TODAY: In 1960, Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity under Britain’s Obscene Publications Act 1959 Ltd after publishing D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The prosecuting lawyer, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, famously asked the jury, “Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?” Apparently so!
- “We have had no truth and reconciliation process.” On the renaissance of American white supremacy, a conversation with Isaac Bailey, Kathleen Belew, and Connor Towne O’Neill. | Lit Hub Politics
- Desert stories, clean energy transition, and other climate readings for November: N. Scott Momaday, Robert Macfarlane, and more recs from Amy Brady. | Lit Hub Climate Change
- “To me, and to a growing group of Americans in the 21st century, the term patriotism veers dangerously close to nationalism.” Kathleen Flenniken reconsiders what it means to love one’s country. | Lit Hub Politics
- “When Franz Kafka says that Gregory Samsa woke up one morning transformed into a gigantic insect, it doesn’t strike me as a symbol of anything.” Turns out Gabriela Garcia Marquez was also against interpretation. | Lit Hub
- “The most sobering thing about violence is that no one encounters it for the first time by committing it.” Michael Fischer on moving beyond the binary of criminality. | Lit Hub
- “Herzen recognized, as Marx never could, that demagogues would routinely emerge to offer the exhausted and cheated masses the opiate of nationalism.” Pankaj Mishra on Alexander Herzen, who was not wrong. | Lit Hub History
- “The level of deception in the election process has evolved in a few short years, such that it now occurs at our nation’s highest level.” Gilda Daniels on the roots of voter deception. | Lit Hub
- Your week in virtual book events features Margaret Atwood, Teju Cole, Esmé Weijun Wang, and many, many more… | Lit Hub
- On the occasion of its 60th publication anniversary, a classic review of John Updike’s Rabbit, Run. | Book Marks
- “It smells like health, like promise, like a second chance no one deserves.” Carmen Maria Machado’s very literary reviews of the season’s scents. | Vanity Fair
- “All the ideas we’ve imprinted on our children’s minds about how to succeed, how to be good, the right kind of person you have to become—we were challenging that.” Yaa Gyasi and artist Toyin Ojih Odutola in conversation. | Harper’s Bazaar
- What makes a good Stephen King adaptation? Stephen King has thoughts. | Washington Post
- “They really do think we’ll watch anything. And perhaps, in the end, they are right.” Rachel Syme on the “superficial, slapdash new Netflix adaptation” of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. | The New Yorker
- Emily Van Duyne on pregnancy, tenure, and wading through the politics of academia. | Inside Higher Ed
- Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s novel Solaris is often called one of the best sci-fi films ever. Why, then, did Lem dislike it so much? | Far Out
- Bostonites: need a respite from looming existential dread? Shop early for the holidays at your local bookstore. | WBUR
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