literature

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• 11/20/2022
  

  Does Novelist Robert Keable Deserve a Reappraisal?

  by Simon Keable-Elliott

  Briefly celebrated in the 1920s, then consigned to posthumous obscurity, the missionary and novelist, whose experiences encompassed the collision of colonialism, war and racism in the British empire, is overdue for rediscovery. 

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• SOURCE: New Statesman
  10/26/2022
  

  The Moral Corruption of Holocaust Fiction

  A popular book for young readers strips the Holocaust of its horror, and its victims of their Jewishness in favor of banal lessons about empathy and kindness. 

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• SOURCE: The Drift
  10/25/2022
  

  Against Queer Presentism—How Literary Studies Neglects the Archive

  by Colton Valentine

  LGBTQ writers in today's literary world too often operate on the presumption that they are the first to experience queerness openly, making their own experiences of repression seem universal and transhistorical, and effacing older fictional and critical voices. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/13/2022
  

  Do Documents Clear Chaucer's Name Over Accusations of Rape?

  Although the belief that Chaucer was accused of the crime spurred a significant wave of feminist critical studies of sex and power in his writing, scholars have recently argued that the documents used to support the charge have been misinterpreted. 

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• SOURCE: Religion Dispatches
  9/15/2022
  

  "I'm Not Racist, I'm Just Mad Amazon is Destroying Tolkien's Middle Earth with Black Hobbits"

  by Mary Rambaran-Olm

  Viewer complaints that Amazon Prime has defiled the author's fantasy vision with "wokeness" ignore the historical diversity of the medieval society on which Tolkien based his works. 

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• SOURCE: Miami Herald
  9/12/2022
  

  Cuban-American Playwright Censored by Miami-Dade Schools—Is it over "Don't Say Gay"?

  Columnist Fabiola Santiago argues that the censorship of the Cuban-American writer's plays by local schools shows that Cuban Americans can't expect the state's escalating culture wars to leave them alone. 

• 
• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  8/27/2022
  

  Sorry Zoomers, Gen X Invented the "Quiet Quit"

  "Strivers, grinders and hustlers hate them, but quiet quitters, slackers and work-to-rulers are treasured antiheroes in American folk culture."

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  8/16/2022
  

  Salman Rushdie Changed Everything

  by Siva Vaidhyanathan

  The novelist's creative brilliance and critical acclaim signaled a moment for south Asian people around the world to see themselves outside the frame of colonialism and to grapple with the subcontinent's ethnic and religious fissures. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  8/13/2022
  

  Want to Support Salman Rushdie? Read His Books

  by Randy Boyagoda

  A professor of English literature argues that it would be a shame for the novelist to be known only for the controversy surrounding his novel The Satanic Verses and the threats made against him and others involved in its publication. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  8/10/2022
  

  Eve Babitz's Archive Reveals the Person Behind the Persona

  by Kevin Dettmar

  "What could the personal documents of a writer who was so public about her private world teach us about her work? How much of that persona was a performance and how much a reflection of her real anxieties and ambitions?"

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• SOURCE: L.A. Progressive
  7/23/2022
  

  Can Fiction Like "The Ministry For the Future" Guide Real Action on Climate?

  by Walter G. Moss

  Kim Stanley Robinson's 2020 novel has impressed readers from Bill McKibben to Barack Obama – does it model a better approach to the global climate crisis? 

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• SOURCE: Slate
  6/6/2022
  

  Reading History for "Lessons" Misses the Point

  by Daniel Immerwahr

  "We read past authors as a sanity check. They reassure us that we’re not alone in what we see."

• 
• 6/5/2022
  

  The Environmental and Humanistic Sensibility of Pasternak and Lessons from Dr. Zhivago for Today

  by Walter G. Moss

  Boris Pasternak's masterwork exhibited a profound awareness of the onenness of creation – human and natural alike – that should guide the projects of peace and environmental protection.

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  4/12/2022
  

  Leo Bersani: Contrarian Critic of Gay Desire

  by Jack Parlett

  "For Bersani, reading is meant to hurt a little or you’re not doing it right. A preface that preempts what you’ll take away, or paraphrases what is particular, can have, he suggests, a simplifying or even sanitizing effect."

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• SOURCE: Austin American-Statesman
  3/31/2022
  

  Tom Staley, 86, Built UT's Ransom Center into Key Research Destination

  "Staley turned the archives into a global powerhouse that rivals the collecting achievements of Harvard University, Yale University and the British Museum."

• 
• 3/20/2022
  

  The Two Russias

  by Walter G. Moss

  Russia's literary traditions evoke a national character in stark opposition to the belligerent machismo of Putin, but it's unclear which Russia will prevail today. 

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• SOURCE: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
  2/16/2022
  

  "The New Negro" Launched a Renaissance, and Not Just in Harlem

  Alain Locke's anthology proposed and modeled a new image of Black life that held room for artistic creation and criticism of art and society. 

• 
• 2/20/2022
  

  Why the Short and Rebellious Life of Stephen Crane Still Matters

  by Linda H. Davis

  Though he quickly became a model of literary celebrity of the sort we would recognize today, Stephen Crane's more crucial legacy is of the pursuit of truth without regard to consequence.

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Review of Books
  2/9/2022
  

  Crossing the Blood Meridian: Cormac McCarthy as an American Historian

  by Bennett Parten

  "One of the most striking things about reading Blood Meridian now, almost 40 years since its release, is that it anticipates some of the major historical turns of the past decades."

• 
• SOURCE: Contingent
  2/4/2022
  

  Man of Smoke

  by Jason Ridler

  The task of literary biography can be made much more difficult when authors fictionalize the sparse details of their own lives.