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Ed Simon

Ed Simon
Ed Simon is the Public Humanities Special Faculty in the English Department of Carnegie Mellon University, a staff writer for Lit Hub, and the editor of Belt Magazine. His most recent book is Devil's Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain, the first comprehensive, popular account of that subject.
http://edsimon.org


L. Frank Baum’s Literary Vision of an American Century: The Wizard of Oz at 125 Years

Ed Simon on Grifters, the Chicago World Fair, and Oz as Symbol of a Modern USA
May 16, 2025  By Ed Simon
3 Comments

American Literature’s White Whale: Why the “Great American Novel” is Still Worth Pursuing

Ed Simon on the Importance of Chasing an Elusive Literary Ideal in an Era of National Decline
April 2, 2025  By Ed Simon
5 Comments

Punk, Poet, Prophet: In Praise of the Late, Great Shane MacGowan

Ed Simon on One of Music’s Great Lyricists  
March 17, 2025  By Ed Simon
0 Comments

In Praise of Wonder Boys (Both the Book AND the Movie)

Ed Simon on Michael Chabon’s Iconic Campus Novel at 30
February 25, 2025  By Ed Simon
5 Comments

“Anarchism Means That You Should Be Free.” On the Literature of Liberation

Ed Simon Considers the Life Alexander Berkman, Anarchist, Would-Be Assassin, and 19th-Century Luigi Mangione
January 27, 2025  By Ed Simon
3 Comments

How Walter Benjamin’s Iconic Antifascist Essay Escaped Europe

Ed Simon on the Enduring Political Relevance of Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History”
December 13, 2024  By Ed Simon
4 Comments

In Praise of Print: Why Reading Remains Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

Ed Simon on What Sven Birkerts Got Right in “The Guttenberg Elegies”
November 25, 2024  By Ed Simon
0 Comments

Deadly Sins and Heavenly Virtues: On the Timeless Duality of Being Human

Ed Simon Explores the Ways in Which Good and Evil Have Manifested Throughout the Ages
November 15, 2024  By Ed Simon
1 Comment

Exhuming Dracula’s Ancestors: What Vampires Reveal About Our Latent Fears

Ed Simon Explores the History and Tradition of Unearthing the Long-Buried Past in Eastern Europe
October 31, 2024  By Ed Simon
6 Comments

Life Imitates Art: On The Sorrows of Young Werther, Moral Panic and the Power of Books

Ed Simon Considers the Phenomenon of Killing Yourself (and Others) in the Name of Literature
September 27, 2024  By Ed Simon
1 Comment

Boccaccio’s Modern Life: What The Decameron Reveals About Contemporary Anxiety

Ed Simon Considers the Act of Storytelling as a Means of Preserving Our Humor and Humanity in Tumultuous Times
August 5, 2024  By Ed Simon
0 Comments

A Deal With the Devil: What the Age-Old Faustian Bargain Reveals About the Modern World

Ed Simon on "The Most Important Story Ever Told," That of Humanity's Transactional Relationship With Evil
July 9, 2024  By Ed Simon
3 Comments

Remembering Samuel Roth, the Bookseller Who Defied America’s Obscenity Laws

Ed Simon on Free Speech, Book Bans and Court-Mandated Censorship, Then and Now
July 3, 2024  By Ed Simon
2 Comments

In Praise of the Paranormal Curiosity of Charles Fort, Patron Saint of Cranks

Ed Simon on the Porous, Ever-Shifting Boundaries Between Science and Speculation
June 10, 2024  By Ed Simon
3 Comments

In Honor of Duke Ellington: Here Are 15 Great Books About Jazz

Ed Simon Recommends Langston Hughes, Dorothy Baker, Geoff Dyer, and More
May 24, 2024  By Ed Simon
3 Comments

The Yinzers of Glasgow: On the Scottish Origins of Pittsburgh’s Unique Dialect

Ed Simon Demystifies and Reclaims Pittsburghese
May 15, 2024  By Ed Simon
13 Comments

The Byronic Revolution of Che Guevara

Ed Simon on the Lives and Legacies of Two Icons of Romanticism and Rebellion
April 19, 2024  By Ed Simon
2 Comments

Jesus Had Needs, Too: On the Sacred Blasphemy of The Last Temptation of Christ

Ed Simon Considers the Literary and Cinematic Representations of Christianity's Chief Paradox
March 29, 2024  By Ed Simon
6 Comments

A Poet Is a Poet Is a Poet: Ed Simon on the Significance of Gertrude Stein’s Subversive Poems

Remembering the Queer Modernist Poet on Her Sesquicentennial
February 5, 2024  By Ed Simon
4 Comments

In Praise of the Tangible Sacredness of the Printed Word

How Physical Copies of Shakespeare's First Folio Cemented the Bard's Legacy
November 13, 2023  By Ed Simon
0 Comments

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