March 24, 2021, 3:47pm Plenty of writers have adapted, or had a hand in adapting, their own novels for the screen. Gillian Flynn did it with Gone Girl. John Irving did it with The Cider House Rules. Nick Horby did it with Fever Pitch. William Peter Blatty did it with The Exorcist. William Goldman did it with
Literature
March 24, 2021, 7:00am Today, the Columbia School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard announced the 4 winners and 2 finalists of the 2021 J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Awards, which honors the best American nonfiction writing of the previous year. The Prizes, established in 1998, consist of the J. Anthony Lukas
Gulliver’s Travels, first published in 1726 and written by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), has been called one of the first novels in English, one of the greatest satires in all of literature, and even a children’s classic (though any edition for younger readers is usually quite heavily abridged). How should we respond to this wonderfully inventive
March 23, 2021, 1:14pm In a shocking tale of bureaucracy making life worse, NorthJersey.com has reported that officials of Oradell, New Jersey, are demanding that a local woman take down the Little Free Library she erected in her front yard. Why? Apparently, it violates zoning laws. Since installing the library—a small red box with a
March 23, 2021, 7:50am Rejoice! Spring has sprung! Tulips are popping up to say hello! I even saw an ice cream truck the other day. Plus, if you layer up and stay strictly in the sun, you might feel a semblance of warmth. Dare I say: it might start to feel like things are maybe
‘The raven himself is hoarse / That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan’: so begins Lady Macbeth’s first great soliloquy or monologue in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The speech comes in Act 1 Scene 5, immediately after Lady Macbeth has received news from a messenger that Duncan, the King, will be arriving at the castle that night,
March 22, 2021, 3:15pm Today, Yale University announced the winners of its Windham-Campbell Prizes, which celebrate extraordinary literary achievement by rewarding eight writers an unrestricted grant of $165,000 to support their creative projects. The Award, now in its 8th year, was the brainchild of lifelong partners Donald Windham and Sandy M. Campbell, who were deeply
TODAY: In 1920, Federico García Lorca’s first play, “The Butterfly’s Evil Spell” (El maleficio de la mariposa) is poorly received at its première in Madrid. “There was a significant group of people who did not like my talk radio voice and haven’t been shy about letting me know: male sports fans.” Julie DiCaro on sexism
Of all the major symbols in literature, art, and religion, perhaps no symbol is more ambiguous and double-edged than fire. Fire symbolism can simultaneously denote illumination and purification and destruction and pain. What are some of the main meanings of fire symbolism in literature and art over the centuries? Fire-symbolism in classical myth In Greek
March 19, 2021, 10:07am If you’ve ever spent any serious time on Zillow (and if you’re between the ages of 30 and 45 you probably have?) you’ll know that people make some pretty wild and terrible decisions with their homes. It’s no surprise, then, that an Instagram account like Zillow Gone Wild, which has over
March 19, 2021, 12:59pm Haruki Murakami fans are living high on the hog: they’ve got themed shirts, music events, video games, radio shows, and an archival library. And here’s one more thing to add to the mix: dedicated fan Masamaro Fujiki has made a playlist of every song Murakami has written about in his novels
‘Ligeia’ is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, published in 1838. Weaving together a number of Poe’s favourite themes and preoccupations, it’s an unsettling and ambiguous tale about love, beauty, death, resurrection, and drugs (yes, we’ll come to that). Poe also considered the story his favourite. Before we proceed to a summary and analysis
March 19, 2021, 1:29pm Honoré de Balzac, known for his sweeping portrayals of the individuals that make up a nation, is survived by his famous multi-volume project La Comédie humaine. But you may not know that he was also a playwright—and the reason you may not know is because of Balzac’s own marketing foibles. Today
TODAY: In 43 BCE, Publius Ovidius Naso, known as Ovid, is born. “I found myself straddling two very different identities, as a committed nun and as a woman experiencing myself as a sexual person for the first time.” Patricia M. Dwyer on the life-changing poetry of Elizabeth Bishop. | Lit Hub Criticism In part two of The
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the meaning of a famous proverb – and its origins in a work of literature ‘Procrastination is the thief of time’. It’s perhaps one of the best-known proverbs in the English language, and as with most proverbs, the temptation is to ascribe it
March 19, 2021, 2:40pm If the last year has taught us anything, it’s that Austin’s (Lincoln-drivin’, Wild Turkey-suppin’, Longhorns-boostin’, emergency-broadcastin’, naked bongo-playin’, UT professorin’) favorite son, Matthew David McConaughey, is actually a far busier man than his famously laid-back public persona would suggest. Consider the recent evidence. No sooner had McConaughey finished up an extensive
TODAY: In 1933, Philip Roth is born. In part two of our series The Longest Year: 2020, Marvin Heiferman reflects on documenting his grief on Instagram after the sudden loss of his husband. | Lit Hub “One of the symptoms of racism is that you get all lumped together.” Cathy Park Hong on the recent
Whether it’s vampires or werewolves or mysterious patterns in wallpaper, writers of Gothic short stories have used all sorts of horrors and frights to chill our blood, ever since the horror short story developed in the early nineteenth century. Below, we pick ten of the very best Gothic horror tales which you can find online.