The Dark Magic of Words: Why Fascism and Illiberalism Are So Seductive to Writers
Ed Simon Looks at Eduard Limonov, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Yukio Mishima, and Others
June 23, 2025
By Ed Simon
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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.
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
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
Punk, Poet, Prophet: In Praise of the Late, Great Shane MacGowan
Ed Simon on One of Music’s Great Lyricists
In Praise of Wonder Boys (Both the Book AND the Movie)
Ed Simon on Michael Chabon’s Iconic Campus Novel at 30
“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
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”
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”
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
In Honor of Duke Ellington: Here Are 15 Great Books About Jazz
Ed Simon Recommends Langston Hughes, Dorothy Baker, Geoff Dyer, and More
The Yinzers of Glasgow: On the Scottish Origins of Pittsburgh’s Unique Dialect
Ed Simon Demystifies and Reclaims Pittsburghese
The Byronic Revolution of Che Guevara
Ed Simon on the Lives and Legacies of Two Icons of Romanticism and Rebellion
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
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
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