TODAY: In 1933, Philip Roth is born.
- “I would quit while you’re ahead. Really, it’s an awful field. Just torture. Awful.” Enjoy some relentlessly cheery writing advice from Philip Roth. | Lit Hub
- The island—of “floating veils, strangely waving whiskers, grotesque hats”—that inspired Conrad and Lawrence’s queerest characters. | Lit Hub
- John Freeman on the poetic legacy of W.S. Merwin · Read “Rain Travel,” a poem by Merwin. | Lit Hub
- “The last thing any of us will want to do is accept that, sometimes, shift just happens.” On the inevitability of the Big One along the San Andreas Fault. | Lit Hub
- How Japan almost lost a national symbol to extinction. | Lit Hub
- Patriarchy and politics in Idaho after Trump’s election: Debra Gwartney pushes back against her conservative family. | Lit Hub
- On the enduring appeal of literary tricksters, from Jeeves to the Cat in the Hat. | Lit Hub
- Arctic Dreams and Horizon author Barry Lopez recommends five books about traveling the world. | Book Marks
- “Gentrification is choking the living hell out of noir cities.” Adam Abramowitz on noir in the era of gentrification. | CrimeReads
- “As much as it is an economic, a social and a foreign-policy issue, migration is a climate issue”: Laila Lalami on America’s responsibility toward migrants and climate refugees. | The New York Times
- “I taught her the word hoard.” Read a new story by Helen Phillips. | Guernica
- “The better angel is a man right fair”: Sandra Newman makes a case for the queerness of Shakespeare’s sonnets. | Aeon
- A writer cooks his way through Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook, starting with the French onion soup, of course. | The Takeout
- “Toews is an artist of escape; she always finds a way for her characters, trapped by circumstance, to liberate themselves.” A profile of Miriam Toews. | The New Yorker
- In news that will not surprise any female writers, a UK commission called the Emilia Report found a “marked bias” toward male writers in media coverage. | The Guardian
- “You’ll either love it or hate it, but whatever you do, just don’t look up the Wikipedia plot summary.” A spirited debate about A Little Life. | The Niche
Also on Lit Hub: “Some Transcendent Addiction to the Useless,” a poem by Kay Ryan from The Best American Poetry 2018 • On studying—and coping with—tinnitus • Read from From Memories of the Future
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