TODAY: In 1854, Henry David Thoreau published Walden.
- Lara Vapnyar on empathy, assimilation, and writing immigrant characters as a “rookie American.” | Literary Hub
- Non-geek Margaret Atwood attends Comic-Con, a modern-day Saturnalia. | Vulture
- Of refuse and “real America:” On new books examining the “crisis” of the white working class. | The Atlantic
- “you who were compressed into a dense calyx,/nib which dips into a forty-year river:” Sharon Olds’ “Ode to the Tampon.” | Tin House
- On 17th-century traveler Evliya Çelebi’s Seyahatname, “a magnificent ten-volume sprawl of fantasy, biography, and reportage that is utterly unique in the canon of travel literature.” | The Paris Review
- Perhaps language was the very first augmented reality ‘app:’ On Pokémon GO, capitalist drives, and the construction of fantasy worlds. | 3Quarks Daily
- On Harry Potter’s “Goldilocks conundrum” and ever-expanding franchise. | The New Yorker
- Ending a lengthy legal battle, Israel’s supreme court has ruled that Franz Kafka’s manuscripts belong to the National Library of Israel. | The Guardian
- On the original Interpretation of Dreams (Oneirocritica), written by Artemidorus of Daldis in the second century A.D. | The Awl
Also on Literary Hub: The most literary book ever written about bodybuilding: William Giraldi on New Jersey and writing a memoir · On name-calling, poetic partners-in-crime, and the blues: poets Cynthia Manick and Chialun Chang in conversation · Long needles scraping bone: from Joe McGinniss Jr.’s Carousel Court
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