TODAY: In 1931, Austrian novelist, playwright, and poet Thomas Bernhard is born.
- A judge in Virginia has ordered five teenagers who were caught defacing a historic black schoolhouse with racist and anti-Semitic graffiti to watch 14 films, visit two museums, and read 35 books—including The Color Purple, Native Son, and Night. | The Guardian
- “Tarot, like a poem, seems to exist out of time.” Trevor Ketner and Hoa Nguyen discuss tarot and the links between their spiritual and creative practices. | Catapult
- From Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men to Nella Larsen’s Quicksand, 7 of the best books to come out of the Harlem Renaissance. | Signature Reads
- My fixation on the fate of the land has rendered me no less susceptible to hollow promises of her immortality: Alana Massey on nightmares, sea monsters, and rising tides. | Hazlitt
- Two new biographies of George Orwell attempt to separate the man from the symbol. | London Review of Books
- “Why do some rare individuals become the vehicles of universal ideas, when almost all others do not?” On the abiding fascination with—and countless biographies of—Karl Marx. | The Nation
- Religion, inherited trauma, and suicidal fantasies: Daphne Merkin on her new memoir of depression, This Close to Happy. | Broadly
