Literature

August 11, 2023, 10:49am Fast-moving wildfires damaged much of Lahaina, the capital of the Kingdom of Hawai’i, this week, as well as locales up and down the west coast of Maui. Priceless cultural artifacts and buildings were destroyed or damaged, including Lahaina Public Library, which was built in 1956 on a former royal taro patch

London, April 1977 When I turn up at the offices of Arista Records to interview Lou Reed for the first time, I’m taken aside and told quite firmly that certain questions I may have for Lou are off-limits. I’m particularly discouraged from asking, for instance, anything about The Velvet Underground, David Bowie, Andy Warhol, the

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Here’s a question for you. When the word ‘virus’ was first used in English, what did it mean? Let’s make it a little easier by making the quiz multiple-choice. Did ‘virus’ originally mean: a) venom or poisonb) violent animosityc) semend) an infectious agent? Most people might plump for d),

August 10, 2023, 3:01pm What do you even do with a caul? That’s a question that The Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy (“July, July, Julaaaaaaay”) asked himself while reading the beginning of David Copperfield, in which David is born en caul—in his amniotic sac—and the family auctions the remnants off as a good luck totem. The

The following is from la Genberg’s English language debut The Details. Genberg began her writing career as a journalist and is the author of novels Sweet Friday, Belated Farewell, and Small Comfort, and one short story collection. She lives in Sweden. Kira Josefsson is a writer, editor, and literary translator working between English and Swedish.

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) To ‘delude’ someone is to trick, cheat, or deceive them, although the word’s origins are interesting. It’s derived from the prefix de- and the Latin verb lūdere meaning ‘to play’: the same root which also gave us interlude, allusion, and even the game, Ludo (meaning ‘I play’). This explains

Children’s books, comics, puzzles, toy cars, soccer balls, illustrations, the lyrics of songs and lullabies: taken together, the stories in Michele Mari’s You, Bleeding Childhood represent a cataloguing of objects and texts, a crystallization—through the most personal artifacts—of a childhood, and with it, a life. A literary project such as this could no doubt be

I’ve always loved the novella, which Henry James called “the beautiful and blessed nouvelle” and which Joyce Carol Oats deemed “the most difficult, at least for me” of “all the literary prose forms.” Its length makes it seem grander and more important than a mere short story, while its brevity means that the reader can

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Sometimes, writers get undue credit for coining particular words. Did Shakespeare really ‘invent’ the word ‘alligator’? Or ‘puking’? Or is his use of these words simply the earliest use we have (or at least, have found) on record? (Indeed, in the case of ‘alligator’ Shakespeare’s isn’t even the earliest

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Let’s begin with a quiz question: what is the title of the poem in which the phrase ‘dark Satanic Mills’ appears? Is it a) ‘Jerusalem’ or b) Milton? Most people would probably go for a), but although we know commonly know William Blake’s poem (or the words to the

August 7, 2023, 12:29pm Good news for Carley Fortune, who put just the right mix of trauma (a parent lost in a deadly car crash, postpartum depression) and love (love) in her bestselling 2023 romantic novel Meet Me At The Lake, and has reportedly sold film rights to the production company Archewell Foundation $3.8 million,

The following is from David Connor’s debut novel Oh God, the Sun Goes. Connor studied at Pomona College and the California Institute of the Arts, where he was the recipient of the William H. Ahmanson Endowed Scholarship Award. He lives in New York City and Montreal, Canada. A metal object moves through a cloud, emerges

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Eyes Do More Than See’ is a very short story by Isaac Asimov (1920-92), which originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in April 1965. Background The story had a curious genesis. In 1964, Playboy magazine (which published serious fiction as well as erotic stories and

August 4, 2023, 11:23am Today’s news from the front lines of Florida’s war on kids: The state has “effectively banned” Advanced Placement Psychology because its anti-LGBTQ law forbids the course’s material on gender and sexuality. Because the College Board quite reasonably refuses to excise sections acknowledging the full spectrum of gender and sexual orientation to

August 4, 2023, 11:26am Waaaaariorrrrrs! Come out to play-ayyyyy! Everybody might be packed, but it’s hard to imagine how it would be possible to improve on Walter Hill’s 1979 cult classic The Warriors, based on the novel of the same name by Sol Yurick, which was published in 1965 (and which was itself loosely based on

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Reading’ is a chapter from Henry David Thoreau’s 1854 book Walden; or, Life in the Woods. The book details Thoreau’s decision to leave behind modern civilisation and live a simple life in the woods in Massachusetts. In ‘Reading’, Thoreau laments the fact that his fellow citizens of Concord in

TODAY: In 1959, Edgar Guest, a British-born American poet who became known as the People’s Poet, dies at 77.    Victoria Gosling interrogates the legend of King Arthur: “Is Arthur why Britain, despite its history, continues to see itself as the good guy?” | Lit Hub Criticism Wylie Dufresne on the fun, never-ending process of becoming a chef.

August 4, 2023, 12:04pm Michael Chabon—the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Wonder Boys, and The Yiddish Policeman’s Union—spent his Covid quarantine taking a trip…through time! Well, not literally, but in an emotional and curatorial sense, the speculative fiction maestro can now be considered a time traveller. Yes, as reported