TODAY: In 1888, Raymond Chandler is born.
- How literature influenced ideas about love in the 18th century—or, how Jane Austen warned women about rakes. | Lit Hub History
- “Every insurgency requires a political body to represent their views.” Malcolm Nance on the insurgents backed by the Republican party. | Lit Hub Politics
- The John Wick filmmakers explain why killing the character’s dog was more than enough to justify his bloody revenge quest. | Lit Hub Film & TV
- “I think that my knowledge of the Native American oral tradition leads me in the direction of poetry because it is poetic.” N. Scott Momaday on formal verse, falling in love with Emily Dickinson, and bears. | The Millions
- “Is it impossible to touch somebody you’ve lost? Is the light that’s lost really lost forever?” Mieko Kawakami considers the nature of memory. | Astra
- “This country is a terrible country, and this country is not.” David Treuer on the distance between the Americas of his Native mother and his Austrian immigrant father. | The New York Times Magazine
- “If a portrait that I’m writing about somebody doesn’t induce a little bit of discomfort in them, I would almost feel that I hadn’t done my job.” Patrick Radden Keefe talks about investigative writing. | ProPublica
- Are these the 50 “most tearjerking, hilarious, satisfying, and shocking death scenes in 2,500 years of culture”? | Slate
- Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Isaac Fitzgerald’s Dirtbag, Massachusetts, and Jamil Jan Kochai’s The Haunting of Hajji Hotak all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
- “Did Pessoa truly control his alter egos? Or did his creations, in fact, control him?” Ilan Stevens on the many personae of Fernando Pessoa. | The Nation
- “Part of the joy of reading—its essential fiber, if you will—is the way it can disturb us, disrupting our preconceptions and easy pieties.” David L. Ulin’s ode to “inappropriate books.” | Los Angeles Times
- Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett on Hemingway’s “Hill Like White Elephants” and why we need nuanced abortion stories. | The Guardian
- Henry Louis Gates Jr. is spearheading the Oxford Dictionary of African American English: “You wouldn’t normally think of a dictionary as a way of telling the story of the evolution of the African American people, but it is.” | The New York Times
- Are we in the middle of a golden age of Texas fiction? | Texas Monthly
- “The real stakes in this lawsuit concern not digital piracy but the preservation of library rights.” Maria Bustillos delves into book publishers’ attack on the Internet Archive. | The Nation
- “By writing stories, we as doctors aim to teach others about our patients while learning about ourselves.” Jerome Groopman considers the intersection of medicine and narrative. | The New Yorker
- “Lamming never lets readers forget that within that one man—as within all of us—is a boiling multitude.” John Plotz remembers the great Barbadian novelist, essayist, and activist George Lamming. | Public Books
- Richard Hughes Gibson goes deep on the paragraph’s “curious history as a punctuation mark and unit of thought.” | The Hedgehog Review
- “I don’t wish fame on anyone.” Ottessa Moshfegh on Lapvona, haters, and TikTok literary branding. | NPR
Also on Lit Hub:
What are dads bringing to the table (in literature)? • Searching for a vanished medieval city somewhere in Wales • Taymour Soomro recommends six books about patriarchs • Considering Ursula K. Le Guin’s “liberatory alternative” to car culture • Courtney Maum on making a writing career • How do you begin to write a novel about 6th-centry Londinium? • In praise of Josephine Johnson’s 1934 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel • On fan-nonfiction and the joy of mutual delusion • Silvia Moreno-Garcia on H.G. Wells, creation gone awry, and the long history of eugenics • Liska Jacobs on leaving the “city of impermanence” • The surprising origin story of the gimlet • How a colicky baby led to Christina Geist’s picture book debut • How language shapes emotion across cultures • Baynard Woods reflects on how writing a book forced him to confront the many lies of whiteness • Jessica Sequeira considers the overlap between musical interpretation and literary translation • On the Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons crossover that almost was • How Final Fantasy VII taught Jamil Jan Kochai to write • 10 midlife coming-of-age novels • A love letter to public libraries • How Madame Mao remade Hollywood for Chinese audiences • Jen Maxfield examines how unjust drug policy and systemic racism created a class of innocent felons • Verlyn Klinkenborg’s advice for writing more clearly