TODAY: In 1926, Agatha Christie disappears from her home in Surrey; on December 14 she is found staying at a Harrogate hotel (under her husband’s mistress’s surname).
- Like many previous Dickinson drops, going back to the eighteen-nineties, they radically alter our vision of perhaps the greatest poet to write on American soil:” On Emily Dickinson’s envelope poems. | The New Yorker
- “As a refugee from Vietnam, a country the United States bombed, mined, and laced with Agent Orange for years, I have doubts about America’s core goodness.” Viet Thanh Nguyen on Henry Kissinger and American exceptionalism. | The Atlantic
- Keep in view how and why we’ve come so far: On Albert Murray’s “blues idiom worldview” and reconstructions of American identity. | New Republic
- She likes ignoring reality: A collaborative novella by Shelly Oria & Alice Sola Kim. | WeTransfer
- Henrietta Rose-Innes on time-warp experiences, inevitable cycles of change, and embracing dysfunction. | Electric Literature
- Before the thousands of best of the year lists emerge, recommendations of the best books to read in December. | Vulture, Flavorwire
- The scale of individual lives in the Anthropocene: On The Argonauts, A Little Life, and the problem of futurity. | Los Angeles Review of Books
- On two anthologies looking at the Black Power movement, “the movement that most closely mirrors the current rise of activism, outspokenness and unabashed blackness,” on its 50th anniversary. | The New York Times
- “No other American writer since William Faulkner, and perhaps Philip Roth… has made such a determined effort to create a universe out of a community, to transform everyday biographies into epic history.” On John Edgar Wideman’s most recent book. | The Nation
- “Although there are bleak times ahead, we must remember that for most of us America was never paradise.” A reading list for our current political climate. | The New Inquiry
- “Literary critics have emphasized ‘de’ words, like ‘debunk’ and ‘deconstruct.’ But they’ve shortchanged ‘re” words—literature’s capacity to reshape and recharge perception.” On the suspicion inherent in literary studies. | The Chronicle of Higher Education
- From Clarice Lispector to Nell Zink, 60 books by women to correct gender-imbalanced lists of the past. | The Times Literary Supplement
- “Here is only a small sample of their testimony, a sampling of how this organization has changed so many folk’s lives, and how they have evolved since the first meeting of Black poetic minds in the town of Esopus, New York in 1996.” Reflecting on 10 years of Cave Canem. | Harriet
- “Unlike bad sex, which is often obviously recognizable, bad sex writing can be hard to define.” Talking with the spokesperson of the Bad Sex Awards about where erotic literature frequently goes wrong. | Broadly
And on Literary Hub:
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Baffling omissions from the NY Times’ 100 Notable Books list · Miriam Toews on the conflicts that arise from Mennonites’ non-conflict · 10 dystopian novels to inspire you to fight for your reproductive freedoms · The world’s oldest library: founded by a woman, restored by a woman · Rep. John Lewis: ‘Read everything. Be kind. Be bold.’ · Robert Macfarlane reflects on what you give when you give a book · I was a ghostwriter for a ghostwriter: On time spent in a memoir factory · A feminist Thoreau: On the Adirondack woodswoman Anne LaBastille · Storytelling vs. oversharing in the age of Snapchat · Trevor Noah on growing up in South Africa under apartheid
