence • Pitchaya Sudbanthad offers a brief history of trying to breathe in cities • Jess McHugh on the radical, revolutionary history of women’s magazines • How Eudora Welty captured 1930s New York City on film • Dominic Lieven on the rise of the remote Russian Empire • How Peter Higgs came to abhor of nuclear weapons—and find hope in particle physics • On the birth of “underground comix” • Why have teens always loved shopping malls? • On the ancient mysteries of linen • Nandita Dinesh on writing (and not writing) about mutton biryani • Marcy Dermansky on revising without losing your mind • Will Jawando on the senseless gun death of an old friend • Ariella Garmaise on Elif Batuman, Sheila Heti, and literature’s pervasive motherhood/creativity divide • James Burrows on getting Cheers off the ground • Our all-time favorite summer novels