TODAY: In 1933, U.S. federal judge John M. Woolsey rules that James Joyce’s novel Ulysses is not obscene. “In many places it seems to me to be disgusting,” but nothing, he added, had been included in it as “dirt for dirt sake.”
- Ursula K. Le Guin: who cares about the Great American Novel? | Literary Hub
- Is it too late to save the Internet from itself? Andrew Keen in conversation with Noam Cohen. | Literary Hub
- Short stories are not quick literary fixes: Brandon Taylor has some issues with the so-called attention economy. | Literary Hub
- As holiday party season hits full swing, Szilvia Molnar has some thoughts on drinking culture in publishing. | Literary Hub
- Vox’s culture critic Constance Grady on The Handmaid’s Tale, Lolita, and portraits of high school sociopathy. | Book Marks
- Why it’s time for a sexual harassment reckoning in the publishing industry—and why it hasn’t happened yet. | Bitch Media
- “As I read her words, I experienced a feeling previously unknown to me: recognition.” On reading (and meeting) Maxine Hong Kingston. | Catapult
- NPR picks 350 of their very favorite books from the year. | NPR
- Eater’s cookbook of the year is Julia Turshen’s Feed the Resistance, which continues a tradition of progressive recipe collections reaching back to the women’s suffrage movement. | Eater
- We need new cultural scripts: Larissa Pham speaks with Vanessa Grigoriadis, author of Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power, and Consent on Campus. | Guernica
- “I associated Bukowski with condescension, infidelity, and a sheer unwillingness to sexually satisfy a woman.” On finally reading (and still disliking) Charles Bukowski. | Electric Literature
- Nude revelers drinking from a cat fountain? Inside Salvador Dalí’s 1977 illustrated wine bible. | Atlas Obscura
Also on Literary Hub: When the US government leveraged the love of Sylvia Plath · On the loss of ecstasy and rise of managerialism in the art world · An excerpt from the final work by Sam Shepard
