TODAY: In 1936, Rudyard Kipling, who in 1907, at the age of 42, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize, dies.
- Rebecca Solnit on life in the dark timeline and the 20 million missing people that could save America. | Literary Hub
- The literature of bad sex: Hermione Hoby considers the contemporary canon. | Literary Hub
- When your feminist dystopia becomes a work of realism: Leni Zumas in conversation with Maddie Crum. | Literary Hub
- On Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, in which “the prospect of an apocalypse and the destruction of self not a horror so much as the finally ecstasy of power.” | Book Marks
- “Angry women are messier. Their pain threatens to cause more collateral damage.” Leslie Jamison on female rage. | New York Times Magazine
- Margaret Atwood, Sarah Perry, Helen Dunmore, Naomi Alderman: Female writers dominated the literary bestseller lists in the UK last year. | The Guardian
- “It is not surprising that his plays are not well liked in America. They are, to put it bluntly, nightmares.” On Wallace Shawn’s underrecognized genius. | Longreads
- We might justifiably assume the Mad Hatter has mercury poisoning, but what other disorders might the text plausibly present? A neuroscientific reading of Alice in Wonderland. | Open Culture
- Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury will be adapted into a television show, increasing the chances that the President will be able to understand what’s in it. | Variety
- “Sidewalk lines do not want to be solved. They are intentional—cultivated, managed, bred like show dogs.” Jamie Lauren Keiles on the psychology of waiting in line, from George Orwell’s “The English People” to today’s sneakerheads. | Racked
- Lupita Nyong’o is set to publish her debut children’s book Sulwe, or star, about a 5-year-old girl growing up in Kenya and struggling with self-consciousness over her dark skin. | The New York Times
Also on Literary Hub: Finding yourself through food: On Alice B. Toklas and her radical cookbook · After the memoir: Molly Caro May is a different person now from the one on the page · Read from The Last Days of Oscar Wilde by John Vanderslice
