TODAY: In 1880, Andrei Bely, whose novel Petersburg was thought by Vladimir Nabokov to be one of the four greatest novels of the 20th century, is born.
- 8 delusions of Western democracy we could totally do without (h/t Machiavelli). | Literary Hub
- Joe Fassler talked to 150 writers and compiled the 7 best pieces of writing advice they came up with. | Literary Hub
- Jean Rhys had to leave her home in order to truly see it: Gabrielle Bellot on exile, otherness, and the isolation of a great 20th-century writer. | Literary Hub
- Meet the booksellers who stayed open through the Libyan civil war. | Literary Hub
- Cold War Noir: 10 novels that defined an era. | Literary Hub
- M. Sophia Newman: in defense of the personal illness essay. | Literary Hub
- “He has some enviably indulgent editors.” A 2006 review of David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster. | Book Marks
- Colin Kaepernick has signed a million-dollar book deal with Random House’s OneWorld imprint. | Page Six
- His ’n’ hers guinea pigs in a harrowing experiment: Rumaan Alam and Emily Gould team up to investigate a selection of clothing subscription services. | The New York Times
- “I didn’t know what else to do. So I do what I always do, I wrote something.” An interview with Suzan-Lori Parks, who wrote a play for each of the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency. | American Theatre
- Twain wasn’t above the contrivances of capitalism, even as he skewered them: On Mark Twain’s “pecuniary gullibility.” | The New Yorker
- Portrait of the poet as megalomaniac: On tyrant-poets, from Nero to Osama bin Laden. | BBC
- “Mayonnaise, n. One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion” and 73 more great entries from Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary. | The Paris Review
- “Is scholarship doomed to be complicit in the violence done in its name?” When the alt-right appropriates medieval studies. | The New Republic
