Literature

What is the significance of teeth in religion, mythology, and literature? There should be a link: teeth are obviously, like the tongue, instrumental and essential in oral culture and so we might expect to find a strong link between teeth and the composition of poems and songs. And sure enough, we do. But there are

July 2, 2021, 11:48am Across the pond at Sotheby’s London, a cache of Sylvia Plath’s letters and personal items are going under the hammer. There’s a family bible, some honeymoon period correspondence between Plath and Ted Hughes, a photo album full of pictures from happier times, a set of tarot cards, and a pretty cool

The story of Cain and Abel is the next major story in the Bible, after the Creation account and the story of the Garden of Eden. In short, Cain murders his younger brother Abel and is exiled for his crime. But is the story ‘just’ a moral tale, or might it be an attempt to

July 2, 2021, 11:58am Former president Barack Obama was this year’s closing speaker at the American Library Association Annual conference on Tuesday. In a wide-ranging virtual conversation with Secretary of the Smithsonian Lonnie G. Bunch III, he discussed misinformation, racial justice, and (shocker) his memoir. In keeping with his audience, he also emphasized the importance

July 2, 2021, 12:40pm I declare after all there is no enjoyment like [A FILM ADAPTATION]! This week, Variety announced that Bowen Yang is set to star in a modern Pride and Prejudice feature adaptation, which takes place on Fire Island. Joel Kim Booster, who wrote the screenplay, stars opposite Yang; Andrew Ahn (Spa Night)

‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’ is a famous line from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, but since Hamlet is positively brimming with famous lines, it doesn’t get as much attention as other famous quotations from the play. Many of us know, and some may use, phrases such as ‘to the manner born’, ‘cruel to

TODAY: In 1883, Franz Kafka is born.    “That Barthelme had such a long and fruitful relationship with The New Yorker now seems remarkable, for he was in many ways the least likely New Yorker contributor ever.” Charles McGrath on the avant-garde genius of Donald Barthelme. | Lit Hub How Kurt Cobain’s favorite novel made its way onto Nirvana’s final album:

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses the origins of a famous line from The Waste Land Among many haunting lines in T. S. Eliot’s 1922 poem The Waste Land, ‘I will show you fear in a handful of dust’ stands out for its sinister suggestions of death, mortality, and

July 2, 2021, 1:52pm Zakiya Dalila Harris’ The Other Black Girl, Brandon Taylor’s Filthy Animals, Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat, and Lawrence Wright’s The Plague Year all feature among the best reviewed books of the month. Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.” Fiction 1. The Other Black

The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible is well-known: God destroyed those two cities for their ‘sin’ of homosexuality. Or did he? What’s wrong with talking about ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ as a pair of cities in this way, and what exactly was the sin committed by the inhabitants of these places? Let’s take

TODAY: In 2010, English screenwriter and author Beryl Bainbridge dies.   If “national characteristics don’t create national unity,” asks George Packer, what could? | Lit Hub Politics “I feel a defiance to those who would have me disappear.” Anita Sethi reclaims her existence in the wake of racial trauma. | Lit Hub Theodore R. Johnson considers

‘The Dong with a Luminous Nose’ is one of the greatest nonsense poems by the Victorian poet and artist Edward Lear (1812-88). Among other things, Lear is known for popularising the limerick among Victorian readers, and for being, along with Lewis Carroll, probably the chief exponent of nonsense verse in English. (We have gathered together

July 1, 2021, 2:02pm The Shirley Jackson Awards have announced their impressive list of nominees for the 2020 awards. The awards were established to celebrate the literary career of Shirley Jackson and recognize works that represent “outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.” A jury of professional writers, editors,

Shakespeare’s Richard III was not the first Elizabethan play written about the latest Plantagenet king of England. An anonymous play, The True Tragedy of Richard III, was printed in 1594, though it’s thought to have been written and performed several years earlier. There was even a Latin play by Thomas Legge, Richardus Tertius, which was

TODAY: In 1915, short story writer and novelist Jean Stafford (here, in between Robert Lowell and Peter Taylor) is born.  In the latest installment of The Longest Year: 2020+, Isadora Kosofsky documents an LA Covid ward, and Suzanne Koven reflects on treating patients in another ward across the country. | Lit Hub Photography Humans have

‘In the Penal Colony’ is one of the best-known stories by Franz Kafka. After ‘The Metamorphosis’, it is his most acclaimed and widely discussed shorter work. Kafka wrote ‘In the Penal Colony’ in two weeks in 1914, while he was at work on his novel, The Trial. He revised it in 1918, as he was

June 30, 2021, 2:27pm To my fellow villagers— I’ve seen the tweets, comments, and high school English papers, and I want to respond. I am deeply sorry for my role in creating the Lottery, and in continuing to uphold systematic neighbor stoning. My youth, as well as my genuine belief in the sentiment “Lottery in

‘To every thing there is a season’, ‘nothing new under the sun’, ‘vanity of vanities’, ‘evil under the sun’, ‘the sun also rises’: perhaps there is no Old Testament book more chock-full of memorable phrases than the Book of Ecclesiastes. In essence, the author of Ecclesiastes tells us that everything we do is ‘vanity’: empty,