Lit Hub Daily: July 6, 2026
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET
TODAY: In 1893, Guy de Maupassant dies.
- Michael Dirda makes the case for Moby-Dick as the ultimate American novel. | Lit Hub Criticism
- Why the “legendary” dinner party from Plato’s Symposium is actually about love. | Lit Hub Craft
- How medieval scribes engaged in writing as a spiritual practice (and preserved culture and history in the process). | Lit Hub History
- On the unexpected gift of sharing a geriatric debut: “When my manuscript wasn’t chosen as the winner, I had a sinking feeling that getting a collection published might take longer than I hoped. And my goodness, did it ever.” | Lit Hub Memoir
- This week in literary history, American Red Cross volunteer Ernest Hemingway is struck by an Austrian mortar shell while delivering chocolate to soldiers on the Italian front. | Lit Hub History
- Joshua Thermidor reflects on how Etel Adnan’s influenced a generation of poets. | Lit Hub Criticism
- “One has to be willing to humiliate oneself in order to yodel, there is no spiritual bypass.” Valerie Hsiung explores the poetics of grief, loss, and revenge. | Lit Hub Craft
- “You’ve got long arms for your height. Everyone tells you so. Good for hugging and pulling down rebounds in pickup basketball.” Read “Catcher” from Mac Crane’s debut story collection, Perverts. | Lit Hub Fiction
- David E. Nye considers the optical illusion of American progress. | The MIT Press Reader
- Jeff Goodwin explores the often erased Marxism of W. E. B. Du Bois. | Jacobin
- When Rosemary Tonks disowned her own writing (after converting to Christianity). | New York Review of Books
- Hank Kennedy reads two recent graphic biographies of Jane Austen. | The Comics Journal
- Have you heard? AI is bad for business. | 404 Media
- Keli Dailey rereads Mark Twain as the world burns. | Adi Magazine
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