TODAY: In 1936, Larry McMurtry, author of twenty-nine novels including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Lonesome Dove, is born.
- ON THE FRAGILE LINE BETWEEN DEMOCRACY AND FASCISM
Aleksandar Hemon: fascism is not an idea to be debated, it’s a set of actions to fight · Natasha Lennard on anti-fascism and the criminalization of protest in America · Timothy Snyder on the importance of disobedience · Never again what? Giacamo Lichtner on Primo Levi · John Freeman on state misinformation and the role of the whistleblower · Ariel Saramandi on the aesthetics of the American dictator · Ece Temelkuran on losing one’s democracy to a populist demagogue · Grigory Yavlinsky on how a dictator holds on to power · Federico Finchelstein on the political art of spinning lies into myth · A good journalist understands that fascism can happen anywhere, anytime: on the writing of Dorothy Thompson · Lorraine Berry on Donald Trump, and Umberto Eco’s 14 ways of spotting a fascist. | Lit Hub - “This country, the structure—if it were a dinner table, I’d flip it.” Layli Long Soldier on Wounded Knee and the murder of George Floyd. | Lit Hub
- “I was in the process of witnessing the preparations for a police riot.” Timothy Denevi on the clearing of Lafayette Square, and the coward Donald Trump. | Lit Hub
- Letter from Cleveland: poet Ali Black on protest, laughter, and finding breath. | Lit Hub
- “São Bernardo was visionary, reconceiving the boundaries of Brazilian literature, placing Ramos on the vanguard of modernism.” Padma Viswanathan on Graciliano Ramos, “Brazil’s William Faulkner.” | Lit Hub
- “Today the cultural air is thick with sex, but the rhetoric of freedom largely serves a commodified notion of sexual performance.” How capitalism created sexual dysfunction. | Lit Hub History
- What can humanity’s newest disease learn from its oldest? Dr. Monty Lyman on the social cruelties of leprosy. | Lit Hub History
- “The brutality with which Negroes are treated in this country simply cannot be overstated, however unwilling white men may be to hear it”: a 1963 review of James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. | Book Marks
- “The bizarre prevails.” A writer’s tour of New York City during the pandemic, from A.F. Carter. | CrimeReads
- A new literary rights group has acquired the estates of 12 authors, including Evelyn Waugh, Georges Simenon, and Margery Allingham. | The Hollywood Reporter
- “Dear Reader” and “Dear Holmes” are two puzzles for book lovers to help you pass the time. But be warned—they aren’t easy! | The New York Times
- Dave Eggers thinks you should read Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis’s The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, “one of the wittiest, most playful, and therefore most alive and ageless books ever written.” | The New Yorker
- “The police brutality and state sanctioned murders were done loudly with no fear of consequences from those who perpetrated them.” Over 100 African writers signed an open letter in solidarity with African Americans. | Al Jazeera
- The Westing Game is an ideal escapist book. It’s also “a rich, paranoid allegory of American capitalism.” | Vox
- “I want to sit with someone and talk with them about what’s happening, and how I see it, and how I feel about it, rather than shouting.” Helen Macdonald on the politics of environmental literature. | The Millions
- “The atmosphere is noir, and everywhere vice is interleaved with virtue.” Emmanuel Iduma on Cyprian Ekwensi and the stories of Lagos. | New York Review of Books
Also on Lit Hub: Hugh Ryan on Outline of My Lover • “The Boy’s Face in Toledo”: A poem by Desirée Alvarez • Read a story from María Fernanda Ampuero ‘s collection Cockfight, trans. by Frances Riddle.
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