TODAY: In 1927, poet W.S. Merwin is born.
- “Jon Fosse’s darkness is always luminous.” Karl Ove Knausgaard has some thoughts on one of Norway’s great writers (just in time for Nobel season). | Lit Hub
- “The novel felt as though it contained the entire breadth and depth of life. It was also absolutely Australian.” Madeleine Watts on Patrick White, Australia’s great unread novelist. | Lit Hub
- With The Topeka School, has Ben Lerner finally admitted to himself that he’s a novelist? | Lit Hub
- Why couldn’t the whole thing have been a dream? Anthony Doerr on the pleasure of throwing out all the rules when writing a short story. | Lit Hub
- Reimagining an absent father as Odysseus: Maya Phillips wanders through the fallen kingdom of her family. | Lit Hub
- “The paradox is that one has to read the stories to understand how wrong we have been.” Lauren Groff on the forgotten genius of Nancy Hale. | Lit Hub
- Dog whistle politics, gaslighting, and other contemporary political tricks: Definitions from A People’s Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter. | Lit Hub
- This month, Ian McEwan accepted the inaugural Halldór Laxness International Literary Prize in Iceland, meant to recognize an author whose work has contributed to “a renewal of the narrative tradition.” | The Reykjavik Grapevine
- Meghan Cox Gurdon on four new children’s books that challenge the conventions of the genre, from a work set in Franco-era Spain to another that celebrates great tangential literary characters. | Wall Street Journal
- Nell Zink, Joy Williams, and the case for climate negativity. | Longreads
- American cultural dominance has faded, author Fatima Bhutto says. | NPR
- “I thought what a great thing—to tell the history of Hollywood through letter-writing”: On filmmaker Rocky Lang’s new book, Letters from Hollywood, which compiles correspondence from stars like Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and more. | The Hollywood Reporter
- “What really guides our history is what people are feeling.” Experience the history of real life, told in postcards. | The Outline
- On Jane Eyre as “multilingual, ever-changing global text.” | The Conversation
Also on Lit Hub: How the Nazis rose to power as an extremist coalition of the discontented • Five island books that reimagine The Tempest • Read a story by Nancy Hale from the collection Where the Light Falls.
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