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
Literature
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
TODAY: In 1923, Radio Times, the world’s first broadcast listings magazine, is published, detailing programs for six BBC wireless stations; Newspapers at the time boycotted radio listings fearing that increased listenership might decrease their sales. Why does everyone in this country think they’re middle class? David R. Roediger on the myth of American exceptionalism. | Lit Hub
September 25, 2020, 9:58am We’re a little more than a month out from Election Day and the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list is looking predictably odd. In a year when books about anti-racism have reached unprecedented sales, so too has the tide of journalistic blockbusters and books by conservative mainstays been steadily rolling. After seven weeks
September 25, 2020, 11:18am Graham Swift’s Here We Are; Natalie Zina Walschots’ Hench; Christina Lamb’s Our Bodies, Their Battlefields; and Laila Lalami’s Conditional Citizens all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. Fiction 1. Here We Are by Graham Swift 8 Rave • 5 Positive • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan “Here We Are is a
In New York City and across the country, thousands gathered to honor Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who served on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death by pancreatic cancer last Friday, September 18. She was respected and beloved by many for her legal decisions in favor of women’s rights and
TODAY: In 1946, William Strunk, Jr., professor of English at Cornell University and author of The Elements of Style (revised and updated by his former student, E.B. White), dies. “Privacy is a form of power, and whoever has the most personal data will dominate society.” Carissa Véliz on life under surveillance capitalism. | Lit Hub Tech
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the origins of the phrase ‘dark horse’ in a forgotten nineteenth-century novel The novel The Young Duke may have been forgotten, but its author hasn’t been – even if his reputation as an author is not now as high as it once was.
September 25, 2020, 2:21pm Within an hour of hearing that she had won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, a top honor given to science fiction published in the UK, Namwali Serpell also heard the news that the police officers who killed Breonna Taylor would not be charged for her murder. “I received these two pieces