Lit Hub Daily: February 21, 2023

TODAY: In 1925, the first issue of The New Yorker is published.  

• A brief history of the lobotomy, and how the so-called “miracle cure” impacted the Kennedys and Tennessee Williams. | Lit Hub Science

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• 12 new books to snap up this week. | The Hub

• Gregory Pardlo considers James Weldon Johnson’s poetry collection God’s Trombones: “Johnson was writing at a time when ‘the souls of Black folks’ were very much at stake.” | Lit Hub Religion

• From nuncheon to pumpernickel to an Alice B. Toklas brownie, Judith Tschann explores the etymology of lunch. | Lit Hub Food

• Gaze upon the most beautiful libraries in the world. | Electric Lit

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• “Incuriosity is thriving at the moment. People seem incredibly proud of publicly renouncing critical thinking.” Papi weighs in on what to do if you hate your writing group. | The Cut

• Jim Ruland goes behind-the-scenes at Gillian Flynn Books. | Los Angeles Times

• Read “The Flawed Concept of Coupledom,” a short story by Argentinian poet, writer, and translator Cecilia Pavón. | The MIT Press Reader

• “One thing about Keats that’s worth saying is that his posthumous existence is ongoing, and a lot of people experience Keats as a living and vibrant pressure on their own lives.” Anahid Nersessian discusses Keats’s odes. | LARB

• New editions of Roald Dahl’s children’s books have been altered to eliminate words deemed inappropriate. (Cue backlash.) | The New York Times

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Also on Lit Hub: Jai Chakrabarti takes the Lit Hub Questionnaire • What our fear of wolves tells us about ourselves • Read a story from Asja Bakic’s newly translated collection, Sweetlust (tr. Jennifer Zoble)

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