TODAY: In 1945, poet Pablo Neruda is elected a Chilean senator. He officially joins the Communist Party of Chile four months later.
- Nell Zink on writing for rejection and finally finding “some rigorous realist fiction to love” in Doris Lessing. | n+1
- Unstable in the present, being dragged from the past, resistant to the future: Mohsin Hamid on the appeal and dangers of nostalgia. | The Guardian
- On the history of feminist bookstores: What contemporary readers owe them and what they reveal about the movement’s failures. | Los Angeles Review of Books
- It’s hard to defend doing anything except being in the streets: On the value of cultural criticism, even in Trump’s America. | The New Republic
- “Every bedroom was empty except for the smell of gasoline and a small crackling fire set directly in the middle of each bed, as if a demented Girl Scout had been camping there.” An excerpt from Celeste Ng’s forthcoming novel, Little Fires Everywhere. | Entertainment Weekly
- Sam Lipsyte and George Saunders discuss preaching to the choir, combative compassion, and how narrators narrate themselves. | BOMB Magazine
- Your mouth, your mouth reinvents the word “mouth.” An excerpt from Melissa Febos’ essay collection, Abandon Me. | Tin House
- Pull Me Under novelist Kelly Luce on the harrowing week she spent in a Japanese detention center as a young English teacher. | New York Magazine
- Hanya Yanagihara on the town of Karuizawa, “a Japanese dream of a particular kind of Western idyll, an idealized village convincingly radiating its own, sincere brand of gemutlichkeit.” | T Magazine
- “I shout that she’s crazy and scaring me and I want to get out of the goddamn car and that we’re going to die, please, she’s going to fucking kill us.” An excerpt from Julie Buntin’s forthcoming novel, Marlena. | Electric Literature
- Barack Obama and Michelle Obama have signed a book deal with Penguin Random House that “probably stretched into the tens of millions.” | The New York Times
- Poet Layli Long Soldier on prayer, Lakota language, and embracing the unseen. | The Creative Independent
- Lou Reed’s archives have been acquired by the New York Public Library, and Anthology Editions will publish a collection of his personal essays, poems, and photographs. | The New Yorker, Anthology
- Internet-beloved actor Benedict Cumberbatch will star in a limited series based on Edward St. Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose novels. | Deadline
- “I certainly don’t mind pushing buttons.” Dale Peck and John Oakes talk reviving Barney Rosset’s infamous erotic literary journal, the Evergreen Review. | The Daily Beast
Cornel West on why James Baldwin matters more than ever · Lauren Elkin on Paris in 1968, a “mythologized collective uprising” · Karolina Ramqvist on the writer as a public figure vs. the writer who actually writes · Encountering literary bots in the wilds of Twitter · Katie Prout on the Spirit Lake Massacre and early-American captivity narratives · Anna Journey on the decade-spanning, 14-volume guest book at Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn · The dark, Orwellian power of Steve Bannon, on display at CPAC · What Yoojin Grace Wuertz learned about patience and writing from her garden · On the importance of the public school novel, right now · Gabrielle Bellot on transhumanism and the shadowy line between human and machine · How postcards from Rowan Hisayo Buchanan’s mother helped her survive her childhood
