TODAY: In 1851, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is published in the United States.
- The wondrous world of Russian toys: Nabokov on finding art in the commonplace. | Lit Hub
- “Peace may require that the dealers of death have a place at the table of political power.” Philip Metres on Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Anything, and the elusive lure of reconciliation in Northern Ireland. | Lit Hub Politics
- You’re almost definitely more of a jerk than you think you are (but hey, so are we). | Lit Hub Science
- On the royal spectacle of The Crown, or: Why Claire Foy will always be the Queen in Will Self’s heart. | Lit Hub TV
- Penelope Rosemont on the surreal humor of artist Mimi Parent, “aeronaut of invisible spaces, explorer of the oneiric stratosphere, sorceress of luminous laughter.” | Lit Hub Art
- Five reasons a writer should move to Pittsburgh, including a wealth of literary events and the actual Cloud Factory. | Lit Hub
- When will we pay attention to missing and murdered Indigenous women? Jessica McDiarmid on the Highway of Tears. | Lit Hub Politics
- Curtis Evans recounts the tragic tale of dilettante Golden Age crime writer Willoughby Sharp and his pulp-peddling publisher Claude Kendall. | CrimeReads
- “I imagine Luke Rhinehart as something like Carlos Castaneda, William Burroughs and Thomas Pynchon rolled into one: an icon of the most radical subversion, transformed into an invisible man. I decide that I must meet him.” Emmanuel Carrère on the man behind the 1971 counterculture classic The Dice Man. | The Guardian
- “We still don’t have enough stories out there. But the stories are coming, especially from black women.” Ibram Kendi recommends 21 recent books by, about, and for black women (and the rest of us). | The Atlantic
- The nonprofit Key West Literary Seminar has purchased Elizabeth Bishop’s former home on the island. The organization plans to restore the home and use it as a new headquarters. | The New York Times
- Urban Dictionary isn’t just the best place to discover new, terrifying sex acts—it’s also a useful tool for linguists. | JSTOR
- The first part of a new multi-volume biography of Robert Graves explores the prolific author’s youth (prior to the publication of his most famous works). | Los Angeles Review of Books
- “If you belong to a marginalized group, you already understand how a singular and misleading history can undermine your identity.” On the necessity of fiction in the era of fake news. | Lambda Literary
- Tin House, Granta, and Poetry Magazine lead the 2018 VIDA Count. | VIDA
Also on Lit Hub: The secret society of women writers in Oxford in the 1920s • Remembering the moments before
the Charlie Hebdo attack • Read from Jorge Comensal’s debut novel The Mutations (trans. Charlotte Whittle).
