Literature

‘The Bowl’ is not one of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s best-known short stories, but it is a notable work which deals with the themes of fame, football, and envy, among other things. Written in 1927 and published a year later in the Saturday Evening Post, ‘The Bowl’ is about a college football player who meets a

TODAY: In 1949, a Danish-born Norwegian novelist Sigrid Undset dies at 67.   “Every novelist’s life has taken place during times of turmoil.” Jane Smiley considers how the essay and the novel inform each other. | Lit Hub Criticism Nick de Semlyen reveals the literary roots of Die Hard (yes, your favorite Christmas movie is based on a book). |

The Columbia River Bar is the violent meeting of the twelve-hundred-mile-long Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean, the site of over 2,000 shipwrecks. Thirty-three tributaries feed the Big River with rainwater in the ninety miles between the Willamette and the Pacific Ocean, and by late May and early June the flow of the lower Columbia

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Flying Machine’ is a 1953 short story by Ray Bradbury, included in his collection The Golden Apples of the Sun. Often analysed as an allegory for nuclear proliferation during the Cold War, ‘The Flying Machine’ is in fact a subtler story than this critique implies, and so its

June 9, 2023, 11:21am The trailer opens with Richard E. Grant growling that “great writers … steal” (Aaron Sorkin stole it first). There are dark slashes of cello in the nondiagetic that let us know The Lesson will be a dark film about a novelist. Do writers invent characters, or do they kill them and

June 8, 2023, 1:13pm Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood. George Orwell’s dystopian masterwork, Nineteen Eight-Four, was first published seventy-four years ago today. Set in a totalitarian London in an imagined future where all citizens are subject to constant government surveillance and historical reeducation, Nineteen Eighty-Four tells

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Few songs of the 1960s, outside of The Beatles’ later output, has perhaps inspired more head-scratching than Procol Harum’s 1967 hit ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’. Even the band’s name is likely to invite puzzled looks from people who first encounter it. Who, or what, is a ‘procol harum’?

June 8, 2023, 12:33pm Today in word news: Apple will finally stop autocorrecting swears! As many people have pointed out to me via the comment section of this website and also emails sent through my personal website (thanks, guys), I swear a lot, so this is great news for me. Although it’s easy enough to

June 7, 2023, 10:44am There was no prior announcement, but an assessment took place yesterday on the internet of our collective worth, a kind of Internet Speed Test for our souls. New Yorker writer Hannah Williams posted a screencap of Anne Carson’s 2017 POEM “Saturday Night As An Adult,” with the caption: “Think about this

What was the Trojan Horse? The Trojan Horse the hollow wooden horse in which Greek soldiers concealed themselves so they could enter Troy without arousing suspicion. The Trojan Horse was offered to the city of Troy as a gift, but when the Trojans took the wooden horse inside the city gates, the Greeks who had

Hosted by Andrew Keen, Keen On features conversations with some of the world’s leading thinkers and writers about the economic, political, and technological issues being discussed in the news, right now. In this episode, Andrew talks to Jordan Crandall, the author of Autodrive, about the imminent age of superintelligence in which we will won’t be

This summer’s Official Online Brand may be up in the air (may I suggest “Long Nap Summer”?), but one thing is for sure: there are many, many books coming out. Which one deserves space in your beach bag or air-conditioned brain? We at Literary Hub have our opinions, but perhaps you simply want to make

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Call Me Maybe’ is the best-known song by the Canadian singer-songwriter Carly Rae Jepsen. This 2011 song began life as a folk song, written by Jepsen and Tavish Crowe. It’s about a girl who sees a boy she likes; she gives him her phone number and tells him to

June 6, 2023, 10:31am Not infrequently, in the course of my work here at Literary Hub, I find myself scouring through Adobe Stock Photos, looking for images to use or adapt. Luckily, there are plenty of cool and useful literary stock photos and illustrations in the Adobe library. There are also some deeply deranged ones.

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Tyger’ is one of the best-known poems of the poet and engraver William Blake (1757-1827), but in many ways it is a mysterious, even inscrutable poem which views the tiger with both awe and horror. A number of lines in the poem carry the force of an incantation,

Festival season has officially been kickstarted with the Cannes Film Festival, a glamorous 11-day event held in the South of France where thousands of celebrities, filmmakers, industry members, and cinephiles gather every May to celebrate the most anticipated titles of the year. Among the hundreds of films programmed across several sections, a handful are based

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) The word ‘busy’ is commonly used to describe hectic or frenetic activity: someone who is busy has a great deal to do, perhaps too much. They are actively engaged in something and conducting a great deal of activity. The word is from a Germanic root meaning ‘useful’ or ‘occupied’,

Strictly speaking, it would be inaccurate to describe Shirley Hazzard as neglected. All her work is still very much in print, and few who’ve read any of it would dare deny that they’re encountering a formidable talent. She’s also been awarded a number of impressive accolades: her third novel, The Transit of Venus (1980), won