Literature

TODAY: In 1918, Doris Grumbach, writer, critic, and literary editor of The New Republic for several years, is born.     Also on Lit Hub: On loving and fictionalizing Ruth Bader Ginsburg • Andrew Ridker on writing about the recent past • Read from Maud Ventura’s newly translated novel, My Husband (tr. Emma Ramadan)

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The peace which passeth understanding’ has become a well-known biblical phrase, and it originates in a couple of verses found in St. Paul’s epistle to the Philippians. In Philippians 4:6-7, we read: Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests

July 11, 2023, 1:48pm Sixty-three years ago today, a young Alabama writer by the name of Nelle Harper Lee published her debut novel: a Southern Gothic-adjacent bildungsroman about racial injustice and familial love in the American South. In the months leading up to publication, Lee’s editors at Lippincott were keen to manage expectations, telling the

July 11, 2023, 7:58am It’s another Tuesday in a sweltering July, and for those of us trying to beat the heat—especially the chthonic, oven-like warmth of New York’s subway tunnels—finding somewhere cool can feel almost transcendentally delightful. What makes a cool place even lovelier? A new book, of course, and today, there are many exciting

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Courtship of Mr Lyon’, which was originally published in the British version of Vogue magazine, is a 1979 short story by Angela Carter (1940-92). The story was later collected in Carter’s 1979 book The Bloody Chamber. Like most of the stories in The Bloody Chamber, ‘The Courtship of

July 10, 2023, 3:18pm This fall, hundreds of books owned by Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts will go up for auction at legendary London auction house Christie’s. In case you didn’t know (I didn’t), Watts, who died in 2021 at the age of 80, was a devoted bibliophile and collector; Christie’s describes the cache, which

It’s 1965. Truman Capote was a known figure on the literary scene and a member of the global social jet set. His bestselling books Other Voices, Other Rooms and Breakfast at Tiffany’s had made him a literary favorite. And after five years of painstaking research, and gut-wrenching personal investment, part I of In Cold Blood

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) The Book of Hosea is one of the twelve short prophetic books which conclude the canonical Old Testament. For this reason, Hosea is often known as one of the ‘minor’ prophets, because this book, and the other eleven short books which make up ‘the twelve’, are less lengthy and

In the fall of 2012, I said goodbye to my thirteen-year-old cat, Snowflake. The grief was breathtaking, in a literal sense: it took the wind out of me. I had tried to brace myself, but I’ve since learned that it’s impossible to prepare. In the days and weeks that followed, I couldn’t focus and barely

July 7, 2023, 10:10am This week I’ve been pressing my degrees together between my tented fingers to figure out how a book that I did not recommend—nor did any other Critic—became a bestseller. How? I’m led to believe that someone named Colleen Hoover simply started publishing books from Texas, of all places, and, 23 books

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’ is one of many classic songs by the Manchester group The Smiths. More than this, it is one of many classic songs to appear on a single album, The Queen Is Dead (1986), the album which represented the peak of the band’s success and powers. On

July 7, 2023, 11:17am AI can’t “learn” unless it has something to train on. Authors Mona Awad and Paul Tremblay are suing OpenAI on the grounds that ChatGPT, an OpenAI product, used their copyrighted material to improve the model, reports The Guardian: Books are ideal for training large language models because they tend to contain

TODAY: In 1923, Nella Larsen graduates from the NYPL’s Library School and becomes the first professionally trained Black librarian.    How Franz Kafka achieved cult status in Cold War America: Brian K. Goodman traces the origins of the term “Kafkaesque.” | Lit Hub Criticism “I am almost always the main character in my stories of my parents’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Ye cannot serve God and mammon’. This is one of many famous Bible quotations. Indeed, it is one of many famous quotations from the New Testament. More specifically, it is one of many famous quotations from a single moment in the New Testament: the Sermon on the Mount. But

July 7, 2023, 11:59am Yu and Me Books opened in December 2021 on Mulberry Street in Manhattan’s Chinatown, and was named for owner Lucy Yu’s mother. It was the first Asian-American woman-owned bookstore on the island. Following a July 4, 2023, fire in a neighboring residential unit, the store has lost most of its inventory

At first glance, director and screenwriter Celine Song’s debut film, Past Lives, seems to be made specifically for someone like me: an Asian American female writer, a resident of a large East city, an aging millennial obsessed with the film’s lead actress, Greta “Sweet Birthday Baby” Lee. But this first-blush recognition of myself in Nora

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Written by George Michael in 1979 when he was still a teenager, ‘Careless Whisper’ became a number one hit in 1984 on both sides of the Atlantic, topping both the UK and US singles charts. This song, which remains a karaoke and dancefloor classic, is beloved by millions; yet

July 6, 2023, 3:44pm On a beautiful Sunday at the end of April, I attended an illustrious event at Downtown Manhattan’s Metrograph movie theater: a screening of the Paul Schrader classic 2017 film First Reformed followed by a discussion with Schrader, himself. But this was more than a special showing, it was a celebration commemorating