Literature

April 6, 2023, 2:26pm Another day, another piece of horrifying anti-trans news in the book world. Even by recent standards, though, this one seems particularly fucked-up. An Alaska-based children’s book illustrator has been dropped by his publisher after making terroristic threats against transgender people. Mitchell Thomas Watley, 47—known for drawing mother-baby animal pairs like sea

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ is one of a string of famous songs that appeared on Madonna’s hit 1986 album True Blue. This album was, in many ways, ‘her’ Revolver, a consummate collection of strong hits which she co-wrote with those masterly songwriters, Stephen Bray and Patrick Leonard. However, this particular

April 6, 2023, 12:10pm After creating several lifetimes’ worth of mythologies, Jorge Luis Borges saw his own end in 1986 (he died), and the entire surreal estate came to rest with his wife, Maria Kodama. You can picture it piled into her living room: the garden of forking paths, the library of Babel, the lot

‘Music Lessons’ is a 1979 poem by the American poet Mary Oliver (1935-2019), first published in her collection Twelve Moons. Mary Oliver is a poet who has perhaps not received as much attention from critics as she deserves. It’s been estimated that she was the bestselling poet in the United States at the time of

April 5, 2023, 9:39am Apparently, after years and years of the thwarted desires of…someone or other…an “updated take” on the perfect 1999 film Cruel Intentions (based, of course, on Dangerous Liaisons (Les Liaisons dangereuses) by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, which is why I get to talk about it here) has been picked up to series at Amazon

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’ is a famous quotation from William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The play is one of Shakespeare’s most widely studied and, perhaps on account of its brevity, straightforward plot, and crowd-pleasing set pieces, it is one of his most frequently staged. We find the line

April 5, 2023, 11:22am Tom Holland the writer and historian has respectfully asked that the good people of India stop tagging him in photographs of actor Tom Holland from the recent Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC) event, a Bollywood night-of-nights. An honest mistake! Two British lads, one who happens to be a medievalist and

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength.’ These three short sentences are a central part of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949): a book which is probably the best-known dystopian novel ever written. It’s also one of the books most people lie about having read, perhaps because they

April 4, 2023, 3:13pm Today, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation has announced the winner of the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction: Yiyun Li’s The Book of Goose (FSG). The Book of Goose was chosen by a panel of judges (Christopher Bollen, R.O. Kwon, and Tiphanie Yanique) from 512 eligible novels and short story collections written by American authors and

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Released in 1995 at the height of Britpop, ‘Wonderwall’ is perhaps the most iconic song by the English rock group Oasis. With Liam Gallagher’s distinctive sneering vocals and the anthemic quality of the song, ‘Wonderwall’ is perhaps the standout track on the band’s second studio album, (What’s the Story)

April 4, 2023, 10:44am Up and at ’em! The National Book Foundation announced the most recent crop of honorees under its 5 under 35 program, each of whom was chosen by a past winner. The titles include novels, and poetry and short story collections. Do give them a look! 2023 “5 under 35” honorees: Mateo

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘To see a World in a Grain of Sand and a Heaven in a Wild Flower, hold Infinity in the palm of your hand and Eternity in an hour.’ Who wrote these words, and what do they mean? The answer to the first of these questions is William Blake:

April 3, 2023, 10:34am The latest edition of Margaret Mitchell’s Civil War epic Gone With the Wind, published by Pan Macmillan in the UK, carries a warning on the first page, The Telegraph (which is really making this kind of thing their beat) reports. It goes like this: Gone with the Wind is a novel which

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Philippians 4:13 is one of the most famous quotations from St. Paul’s writings gathered together in the New Testament. In the Authorised King James Version of the Bible, published in 1611, Philippians 4:13 is translated as ‘I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me’. But what did

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’: this phrase has become proverbial, its origins less famous than its meaning. But even the meaning of this pithy line, which is so recognisable as to be shortened to the four words ‘hell hath no fury’ without its meaning being lost,

Photo courtesy of Kelly Fremon Craig When Kelly Fremon Craig was a tween, she hid in the closet reading Judy Blume’s timeless classic Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Like many girls over the past three generations, Fremon Craig found comfort in Blume’s pages. What Fremon Craig couldn’t have known then—what’s still impossible for

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Adversity and hardship have been common themes in poetry, because they are, of course, common experiences for many people. Poets seeking to raise awareness of the suffering people have undergone, or their financial dire straits, have often drawn attention to the hardships suffered by particular groups of people: refugees