TODAY: In 1842, a play by Honoré de Balzac opens to an empty house. Balzac had spread a rumor that tickets for the play were almost sold out, hoping that people would rush to buy what they thought were the last remaining seats.
- Rachel Cohen considers the epistolary friendship between Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore, and how each poet inspired the other. | Lit Hub Biography
- Marriage isn’t half as glamorous as divorce. Rowan Beaird recommends divorce novels by James Salter, Katie Kitamura, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
- “I know what illness is and I know why it’s important to enjoy life.” Jane Ciabattari talks to Marie Mutsuki Mockett about life and sickness. | Lit Hub In Conversation
- Venki Ramakrishnan on the elaborate performance of cells, the body’s constantly moving parts. | Lit Hub Science
- Here are twenty-five new books out today, featuring Percival Everett, Téa Obreht, Michael Ondaatje, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
- “Despite surging to the top of Russia’s domestic box office just days after its release in January, it has raised the ire of pro-Kremlin bloggers who resent the director’s stance against the country’s war in Ukraine.” Cameron Manley on the latest adaptation of The Master and Margarita. | Lit Hub Film
- “Dev Hendrick was lying in the dark on the sofa, laptop propped on his belly, asleep or almost asleep, earbuds bleeding white noise into his ears when his phone buzzed three times on the coffee table and stopped.” Read from Colin Barrett’s new novel, Wild Houses. | Lit Hub Fiction
- “Iceland” by Yun Ko-eun considers the fantasy of living in another country—and the commodification of that fantasy. | The Dial
- The earliest writing by the English language’s greatest bard is also the most forgotten. On Shakespeare’s first published work, “Venus and Adonis.” | JSTOR Daily
- Jason Bergman talks to game design legend Jordan Mechner about transitioning towards writing and illustrating comics and translating family history to graphic memoir. | The Comics Journal
- “The more the people working on books participate in their profits, the more, structurally, profit-seeking will shape what books look like.” Dan Sinykin on Author’s Equity and the “gigification” of publishing. | The Baffler
- Ben Lerner pays tribute to James Schuyler. | The Paris Review
- How do you become “one of American literature’s great stubborn bastards?” On the weird and fascinating legacy of Ambrose Bierce. | Reactor
