April 6, 2021, 11:47am Craving some new Lord of the Rings-related media? While you wait for the Amazon Prime series, have a laugh and watch this 30-year-old television adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring, courtesy of Russian channel 5TV. The 1991 film aired once, never to be seen again—until now. Very much a product of
Literature
April 5, 2021, 1:32pm There’s much to celebrate at the moment: it’s spring, vaccinations are becoming widely available, Cadbury Cream Eggs are steeply discounted at Walgreen’s… But in case you’re still looking for a way to quiet your racing mind, may I recommend Oral Florist? Created (or “arranged”) by writer and translator Rita Bullwinkel and
‘Ulysses, Order, and Myth’ is the title usually given to T. S. Eliot’s review of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Eliot’s short review was published in The Dial magazine in 1923, and can be read here; below, we offer a few words of analysis of this influential essay by one major modernist writer, about the work of
April 5, 2021, 10:53am N+1 has announced a new fiction prize in honor of n+1 contributor and brilliant short story writer Anthony Veasna So, who died in 2020. The newly established Anthony Veasna So Fiction Prize is an annual $5,000 award granted to a fiction writer whose work has appeared in n+1 in print or
In this episode, Andrew is joined by Tobey Pearl, the author of Terror to the Wicked, to discuss the violence, war, and oppression that shaped life in early America, as well as to share the story and impact of the first murder trial in the nation’s history. From the episode: Tobey Pearl: I certainly am
Although perhaps the most famous symbolic quality associated with the colour white is ‘purity’, this summary doesn’t take into account the complexity and ambiguity of colour symbolism when it comes to the colour white: a colour which is at once all colours and no colour. In this post, we’re going to analyse the symbolism and
Timur likes going to the cinema to see double bills of Turkish or foreign films; a romance and an adventure film, a drama and a western—it almost doesn’t matter what they show. It’s a treat, but not as much as going to Istanbul; drinking, listening to the beautiful singers and cheering on the footballers. The
Melissa Febos in her previous works has investigated herself with smart, hawk-eyed precision and dazzling prose. In Girlhood, Febos’s new essay collection, she turns her unflinching eye to the experience of coming of age in a female body. Pulling from her own memories and reflections, interspersed with those of women she interviewed, Febos reveals how
‘A Day’s Wait’ is one of Ernest Hemingway’s shortest short stories, running to just a few pages. It was published in 1927 in his collection The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories. In just a few pages, ‘A Day’s Wait’ covers a number of key features of Hemingway’s work as a whole, and so despite
Despite my inclination for critical detachment, I admit there are some books I can’t help but take personally. As a person who stutters, Philip Roth’s American Pastoral is one of those books. I first read the Pulitzer-winning novel my senior year of college, during which I wrote a thesis about characters who stutter. I’d compiled
During the first month of the pandemic I was afraid to write to my grandpa. I imagined the virus, bright pink but invisible, smearing the paper and the envelope and the mail carrier’s glove, and so on, all the way to my grandpa’s hand. In April I began sending him a weekly letter at the nursing home where
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle considers a famous and much-misunderstood quotation from Shakespeare ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ These words are among the most-quoted in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, and they’re up against a whole host of other
TODAY: In 1947, Camille Paglia is born. “Our letters are a closeness we can keep.” Jackie Polzin on writing letters to her grandfather during COVID, and the joys of slow correspondence. | Lit Hub On American Pastoral’s Merry Levov, American literary fiction’s peerless female stutterer, and what we lose by singular representation. | Lit Hub
April 1, 2021, 1:35pm On April 23, “one of the most important collections of illuminated manuscripts and early prints to have appeared at auction” will go on sale at Christie’s. This collection, the private collection of late philanthropists and collectors Elaine and Alexandre P. Rosenberg, is expected to fetch at least £8 million. Notable among
Washington Irving (1783-1859) is often known as ‘the father of American literature’. Named in honour of the (future) first US President, Irving has had a huge influence on American writers for two centuries, and has also been responsible (indirectly) for the name of the knickerbocker glory dessert and, even, the word ‘knickers’ (both words come
April 1, 2021, 9:00am Depending on who you ask, Substack is either a haven for writers who have flounced away from their journalism jobs claiming that Cancel Culture forced them out, or a platform that allows writers to actually (maybe) pay their bills without relying on a media company owned by a fickle tech billionaire
March 31, 2021, 3:25pm The year from hell has turned out to be a hell of a year for Eisner Award-winning cartoonist and New Yorker illustrator Adrian Tomine. First, his graphic memoir, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist, got a pretty rapturous critical reception upon its release back in June. Then, three months later, it
Midas is known for two things: being given the ears of an ass, and turning everything he touched into gold. The latter of these was his reward from Dionysus, although he soon discovered that his gift was a bane rather than a blessing, and that he couldn’t even do simple things like take a drink