March 28, 2023, 12:42pm First, there was Helen Mirren as Regal Patricia Highsmith. Then came Oscar Isaac as Sexy Kurt Vonnegut. Now, get ready for Chris Chalk as Super Intense James Baldwin. Yes, continuing the recent trend of casting Hollywood and prestige TV stars as iconic mid-century writers, Chalk (Perry Mason, Underground, Gotham) is set to
Literature
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Poker Face’ is a 2008 song by Lady Gaga, written by Lady Gaga and the Moroccan singer and record producer RedOne. But although the song was recorded and first released in 2008, it was in 2009 that it became a worldwide smash hit – and it was also in
The following is from Maki Kashimada’s Love at Six Thousand Degrees. Kashimada’s first novel Two won the 1998 Bungei Prize. Since then, she has established herself as a writer of literary fiction and become known for her avant-garde style. She was nominated three times for the Akutagawa Prize before ultimately garnering the award in 2012
By Dr Oliver Tearle Sometimes we might wish to describe something as ‘poetic’: we might speak or write of an author’s or speechmaker’s ‘poetic turn of phrase’ or describe the style of a novel as ‘almost, at times, poetic’, or something similar. We all know what ‘poetic’ means: having the qualities of poetry, or qualities
March 27, 2023, 1:31pm Alfred A. Knopf has done it, dropped a little grenade in the timelines this afternoon with the news that it will publish Jhumpa Lahiri’s Roman Stories this October. The Lahiri-hive was swift to celebrate what will be the first short story collection since 2008’s Unaccustomed Earth. Her 2000 collection Interpreter of
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, beginning ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ is one of the best-known and most widely studied poems in all of Renaissance literature. The poem is often viewed as a love lyric, but can alternatively be interpreted as a poem about the power of poetry
The following is from Yuri Herrera’s Ten Planets. Born in Actopan, Mexico, Herrera is the author of three novels, including Signs Preceding the End of the World, which was one of the Guardian’s “100 Best Books of the 21st Century” and won the Best Translated Book Award. He teaches at Tulane University in New Orleans.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) A simile is a literary device whereby you liken one thing to another, using the word like or as. Sometimes we use similes in everyday language: describing someone as being as sick as a parrot, for instance. This can be contrasted with metaphor, which is more direct and does
The following is from speech given at the Swedish Academy on March 22, 2023, at a conference called Thought and Truth Under Pressure. * I thank the Swedish Academy for inviting me to speak at this conference and for affording me the privilege of listening to the other speakers. It was planned more than two
Published in 1689 though formally dated 1690, John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is one of the most important works of Enlightenment philosophy: indeed, in many ways, Locke paved the way for the (later) Enlightenment. But what is it about An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and Locke’s argument, which makes him so important? You
TODAY: In 1931, Japanese crime writer, actress, singer, and queer icon >Masako Togawa is born. “Solidarity can never be pristine.” Arundhati Roy on free speech, failing democracy, and an India approaching gridlock. | Lit Hub Politics “They are slimy, cold, wet, and jiggly, lacking a brain or a heart or any sort of remorse when they sting
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Shirley Jackson (1916-65) wrote six novels and around two hundred short stories during her brief career. Probably best-known for her novel The Haunting of Hill House and her oft-anthologised short story ‘The Lottery’, Jackson was a writer with a considerable range, whose work often engages with the unsettling, the
TODAY: In 1925, Flannery O’Connor is born. “Solidarity can never be pristine.” Arundhati Roy on free speech, failing democracy, and an India approaching gridlock. | Lit Hub Politics Alissa Quart on the myths of Little House on the Prairie: “I couldn’t help but recognize that though they were seemingly harmless, these novels and that hit show were a crucial example
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Eleonora’ is a short story by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49). It was first published in an annual titled The Gift: A Christmas and New Year’s Present in 1842. The story is narrated by a man who realises he loves his cousin, Eleonora, with whom he lives
March 24, 2023, 8:52am Last night, in a ceremony at the New School in New York City, the National Book Critics Circle announced the winners of its 2022 awards, narrowed down from an impressive list of finalists in six categories: Autobiography, Biography, Criticism, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. Winners in each of the NBCC’s special categories—the
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Poetry is often full of examples of specific literary devices and techniques. Some of these, such as simile and metaphor, are well-known, and it’s important to be familiar with the terminology used to describe poetic imagery. We’ll come to that in time. But we’re also interested in the features
March 24, 2023, 12:00pm Perhaps the fact that Mormon fantasy author Brandon Sanderson made $55 million last year started things off on the wrong foot. For Wired senior editor Jason Kehe, that was the peg on which to hang a profile of the author, “Brandon Sanderson Is Your God.” “How’d he do it? Why now?
‘The Road Not Taken’ is one of Robert Frost’s most famous poems. Frost (1874-1963) was an American poet whose work was at odds with many of his modernist contemporaries, such as William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, and T. S. Eliot. He disliked free verse – memorably characterising it as ‘playing tennis with the net down’