Literature

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) The quotation ‘blessed are the peacemakers’ appears in the Sermon on the Mount, the address made by Jesus Christ to his followers, and recorded in the Gospels. This one speech (although, as discussed in this analysis of Jesus’ sermon, it may well have been a collection of sayings and

June 16, 2023, 12:05pm History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. Happy Bloomsday to all who celebrate! Did you know that iconic mid-century American literary critic/Nabokov frenemy No. 1 Edmund Wilson reviewed James Joyce’s Ulysses upon its publication in 1922? You did? Well, good for you. As Joyce’s magnum opus celebrates

TODAY: In 1914, James Joyce’s Dubliners is published, in a run of 1250 copies. Though it debuted to generally positive reviews, in its first year, the book sold only 499 copies—one short of Joyce being able to contractually profit from it.   Weird wild stuff: Ann Beattie close-reads Frederick Barthelme’s story “Box Step,” featuring the underworld,

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Burning Chrome’ is a 1982 short story by the author William Gibson, who is widely considered the father of cyberpunk. The story was first published in the science-fiction magazine Omni before being collected in Gibson’s first short-story collection, which is also called Burning Chrome. This story – which is

June 15, 2023, 1:12pm Sound too good to be true? Well I have news for you, dear aspiring writer, you can get yourself a phone call or a manuscript critique from a fancy literary agent by bidding at this year’s Literary Agents of Change Auction.  The LAOC is an organization that believes that advancing the

June 14, 2023, 3:20pm Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. Thirty-seven years ago today, Jorge Luis

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘What My Child Learns of the Sea’ is a 1963 poem by the African-American poet Audre Lorde (1934-92), which was later included in her 1968 collection The First Cities. Lorde was a self-described ‘Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.’ Lorde wrote ‘What My Child Learns of the Sea’ when her

TODAY: In 1986, Jorge Luis Borges dies at 86.     Remembering the Great American Writer Cormac McCarthy, who died yesterday at 89. | Lit Hub “I wish I could say my leg fought in a war, or had a drug problem, or escaped a polygamist cult, or smoked cigarettes with Gertrude Stein in Paris.” Greg

Cormac McCarthy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning genius behind such indelible American novels as Suttree, Blood Meridian, and The Road, along with his most accessible work, The Border Trilogy, has died in Santa Fe at age 89. Too often touted as a successor to the gothic modernism of William Faulkner, McCarthy plotted his own unique linguistic routes

‘The Prologue’ is a poem by Anne Bradstreet (c. 1612-72), who was the first poet, male or female, from America to have a book of poems published: The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America appeared in 1650. Bradstreet’s ‘The Prologue’: background This poem is known as ‘The Prologue’ (or sometimes simply ‘Prologue’) because it

June 13, 2023, 1:16pm Monday, June 12th, began with two literature-related tweets. One noted the replacement of newspapers in a bodega with a wall of Welch’s fruit gummies. “This says a lot about society,” went the tweet, which to be frank I don’t have a read on. The other was a video post from Elizabeth

The initial rush of deadline at the newspaper usually started to recede in the late afternoon, and that is when I set out for school. I headed down the corridor where Boston’s major hospitals were clustered, then cut across the wide manicured green lawn at the heart of Harvard Medical School. Before entering class, I

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) What does the word ‘sinister’ have to do with being left-handed? And what was the meaning of the word ‘ambidextrous’ when it was first coined? And what do these two questions have to do with each other? Let’s take a closer look at the interesting origins of the word

June 12, 2023, 9:32am Last week, Elizabeth Gilbert announced the forthcoming publication of The Snow Forest, a novel set in Siberia about a family who flee Soviet forces, escaping to the forest where they “protect nature against industrialization.” After an “overwhelming” response from the Ukrainian diaspora over the weekend, Gilbert announced on Twitter on Monday

A famous fellow British author, a Catholic no less, lived in Monaco, twenty miles from Greene’s apartment. Anthony Burgess and Graham Greene knew one another, yet seldom socialized. Still, Burgess remained a faithful acolyte to Greene’s high priest. He applauded Greene’s books in reviews and on TV talk shows and at literary festivals. Burgess dedicated

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Still I Rise’ is one of Maya Angelou’s best-loved and most widely studied poems. It’s an affirmative poem about the power of the self, as well as a poem which celebrates the speaker’s strength and her ability to overcome the prejudices and setbacks she has experienced in her life.

Anne Berest, the author of The Postcard—one of the most acclaimed and beloved French novels of recent years—came to Books & Books and dazzled a room full of readers. Let’s join those readers on this episode of The Literary Life. From the episode: Brenda Diaz de la Vega: There’s a precise date in the book:

TODAY: In 1870, Charles Dickens dies at 58.   “I felt that the real barrier between us was that between the cradle Catholic and the convert.” Why Graham Greene and Anthony Burgess went from literary friends to enemies. | Lit Hub Biography Between the river and the sea: Randall Sullivan on surviving a near-death experience on