THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET
TODAY: In 1793, Olympe de Gouges is executed by guillotine during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror.
- Jennifer Acker talks to Teju Cole about genre-bending and how artists bear witness to tragedy: “I really believe in the novel as an innovative form. Yet I didn’t want novelty for its own sake.” | Lit Hub In Conversation
- Caroline Carlson shares 10 new children’s books that take readers from the cosmos all the way back to Earth. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
- Sarah Weinman on the importance of librarians in dangerous times as seekers and keepers of truth. | Lit Hub Criticism
- Rebecca Morgan Frank recommends new November poetry collections featuring ancient algorithms, hauntings, sweet repetitions, and more! | Lit Hub Reading Lists
- Read “Sixty Days,” a poem by Layla Faraj: “today The Nation weeded / and counted us among / the invasive species.” | Lit Hub Poetry
- “It is more vital than ever to consider this history in order to understand what could happen next.” Anne Irfan explains how the 1956 Israeli occupation of Gaza informs the present and future. | Lit Hub History
- Natalie Zutter picks new autumnal sci-fi and fantasy reads from authors including Travis Baldree, Claire North, Victor Manibo and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
- “Helm doesn’t know when Helm was born.” Read from Sarah Hall’s new novel, Helm. | Lit Hub Fiction
- Margaret McMullan writes about her travels through Italy, where “the parallels between Mussolini and Trump become hard to ignore.” | Dame
- 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
- H.M.A. Leow explains how medieval “mystery plays” depicting the confrontation between the Virgin Mary and King Herod offered a symbolic resistance to tyranny. | JSTOR Daily
- What the far right doesn’t understand about The Lord of the Rings. | Vox
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