A ‘quest’ is defined by the OED as ‘A search or pursuit in order to find something; the action of searching’. Poets have often used the quest motif to discuss all manner of subjects, from religion to nobility to that most important thing, the quest we as individuals take to find ourselves. The following poems
Literature
July 27, 2022, 10:00am Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Szilvia Molnar’s debut novel, The Nursery, forthcoming from Pantheon in March 2023. The novel, a “visceral and revelatory portrait of a woman struggling with maternal fear and its looming madness,” follows a translator at home with her new baby, Button. Here’s the
TODAY: In 1928, Radclyffe Hall’s novel The Well of Loneliness is published by Jonathan Cape in London. (Later that year, it is convicted on the grounds of obscenity due to its theme of lesbian love.) Ideas can come from anywhere, writes TJ Klune—including from a googly-eyed Roomba. | Lit Hub Craft & Advice “I didn’t
‘Hearts and Hands’ is a short story by the US short-story writer O. Henry, whose real name was William Sydney Porter (1862-1910). His stories are characterised by their irony and by their surprise twist endings. Both of these elements became something of a signature feature, and ‘Hearts and Hands’ exploits both within its very brief
July 26, 2022, 4:31pm While we do not, under any circumstances, have to hand it to Skyhorse, publisher of Sandy Hook deniers, anti-vaxxers, January 6th conspiracy theorists, and Woody Allen—their brand is extremely consistent. To wit: they will be publishing another book by disgraced biographer Blake Bailey (they picked up Bailey’s Roth biography after W. W. Norton
July 26, 2022, 4:55am Coming to an indie bookstore/library near you today! * Dwyer Murphy, An Honest Living(Viking) “Like the best noir practitioners, Murphy uses the mystery as scaffolding to assemble a world of fallen dreams and doom-bitten characters.”–The New York Times Book Review Elaine Castillo, How To Read Now(Viking) “How to Read Now offers
Many of the most quoted, and quotable, lines in Emily Dickinson’s poetry are her opening lines. Perhaps no other poet has produced so many memorable first lines to poems in all of their oeuvre. And it’s worth remembering that Dickinson (1830-86), an American poet who lived much of her life as a virtual hermit in
July 25, 2022, 3:31pm Literary Twitter was not thrilled with Pamela Paul’s most recent New York Times op-ed, which was just another iteration of her usual formula, i.e. “the inchoate woke mob of my fever-dreams is just as bad for the world as the successful, well funded 30-year conservative plan to overrun the judicial branch
I have a fairly large crime fiction library at home and had access to a vastly larger one still for several years while I was working days at the Center for Fiction, in the old building on Forty-Seventh Street, just shy of the diamond district, which you crossed through on your way to and from
When the original John Wick knocked audiences on their collective asses back in 2014, they really had no idea of the Sturm und Drang it had taken to bring the ambitious action film to life or the intricate planning for the elaborate stunt work, balletic gunplay, slick noir-infused aesthetic, and kinetic editing. Despite all the
July 22, 2022, 9:25am This week, composer, violinist, and vocalist Caroline Shaw—who in 2013 became the youngest ever recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music—announced her second album with Attacca Quartet: Evergreen will be out from Nonesuch on September 23. Shaw and Attacca Quartet also shared the opening track from the album, “First Essay: Nimrod,”
Seeing Nope before all the knowing hype is the closest thing I will probably ever experience to seeing Jaws in theaters in the summer of 1975. Of all the films I’ve been fortunate to critique, few have been as difficult to review as Jordan Peele’s new movie—not because I don’t have much to say about
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
Many of the phrases we use in everyday English speech come from the Bible. Even ahead of the works of Shakespeare, the Bible has probably given us more useful expressions and quotations. Indeed, we use quotations from the Bible often without realising we’re quoting it: how many times have people used the phrases ‘apple of
July 22, 2022, 11:08am I am very pleased to report that one of the many ways in which the Internet is mocking now-disgraced Senator Josh Hawley—for fleeing the very mob he incited himself—is through verse. Here is what @limericking on Twitter posted last night: Josh Hawley went out to inciteThe mob in DC with delight.He
TODAY: In 1886, Estonian-Finnish writer Hella Wuolijoki, also known by the pen name Juhani Tervapää, is born. Get in fast, get out faster, and make every word pop: Gary Lippman’s brief survey of even briefer fiction. | Lit Hub Reading Lists “How had an Ivy League undergrad, someone on the same academic path as
California is the most populous state in the United States of America, and it is one of the most iconic: it is home to Hollywood, to the Golden Gate Bridge, to Alcatraz, and many other famous landmarks and institutions which have been immortalised and mythologised in film, literature, and the popular imagination. But what is
July 21, 2022, 9:22am There’s a new book coming from Michelle Obama next season: titled The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times, it will offer her thoughts on handling difficult periods of change. “I’ve learned it’s okay to recognize that self-worth comes wrapped in vulnerability, and that what we share as humans on this