August 4, 2020, 10:45am Please watch this video of Curbside Larry from the Barbara Bush Public Library in Harris County, Texas as he takes us through a dizzying tour of all the library has to offer you, the fine member of the reading public, in these dark dark times: “Shelves and shelves of books!!” Great!
Literature
On this episode of Personal Space: The Memoir Show, Sari Botton interviews Morgan Jerkins, author of Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots, published by Harper. In this fascinating historical memoir, Jerkins explores her identity and heritage by tracing her ancestors’ paths out of the south during “The Great
‘The Next War’ is a relatively little-known Wilfred Owen poem: compared with his great sonnet ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, this sonnet is practically invisible to all but the most diehard fans of Wilfred Owen or war poetry. Yet this poem offers an interesting insight into Owen’s work. Before we offer an analysis of ‘The Next
The following is excerpted from Stephen Kiernan’s new novel, Universe of Two. Kiernan has won numerous awards, including the Brechner Center’s Freedom of Information Award, the Scripps Howard Award for Distinguished Service to the First Amendment, and the George Polk Award. He is the author of two previous novels, The Curiosity and The Hummingbird, and
Trump’s tweet from Thursday should concern all Americans, regardless of political affiliation. We have never had a delayed presidential election in our history—not during the Civil War, not during the Second World War. The fact that Trump lacks the power to delay an election—only Congress could do that—provides cold comfort. The very idea that he
TODAY: In 2012, Gore Vidal dies. “Trump’s refusal to accept defeat is not possible or even probable—it is all but inevitable.” Lawrence Douglas on the crisis that looms in November. | Lit Hub Politics Omar Mouallem’s pandemic project? Becoming the fake dean of a fake university. | Lit Hub “Confession: I still cry at work. I’m
July 31, 2020, 9:12am Gore Vidal—essayist, historian, novelist, public intellectual, and Norman Mailer antagonist (Mailer headbutted him backstage at the Dick Cavett Show over a piece in the NYRB in which Vidal compared Mailer’s views of women to Charles Manson’s)—died on this day in 2012. Thinking of Vidal reminded me of an incredible interview I
TODAY: In 1978, Barbara Pym is a guest on Desert Island Discs. Gregory Pardlo writes a letter to Juneteenth: “You are a brick in the historical foundation upon which our country might reimagine its collective future.” | Lit Hub Politics Introducing Mighty SONG Writers, a weekly video series to benefit education non-profit Mighty Writers. First up:
July 31, 2020, 10:00am Right now, many of us are at home, sheltering in place with too much to do. Why then add yet another chore, reading poetry, to an already long list of to-dos? Because joy. Because we need at least one thing on that list to be something we want to do, enjoy
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the surprising origins of a well-known phrase Who coined the phrase ‘Lost Generation’? The term has become synonymous with the generation of American expatriates living in France after the First World War: Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and other men in their early
July 31, 2020, 10:19am Days after Tsitsi Dangarembga was longlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize for her novel This Mournable Body, Zimbabwean officials have taken her into custody during protests against government corruption. Agence France-Presse reported that Dangarembga and another protester were “bundled into a truck full of police armed with AK-47 rifles and riot
July 30, 2020, 3:54pm If you tuned into yesterday’s historic House Judiciary Subcommittee antitrust hearing, during which the top executives of some of the world’s largest tech companies tried convincing politicians that they weren’t monopolies, you may have heard a bookseller chime in during Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s questioning. Unfortunately for companies like Google, Amazon,
July 30, 2020, 10:22am Today, W.W. Norton announced that they would be publishing Blake Bailey’s highly anticipated biography of Philip Roth on April 6, 2021. “Its 880 pages,” Hillel Italie writes, are the finished result of an undertaking that pre-dates not just Roth’s death in 2018, at age 85, but Roth’s retirement from public writing
July 29, 2020, 3:48pm Here are some facts about “Sinkhole,” a short story by Leyna Krow, author of I’m Fine, But You Appear to be Sinking: 1. It is 1,586 words long. 2. It was acquired by Universal Pictures and Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions in a competitive bidding process for “a low-seven-figure[s].” 3. This means
The finest poems by Marianne Moore Marianne Moore (1887-1972) was one of the most distinctive and accomplished modernist poets of the twentieth century. Along with William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens, she stands as the greatest American modernist – of those poets who remained in America (others, such as T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and
TODAY: In 1628, The King’s Men perform Henry VIII at the Globe Theatre, London. George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham is in the audience, but leaves after watching the play’s Duke of Buckingham beheaded. The character is based on the historical Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, who had been executed for treason in 1521.
July 28, 2020, 1:06pm Have you ever dreamed of being immortalized within the pages of a James Patterson novel? Of living on, long after your bones have turned to dust and your headstone has been weathered into illegibility, as a firecracker love interest or industrious D.C. serial killer? Of course you have. Who amongst us
July 28, 2020, 10:31am Substack, the (apparently pretty well-funded) newsletter distribution company, has announced its second round of fellows, led by novelist and essayist Kaitlyn Greenidge. Greenidge is the only Senior Fellow of the ten, a title that carries with it a $100,000 grant. Her newsletter, Kaitlyn, will feature “cultural criticism that is entirely unchained