Lit Hub Weekly: November 3 - 7, 2025

• “I could only make good art if I made bad art, too, and so I began making bad art an integral part of my creative practice.” In praise of making bad art. | Lit Hub Craft
• Tracy Borman explores the royal drama of the altered manuscript depicting the naming of Queen Elizabeth I’s heir. | Lit Hub History
• Apropos of nothing, please enjoy this brief history of American socialism: “Most citizens believe that the superrich should pay much higher taxes than the middle class.” | Lit Hub Politics
• Sarah Weinman on the importance of librarians in dangerous times as seekers and keepers of truth. | Lit Hub Criticism
• Amitav Ghosh considers how familiar apocalypse narratives shape our responses to climate catastrophe. | Equator
• “The collapse of the institutions where young people learn to make and critique art stands to greatly benefit companies like OpenAI, which, in the absence of human artists and critics, can both make the stuff and tell us it’s good.” Rachele Dini on academia and OpenAI’s “A Machine-Shaped Hand.” | Los Angeles Review of Books
• In a time when bodies are being increasingly imposed upon by the state, Travis Alexander turns to David Cronenberg, master of cinematic body horror. | Aeon
• Chris Lehmann breaks down the taxonomies of Trump novels. | The Baffler
• “She never claimed that her approach was easy, inexpensive, or suited to everyone, only that her guidance was there for anyone who heard the call.” Hannah Goldfield on the surprising endurance of Martha Stewart’s Entertaining. | The New Yorker
• Tariq Ali remembers radical journalist and historian Richard Gott. | Verso
• Karen Weingarten revisits Larry Lader’s controversial 1966 book Abortion, which “proclaimed loudly that all abortion laws should be repealed, that there was no shame in seeking an abortion, and that without legal abortion women would never be free.” | Public Books
• “Vitalism stands, or falls, on its relationship to liberal egalitarianism, sexual difference, and one’s stance on HR departments.” Tara Isabella Burton considers the rise of vitalism. | The Hedgehog Review
• Jack Rodolico explains what a series of high-profile art heists has to do with the publication of the Social Register. | Atavist
• Andrew Leland explores how deaf writers are reimagining language, text, and sound. | The Baffler
• Amardeep Singh, who (literally) wrote the book on Mira Nair’s films, considers what Zohran Mamdani learned from the ethics of his mother’s work. | Pittsburgh Review of Books
• Cat Fitzpatrick traces the history of a mid-90s trans punk zine, Gendertrash From Hell. | Defector
• “Fascism and AI, whether or not they have the same goals, they sure are working to accelerate one another.” The role of AI in the war against libraries.  | 404 Media
• Kristen Ghodsee explains why even flawed socialist systems reveal important truths about solidarity and equality. | The MIT Press Reader
• Ryan Ruby considers what it means to read the transgressive avant-garde fiction of Pierre Guyotat in the age of social sadism. | The Baffler

Also on Lit Hub:

Why maybe you shouldn’t talk to the New York Times about Zohran Mamdani • Jennifer Acker talks to Teju Cole about genre-bending • 10 new children’s books • New November poetry collections • Read “Sixty Days,” a poem by Layla Faraj • How the 1956 Israeli occupation of Gaza informs the present and future • New fall sci-fi and fantasy reads • The “close friendship” between Sor Juana Inés and Vicereine María Luisa • What’s the most accurate way to write about time travel? • Why Thomas Beller saw The Bad News Bears ten times • Three audio narratives to reshape your imagination • Claire Dederer talks to Jodi-Ann Burey • The case for birdwatching in the winter and fall • Amber McBride recommends 10 novels in verse •  Why “technology is not fate” • Why carbon offsetting (and big business) will not save the planet • Georgi Gospodinov on writing about death • How Trump’s isolationist policies challenge the liberal international order • Maris Kreizman on AI, the future, and the ongoing devaluation of the arts • What’s on Dorothea Lasky’s TBR? • Abel Ferrara remembers the mob-backed porno he shot • 5 book reviews you need to read this week • How Brian Schaefer learned to embrace idealism • Finding freedom by writing in English • How Fleetwood Mac inspired Daisy Jones & the Six • Elena Sheppard on connecting with her Cuban grandfather • Why fact-based historical fiction must negotiate with the truth • Political and personal upheavals at the center of the 1938 FIFA World Cup • The best reviewed books of the week • Breaking the law to create art • What you might miss by listening to podcasts on 1.5x speed • Was the American Revolution actually a world war? • Read two poems by MaKshya Tolbert from the collection, Shade is a place