TODAY: In 1998, William Gaddis dies.
- “The truest time of all, Berger might say—the time we feel the most deeply—is the kind of time we can’t measure on a clock at all.” Gabrielle Bellot on John Berger’s final work. | Lit Hub
- “Dracula is highly aroused.” Just in time for the holidays, here is Werner Herzog’s prose script for Nosferatu the Vampyre (to be read aloud in his voice, obviously). | Lit Hub Film
- Confessions of an undercover novelist: Abigail Hing Wen on finding the familial balance between practicality and creativity. | Lit Hub Craft
- On the Nazi hunters who worked to bring Hitler’s hidden army to justice in America. | Lit Hub History
- Meet Richard Sorge, a bad man who became a truly great spy. | Lit Hub History
- “Plenty of horror filmmakers have wrestled with monsters. Fessenden took on one that he knew he couldn’t beat.” On The Last Winter, and the rise of environmental dystopias at the movies. | Lit Hub Film
- Samanta Schweblin’s Mouthful of Birds, Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police, and Svetlana Alexievich’s Last Witnesses all feature among the Best Reviewed Literature in Translation of 2019. | Book Marks Best of 2019
- Alexander Chee on The Stonewall Reader, Parul Sehgal on The Nickel Boys, Andrea Long Chu on Bret Easton Ellis, and more of the 10 Best Book Reviews of 2019. | Book Marks Best of 2019. | Book Marks
- “Yes, it is self-involved.” On the art and etiquette of gifting books. | The Guardian
- A breakthrough review of On the Road “changed the course of literary history.” | The Washington Post
- How did Scrooge become Scrooge? A new Christmas Carol TV adaptation delves into the character’s past. | The New York Times
- “Being a creative person is one of the greatest privileges I can imagine.” Attica Locke on confidence, cowboy boots, political activism. | The Financial Times
- The Game of Thrones creators are adapting a graphic novel about the mind of H.P. Lovecraft for film. But will they address the author’s well-known racism and bigotry? | Vanity Fair
- From an ongoing row over the Booker Prize to criticisms of the Nobel Prize for Literature, 2019 has been a contentious year for global literary awards. | Livemint
- Publishers depend on libraries to raise awareness about new books—so why don’t we have better data on about their role in the reading marketplace? | Publishers Weekly
Also on Lit Hub: William Pierce on grief, intimacy, and renewal • Finding a beautiful escape in illuminated manuscripts • Read an excerpt from Shirley Hazzard’s 2003 novel The Great Fire.
