Lit Hub Daily: January 23, 2025
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET
TODAY: In 1883, Gustave Doré, the illustrator whose engravings provided the defining illustrations for many works of literature, dies in Paris.
- On finding the plot to your novel (after you’ve already lost it): “As the character in this story, I’ve evolved at least to this extent: it’s no longer plot I’m afraid of.” | Lit Hub Craft
- “In place of clear conclusions are persistent themes, like recurring notes in a song.” 5 book reviews you need to read this week. | Book Marks
- Are you the asshole if your friend’s autofiction gives you the ick? Kristen Arnett answers this and other questions about awkward literary situations. | Lit Hub Craft
- “i was in croatia / to learn how to be / a contemporary performer.” Read “how to be a contemporary performer,” a poem by Asha Futterman from the collection Empathy. | Lit Hub Poetry
- Hal Brands explores differing strategies, systems, and worldviews to explain how World War II was won. | Lit Hub History
- “Still today the suffering felt from having to weep over a death without being able to honor the corpse is intolerable.” Guido Tonelli on matter, humanity, and our urge to honor the dead. | Lit Hub Religion
- “Kawsar, Juman, and I are standing on the roof of our school, throwing small rocks at the dish antenna on top of Mohsin sahab’s bare brick house across the narrow alley.” Read from Farah Ali’s novel, The River, The Town. | Lit Hub Fiction
- Canadian author and professor Nathan Kalman-Lamb was barred from entering the United States. Why? “My strongest guess is that it is because I have been reasonably outspoken in my critiques of the genocide being perpetrated in Gaza.” | The Nation
- On Arthur Huff Fauset’s omission from literary history, and how his FBI file “turned the archive of surveillance on its head.” | Public Books
- Ted Chiang and Julien Crockett discuss LLMs, art, and the future of AI. | Los Angeles Review of Books
- A new low for book banning in Utah: students can no longer bring their own copies of banned books to school. | KUER
- “Maybe to make a place holy, you must remember it more than real life allows, with all the truth of a squint, all the grace of peeling paint.” Mathias Svalina considers a blue wall in Leadville, CO. | Poetry
- Jules Feiffer has died at 95. | The Guardian
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