Here’s a question for you: which great work did Oscar Wilde write while imprisoned in Reading Gaol? Not The Ballad of Reading Gaol – that was written while he was in exile in France following his release from prison – but De Profundis, his long letter to his former lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The Ballad
Literature
October 5, 2020, 10:18am It’s first thing in the morning and we’re already buzzing with literary news from abroad. From a spectacular longlist comes an amazing shortlist for this year’s Scotiabank Giller Prize, which seeks to recognize the best Canadian fiction of the year. Previous winners include Esi Edugyan, Elizabeth Hay, Sean Michaels, Michael Redhill, and
October 2, 2020, 12:41pm Today, Merriam-Webster observed that word searches for “schadenfreude” had spiked 30,500% after President Donald Trump announced his positive COVID-19 diagnosis—and the word was included in several news stories and headlines about the diagnosis and the global reaction. Merriam-Webster defines the term, borrowed from the German roots schaden (“damage”) and freude (“joy”) in
October 2, 2020, 12:46pm Derek Mahon, one of Ireland’s greatest contemporary poets, has died at the age at the age of 78. A host of Irish writers, including the country’s president Michael D. Higgins, have today been paying tribute to Mahon, with perhaps the most personal coming from fellow Belfast poet, Michael Longley, who had
October 2, 2020, 1:26pm It would be difficult to dethrone Anjelica Huston as Campy Horror Flick Queen, but Anne Hathaway is giving it a shot in the upcoming film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1983 children’s novel, The Witches. The original tale was about a young British boy and his grandmother who confront a coven of witches,
TODAY: In 1957, a California Superior Court judge rules that Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” is of “redeeming social importance” and thus not obscene. “There is an art to being a good tour guide of the depths of mathematics.” How storytellers use math (without scaring people away). | Lit Hub Criticism Taunts and abuse: Deborah Tannen on what really happened
October 2, 2020, 2:14pm It’s been a real week, hasn’t it? Here’s one thing that may make it the slightest bit easier: Because it is his birthday, and because I’m personally in need of anything that can slow my heart rate for a few minutes at a time, I present to you this audio clip
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores a forgotten work of post-apocalyptic fiction March opened on a comparatively milder note, but there was still no thaw. Food prices, which had been rising for some time, began to rocket, and there was a wave of strikes throughout the country. … The
This week on Well-Versed, Jonathan Galassi, publisher of FSG, talks with writer Marilynne Robinson about her new novel, Jack, returning to Gilead, her research on the segregation of St. Louis, and the mysterious impulse of a new novel. From the episode: Jonathan Galassi: What is it that made life so difficult for Jack? Marilynne Robinson:
October 1, 2020, 4:19pm Congratulations!Today is your day!You’re off to great places!Like a galaxy far, far away! J.J. Abrams of Star Wars fame has arrived.And he is bringing you a big surprise!Oh, The Places You’ll Go! is coming to the screen!A stranger sight you’ve never seen. He’s working with Warner Bros on this,a collaboration you won’t
TODAY: In 1890, poet, playwright, and theatre actress Blanche Oelrichs, who used the nom de plume Michael Strange to publish her poetry, is born. Read Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s 2000 dissent in Bush v. Gore. (And let’s hope we don’t have to refer to its precedents any time soon.) | Lit Hub Politics Taunts and abuse: Deborah Tannen on
Previously, we chose ten classic poems about London, but now we’re turning to books about the capital – whether non-fiction studies, novels, or texts which fall somewhere between the two. Of course, London is such a vast and fascinating city with a long history, that we cannot be comprehensive with ten books – these are
September 30, 2020, 2:33pm Let’s start with the good news—incredible news, really. Poet Kevin Young and publisher Jamia Wilson, two influential African-American gatekeepers in the book and media sectors, are about to take on illustrious new jobs. Young, currently the poetry editor for the New Yorker and director of the Schomburg Center for Research and Black
TODAY: In 1207, Rumi is born. “Merwin asked why they were the only naked people, and then ‘every fucking person in the place took their clothes off.’” Didn’t think we could love W.S. Merwin more than we already did. | Lit Hub We cannot stress this enough: without the mighty beaver we are all well and truly
My husband’s face, when mask-less, interacts with my face. I can read the movement of his mouth, his eyes and, in turn, he reads mine. At times, my husband recedes from my face, pulling his animating forces inside of himself. He is focused on a problem I cannot see. At these moments his face is
On a gray, spitting day in Venice this past summer, I spent a morning strolling through the main exhibits of the Venice Biennale in the Arsenal. The building is tall and narrow, concrete and stolid, and like the cars of a train, you move from one enclosure to the next through a small vestibule. I
‘In loving thee thou know’st I am forsworn’: so begins the antepenultimate sonnet in William Shakespeare’s Sonnets – there are still two more to go in the sequence – but the last sonnet to advance a new argument. (The final pair are more of a coda to the overall cycle.) Sonnet 152 is not one
September 28, 2020, 12:09pm The results are in, and the list of most challenged books from the last decade is a mix of American classics, LGBTQ-themed books, and stories about female agency and empowerment. In other words, all the books that we should be reading all the time. Kicking off Banned Books Week, the American