Open Source is the world’s longest-running podcast. Christopher Lydon circles the big ideas in culture, the arts and politics with the smartest people in the world. It’s the kind of curious, critical, high-energy conversation we’re all missing nowadays. * That blood-red full moon of July looked for sure to be on fire, but only because
Literature
August 6, 2021, 1:05pm Multihyphenates can get a bad rap, accused of not committing to one thing: operating in the gig economy, creators can feel pressure to specialize. But just because many artists are canonized in one discipline doesn’t mean they didn’t work in others. For instance, before Flannery O’Connor—who died this week in 1964—was
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses the famous opening sentence of Orwell’s final novel ‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’ Since those words were first published in 1949 before Slot Online revealed, they have joined the pantheon, the literary canon, of
TODAY: In 1934, American Beat poet Diane di Prima is born. “It’s as if Smith knew what was coming and wanted us to have good company.” Sara Batkie on reading Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet during the past year of COVID-19. | Lit Hub Year in Reading Lucy Jones enumerates the science-based health benefits of enjoying
‘Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca’ is an essay by T. S. Eliot; it began life as an address Eliot gave to the Shakespeare Association on 18 March 1927 before being published on 22 September of that year. Although it is Eliot’s poetry that has endured, and his reputation as a perceptive and provocative critic
August 5, 2021, 1:13pm In early 2022, the scholar collective Post45 will release a cluster of writing, helmed by guest editors Sarah Osment and David Hering, on David Berman. As Post45’s cluster structure dictates, many different thinkers’ short essays on the work of the poet and Silver Jews musician will be released together. The upcoming
This week on The Maris Review, Kelsey McKinney joins Maris Kreizman to discuss her new novel, God Spare the Girls, out now from William Morrow & Co. *On leaving the church: KM: What was interesting for me about growing up and growing out of the faith that I grew up in was recognizing that while
The story of Jesus casting out the demons from a man and into a herd of swine is well-known, but where it happened, and what it means, are more contentious questions and deserve fuller analysis and discussion. The longest and most detailed account of Jesus and the Gadarene swine is found in the Gospel of
August 4, 2021, 2:51pm Today on Instagram, Hanya Yanagihara shared the cover of her next novel, To Paradise, which will be published by Doubleday on January 11, 2022. Yanagihara, who is not only a novelist but the editor in chief of T: The New York Times Style Magazine, has a well-honed aesthetic sense, and a
TODAY: In 1792, Percy Bysshe Shelley is born. “Driving around the mountain roads, I could hear the quiet around me, and it sounded like the foreboding, slinky, synthesizer-filled theme song to Twin Peaks.” Stephen Kurczy visits the “Log Lady” of the Quiet Zone. | Lit Hub American policing is operating exactly as it was designed to, writes
First published in 1899, Heart of Darkness – which formed the basis of the 1979 Vietnam war film Apocalypse Now – is one of the first recognisably modernist works of literature in English fiction. Its author was the Polish-born Joseph Conrad, and English wasn’t his first language (or even, for that matter, his second). As
August 3, 2021, 4:27pm Today is the 57th death day of Flannery O’Connor, sardonic queen of the Southern Gothic sub-genre (whose long-overlooked racist tendencies have been more widely discussed of late), devout Catholic, and lifelong ornithologist. O’Connor’s The Complete Stories won the 1972 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction (beating John Updike’s Rabbit Redux, Walker Percy’s
TODAY: In 1887, English poet Rupert Chawner Brooke, whom W. B. Yeats reportedly described as “the handsomest young man in England,” is born. Your August literary film and TV watchlist features Hot Priest recast as Lord Merlin, Sandra Oh as the chair of an English department, some truly bonkers CGI, and more. | Lit
‘Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have / Immortal longings in me’: so begins Cleopatra’s final speech in Shakespeare’s tragedy Antony and Cleopatra. Her ‘immortal longings’ are her longings for immortality, her desire to leave behind the mortal world and enter the next. Curiously, it isn’t clear whether the historical Cleopatra died
August 2, 2021, 12:29pm When we talk about Raymond Carver, we talk about the short story. Despite having published eight poetry collections before his death (33 years ago to the day), he’s known for works like “Cathedral” and “Why Don’t You Dance.” But, as it turns out, Carver wrote short stories out of practicality, not
As yet another wave of infection blooms and the bitter assignment of vaccine passes becomes a reality, societies are being held hostage by a sadly familiar coalition of the uninformed, the misinformed, the misguided, and the misanthropic. They are making vaccine passports, which no one wants, a likely necessity. Without their noise and narcissism, vaccination
The tragic love story of Dido and Aeneas has been told numerous times, and Henry Purcell famously turned it into one of the first English operas in the late seventeenth century. Dido’s lament from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas is a wonderful piece of music, powerful and moving: you can listen to it here. But unlike
TODAY: In 1924, William H. Gass is born in Fargo, North Dakota. Discovering a piece of the moon’s primordial crust, and other highlights from Apollo 15’s three days in a geologic wonderland. | Lit Hub History If “cities demonstrate their essential character when responding to a crisis,” what will New York City show when