Article continues after advertisement
TODAY: In 1943, Thomas Mann begins writing Dr Faustus.
- “There are a number of things you should expect to happen in the event that you start posing as Susan Sontag on the internet.” Rebecca Brill on inhabiting the diaries of a great mind. | Lit Hub
- Blame your lack of follow-through on gout, encourage vicious takedowns, and more hot tips for a being a great literary citizen, care of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. | Lit Hub
- “In this relentless game of sorting out the fraudulent from the genuine, Senator Hatch’s glasses felt like a nice, easy warm-up for a new year of dogged scrutiny.” Laurence Scott on the glitching reality of contemporary America. | Lit Hub
- An ode to John Graves’ Goodbye to a River: Kevin Powers on an unsung classic of American nature writing. | Lit Hub
- “We live amid palimpsests, the past only overwritten but never erased.” A Gothic fable of home ownership. | Lit Hub
- Binyavanga Wainaina, Kenyan author and gay rights activist, has died at 48. Read an excerpt from his memoir, One Day I Will Write About This Place. | Brittle Paper, Lit Hub
- Alan Cumming on John Waters filthy wisdom, John Connolly on Thomas Harris’ bloodthirsty new novel, and more of the Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
- Thomas Harris’ Cari Mora: an inventive and crisp thriller OR just ketchup sprayed on the page? | Book Marks
- Dwyer Murphy takes to the archives to catalogue the most iconic nose injuries of all crime cinema, from LA Confidential to Brick. | CrimeReads
- This year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe will feature a musical extravaganza inspired by Muriel Spark’s novels, entitled Lie Still My Sleepy Fortunes. | The List
- Read about the people who have worked to bring libraries to children in the most unlikely of places: laundromats. | Mother Jones
- Natalie Portman refuted Moby’s claim in his memoir that the two dated, calling him “creepy” and adding that “there was no fact-checking from him or his publisher.” | The Guardian
- “I don’t think anyone would argue that Daniel Murphy’s tight butt muscle, or Miguel Cabrera’s ‘flu-like symptoms’ (read: hangover) are actual disabilities.” Sara Nović on baseball and how Americans (don’t) talk about disability. | The Believer
- Was Jordan Peele’s Us inspired by an Edgar Allan Poe story? | The Millions
- “It’s about inevitable, perpetual change being the only thing that we can rely on, and it’s about identity being positively negligible. It’s a properly revolutionary book.” Tilda Swinton is curating a photography show inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. | The New York Times
Also on Lit Hub: Saskia Vogel profiles Lena Andersson • Read from Adam Ehrlich Sachs’ debut novel, The Organs of Sense.
