TODAY: In 1930, Almost 6,000 spiritualists gathered in the Royal Albert Hall for a memorial to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, attended by his relatives. The medium Estelle Roberts relayed a private message to Doyle’s widow which she affirmed to be genuine.
- “Perhaps I’ve seen enough of the interior lives of that generation of Canadians.” Jonny Diamond on Alice Munro, Andrea Skinner, and his own mother’s failure to protect him. | Lit Hub
- “I risked being called a liar twice: first, in my claims about Plath’s experience of intimate partner violence, and also in my own.” Emily Van Duyne on how our culture continues to blame the victims of male violence. | Lit Hub Biography
- Janie Kim considers bioluminescence and the pursuit of open-ended questions in science and fiction. | Lit Hub Science
- “The legend of the Devil’s contract is the most alluring…story ever told.” Ed Simon on what the age-old Faustian bargain reveals about the modern world. | Lit Hub Criticism
- Robert Barsky considers the influence of George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia on Noam Chomsky. | MIT Press Reader
- Katherine Churchill examines what monsters and folktales have to do with reproductive freedom. | JSTOR Daily
- “This is why I love Thoreau, because the revelation for him is not God but experience.” Jessie Kindig on metaphor and Transcendentalism. | The Point
- Sasha Frere-Jones on over fifty years of The Poetry Project and its New Year’s Day Marathon. | The Nation
- Sarah Jaffe remembers author and organizer Jane McAlevey. | The Baffler
- How do celebrity book clubs actually work? “While I fully believe that celebrities aren’t playing some nefarious game of imprint chess to benefit themselves, the pieces are still visible on the board.” | Esquire
- “Can a simple act of syntactical rearrangement really have such a profound effect on how we read and write about lives?” Isabella Stuart on Sheila Heti and the “I”. | Public Books
- Justin Taylor talks about his novel Reboot, fan culture, and celebrity. | Language Arts
- “Just around the time I was introduced to Natalie Merchant’s music…Mary Pipher’s book Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (1994) made cultural waves as an exposition of girlhood and adolescence.” On Natalie Merchant and Hamlet’s Ophelia. | Los Angeles Review of Books
- “Dr. Frankenstein in this metaphor is the translator:” Some (mixed) metaphors for translation. | The Paris Review
- John Bucher considers the storytelling potential of knots. | Atlas Obscura
- Andre Pagliarini revisits The Motorcycle Diaries: “If the softer Che made the diaries such a hit in the 1990s, what stands out today is how hard-fought its optimism is—how much effort must sustain its conviction that a better world is possible.” | The New Republic
- “Like many parts of my life during this time, Kundera became a secret.” On the influence of Milan Kundera. | The Point
- Marsha Gordon on the life and work of novelist Ursula Parrott, “a trenchant observer of women like her, who were smart, ambitious and adventurous but who failed to navigate a brave new world in which the odds seemed stacked against their well-being and continued success.” | The New York Times
Also on Lit Hub:
Christian Gullette on architecture, liminality, and grief • KB Brookins recommends trans memoirs • The case against italicizing non-English words • On teaching In Cold Blood to incarcerated women • Olivia Laing on keeping a garden in a time of climate crisis • Mateo Askaripour on the perks of genre agnosticism • If you’re going to platform extremists, you should at least check their facts • Taffy Brodesser-Akner on psychics and writer’s block • Pamela Jean Tinnen on writing through grief • Dan Sheehan talks to Kevin Barry • Ben Shattuck sings the praises of a secluded writing space • Teddy Wayne asks authors 7 questions with no wrong answers • Asha Thanki on the trap of “authentic” writing • Our most anticipated books for the second half of 2024 • Beauty standards in the age of artificial intelligence • What happens when an American family moves to the south of France • Stacey D’Erasmo considers how artists sustain their practices • Jan Carson on capturing the complexities (and failures) of Northern Ireland • Cuban-American stories and the ways popular idioms resonate across generations • “Why won’t my local indie stock my book? Am I the literary asshole?” • Peter Hessler on Wuhan before the pandemic and since • What listening to music and writing have in common • Emma Specter examines how diet culture influences disordered eating • Why everyone deserves their day in court • Brittany Ackerman on her mental breakdown at an esteemed writing conference • The origins of Anonymous, from 4chan and beyond • The process of building your novel’s clock • Why would an American set novels in Nova Scotia? • Zoë Eisenberg and Rhaina Cohen on writing about intimate friendships