TODAY: In 1779, Clement Clarke Moore, author of the Christmas poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (which later became known as “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”), is born. At first Moore had not wished to be connected with the popular verse, given his public reputation as a professor of ancient languages. Can the German path
Literature
July 14, 2020, 1:26pm Andrew Weissmann, who served as a prosecutor for Robert Mueller during an investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, is releasing a book this fall—and says it will include details on the investigation’s “mistakes.” Random House will publish Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation on Sept. 29. Weissmann said in
TODAY: In 1898, Eliza Lynn Linton, the first female salaried journalist in Britain, dies. Incredibly, 2020 is only half over, which means we plenty more good books to come… Here are our most anticipated. | Lit Hub Genie Lauren on the rise of Black Twitter, and the social power (and limits) of hashtag activism. | Lit Hub
Originally titled ‘Swinging Birches’, the poem ‘Birches’ is one of Robert Frost’s most widely anthologised and studied poems, first published in 1915. Although Frost’s style is often direct and accessible, his poems are subtle and sometimes even ambiguous in their effects, so some words of analysis may be of use here. You can read ‘Birches’
July 13, 2020, 12:57pm Probably, yes. Back when I had time to read for many hours a day I devoured Seth’s 1,300-page, 1993 epic of love, class, politics, and just about everything else, all of it set against post-partition India’s roiling transition from colonial raj to independent nation(s) (much of the action takes place in
TODAY: In 1914, D. H. Lawrence weds Frieda Weekley. “History is not written just by acts of war and feats of conquest, nor should it be commemorated only in the monuments erected by its victors.” Sofia Perez travels through Spain as it grapples with its Fascist past. | Lit Hub Travel Estelle Laure reminds us
July 10, 2020, 10:40am I am clearly a coastal elite out of touch with how people really read* because I did not know there’s a robust, overcrowded field of sports-themed romance novels. This is one of the things I learned in this feature at The Athletic about one former ad executive’s marketing-driven entrance into the
July 10, 2020, 12:22pm Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust, the man perennially in search of lost time, was born on this day in 1871. The ruminative frenchman is of course best known for his mammoth seven-volume novel À la recherche du temps perdu, in which the taste of a madeleine, and the involuntary memory
TODAY: In 1558, playwright Robert Greene, a man of sour temperament who, it is believed, deeply resented Shakespeare’s success, is born. Freedom means can rather than should: Gabrielle Bellot on what the Harper’s open letter gets wrong. | Lit Hub Politics “She makes the supernatural natural, the natural real and radiant.” James Lefenstey on Louise Erdrich, who salvages wisdom
July 10, 2020, 12:24pm The owners of Greenlight Bookstore, which has two Brooklyn locations, came forward this week to take responsibility for “negative experiences of Black customers and employees in our stores” with a commitment to improving. In an open letter published Wednesday, co-owners Rebecca Fitting and Jessica Stockton-Bagnulo acknowledged that Black customers and employees
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle enjoys a new lexicon of useful words for troubled times We live in strange and worrying times. If hindsight, as Billy Wilder once said, is always 20:20, then our own hindsight on 2020 will surely be dominated by widespread unrest, a global pandemic, and
Many of you have already heard the awful news that brilliant and beloved and longtime Norton author Brad Watson—who wrote with the most extraordinary and profound awareness of the beautiful and cursed human body and its frailties—died suddenly of an apparent heart attack at 64 years old. He was my first Norton author. I had
TODAY: In 1931, Alice Munro, pictured here with Marilynne Robinson at 92Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center in 1983, is born. “The exiled and returned of Fukushima find themselves cornered again by the pandemic.” Yu Miri’s view from the railways of Japan. | Lit Hub The rise of the feminized city: Leslie Kern on women, gentrification, and
July 9, 2020, 4:21pm It’s the audio version that I want. Wouldn’t you? Mariah Carey’s memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, is set to come out this fall. Carey herself will be reading the audiobook, which will feature occasional musical interludes. Carey’s career has had its highs and lows (let’s be honest, though, like 90% highs),
TODAY: In 1893, American journalist and radio broadcaster Dorothy Thompson is born. Freedom means can rather than should: Gabrielle Bellot on what the Harper’s open letter gets wrong. | Lit Hub Politics “Here you can feel the relief, like something ended and we survived, but it’s clear to me that nothing’s over yet.” Dolores Dorantes and Ben Ehrenreich
Slavery has been much in the news and on social media lately, so we thought we’d do something that’s long overdue here at Interesting Literature: share some of the most powerful, damning, and emotionally moving poems about slavery and the plight of African slaves over the centuries, from poets writing both in Britain and America,
July 8, 2020, 3:25pm Authors including Colson Whitehead, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., and Adam Rutherford are cancelling events at the Free Library of Philadelphia over complaints from Black employees that they have been mistreated and undervalued there. An open letter from Black employees says that “Black staff routinely experience racial discrimination, harassment, microaggressions, and other
Monuments often lie. Political elites erect them in the name of one sanctioned collective narrative or another, and they come down by violence or by decree as historical winds shift. In 1776 American patriots toppled an equestrian statue of King George. Not one of the thousands of statues of Lenin that were once all over