TODAY: In 1860, author, advocate for Oscar Wilde, and “distinguished pornographer” Rachilde is born.
On Dracula’s lost Icelandic sister text, Powers of Darkness · A running list of books that are selling more copies because of Trump (and a plea to not waste any on him) · 10 great novels on freedom of expression that aren’t 1984 · Introducing our new column, Librarians in the 21st Century · What remains when your first language fades away: On losing a mother tongue · On Search Party, Raymond Chandler, and noir as the ideal genre for the millennial story · How fiction tackles global economic uncertainty · Vietnamese and Vietnamese-American lit: A primer from Viet Thanh Nguyen · The people in his life and in his books: A look at James Baldwin’s dedications · Reading across America: A new series on literary community
- “I grew up inhabiting a myth in which I was both enforcer and actor: the myth of a single and unique America.” Raoul Peck’s introduction to I Am Not Your Negro. | Guernica
- “The man was elected President. Ipso facto, America is this, we are this.” Rabih Alameddine on the aftermath of the election. | The New Yorker
- On the collected letters of Ernest Hemingway, “not one of literature’s great letter writers.” | The Times Literary Supplement
- Veering between fiction and fact: On the current state of the South African novel. | Public Books
- On Lydia Davis’ and Jhumpa Lahiri’s recent attempts to learn new languages in precisely opposite manners. | The Millions
- My blessing and my curse is that I’m an empathy: An interview with Naomi Jackson. | The Rumpus
- “Nothing just comes. It’s all rehearsed.” A short story by Gordon Lish. | Granta
- A judge in Virginia has ordered five teenagers who were caught defacing a historic black schoolhouse with racist and anti-Semitic graffiti to watch 14 films, visit two museums, and read 35 books—including The Color Purple, Native Son, and Night. | The Guardian
- “You can always survive bad times more than you think you can when they start, when ‘thus bad begins.’” A conversation with Javier Marías. | Los Angeles Review of Books
- The art of translation is undergoing a renaissance: 20 up-and-coming translators under 40. | Culture Trip
- Another piece on the death of the novel (or, more specifically, “on the decline in the public’s investment in literature as a cultural phenomenon.”) | Overland
- From Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men to Nella Larsen’s Quicksand, 7 of the best books to come out of the Harlem Renaissance. | Signature Reads
- Two new biographies of George Orwell attempt to separate the man from the symbol. | London Review of Books
- An interactive map of 51 poets who immigrated to the United States, from the countries banned by Donald Trump and beyond. | My Poetic Side
- Librarians are combating fake news by teaching students to “fight through lies, distortion and trickery to find their way to truth.” | Seattle News
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