Lit Hub Daily: April 15, 2025
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET
TODAY: In 1755, Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language is published in London.
- “In my careful studies of the Sad Rich Girl genre, I’ve found that the application of ‘Mean Girl’ usually comes down to class.” On Undine Spragg, Becky Sharp, and the mean girls of classic literature. | Lit Hub Craft
- Seán Hewitt meditates on writing fiction inspired by folk music and its constant, changing repository of stories. | Lit Hub Music
- Austin Kelley considers the evolving role of fact-checkers and the (often fruitless) pursuit of truth. | Lit Hub Criticism
- Heather McGowan examines the similarities between filmmaking and novel writing. | Lit Hub Craft
- The 24 new books out today include titles by Ishion Hutchinson, Andre M. Perry, Ariana Reines, and more! | Lit Hub Reading Lists
- “Robert has always been obsessed with displays of physical strength and flexibility—the ultimate counterpoint to his own sense of himself as a brain in a jar.” Dan Nadel on the awkward adolescence of legendary cartoonist Robert Crumb. | Lit Hub Biography
- Heather Christie on losing a rib and writing a memoir: “It makes sense that the act of bringing a demanding book to completion would become metaphorically entwined with my simultaneous medical adventures.” | Lit Hub Memoir
- “We didn’t have air-conditioning at the time—you rarely needed it in southern California—but I remember one day my father went out and came back with a trunk full of electric fans of various sizes and shapes.” Read from Andrew Porter’s novel, The Imagined Life. | Lit Hub Fiction
- Jamieson Webster on the consequences of Wilhelm Reich’s work: “Reich is prophetic of an age when we’re incited to enjoy and enjoy—but wherein everyone, in a perverse twist, feels they are falling short of the enjoyment they could and should be having.” | Broadcast
- Rebecca Johnson asks how closely The Devil Wears Prada captures Anna Wintour. | Dorothy Parker’s Ashes
- Chris Mautner interviews Robert Crumb biographer Dan Nadel. | The Comics Journal
- “That could mean an economy in which the owners of A.I. systems capture most of the rewards, and the rest of us are left with the scraps.” On the Luddites and surviving AI. | The New Yorker
- Mary Harron reflects on adapting American Psycho for the screen. | Salon
- Susan McCabe examines the ecopoetry of Brenda Hillman’s Three Talks, Brandon Som’s Tripas, and Donald Revell’s Canandaigua. | Los Angeles Review of Books
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