literature

• 
• 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?"

• 
• 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? 

• 
• 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.

• 
• 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."

• 
• 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. 

• 
• 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.

• 
• 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. 

• 
• 2/13/2022
  

  Anyone for Existential Torment this Valentine's Day?

  by Barbara H. Rosenwein

  From ancient Greece to the Romantic period, philosophers and artists have endorsed an idea of love that was closer to torture than to the anodyne sentiments of contemporary Valentines. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  1/7/2022
  

  Was "Slaughterhouse Five" Vonnegut's PTSD Novel?

  Is examining Kurt Vonnegut's writing through the lens of suspected posttraumatic stress disorder a worthwhile line of inquiry? 

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  12/7/2021
  

  Orwell Estate Approves Feminist Retelling of "1984"

  "Orwell’s estate said it had been “looking for some time” for an author to tell the story of Smith’s lover, and that [Sandra] Newman, who has previously been longlisted for the Women’s prize and shortlisted for the Guardian first book award, 'proved to be the perfect fit'."

• 
• SOURCE: Vice
  11/11/2021
  

  America's Only LGBTQ Historic District Is Falling Apart

  "Because of centuries of general anti-gay sentiment and laws punishing queerness, little queer history has been preserved, and much of it has been erased."

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  11/9/2021
  

  Emerson Never Practiced the Self-Reliance He Preached

  by Mark Greif

  Historian Robert A. Gross's new "The Transcendentalists and Their World" sets the famous experiments in living of Emerson and Thoreau in the social context of the town of Concord, through which the writers understood the shocks of modernization. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  10/28/2021
  

  Banning "Beloved" Won't Help Protect Kids, But it Will Help Sanitize Racism

  by Farah Jasmine Griffin

  It's worthwhile to consider Morrison's characterization of censoring Huck Finn as a “purist and yet elementary kind of censorship designed to appease adults rather than educate children.”

• 
• SOURCE: CNN
  9/28/2021
  

  Why I Hope My Kids Never Read Roald Dahl

  by David M. Perry

  "The Dahl family has apologized for Roald Dahl's anti-Semitism, but the question remains, for readers and viewers, for TV producers and writers: what might it mean to eat the fruit from this poisoned tree?"

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  9/22/2021
  

  Climate Anxiety and the Return of Arctic Horror

  by Bathsheba Demuth

  As climate change driven by capitalism threatens the polar ice caps, new miniseries return to the themes of arctic exploration, where cold and ice threaten humans and commerce, rather than the other way around. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  9/13/2021
  

  Is this the Moment for Dante's Purgatory?

  by Judith Thurman

  Dante's epic examined the uncharted space of the new Catholic doctrine of Purgatory. New translations make his vision speak to today's mood of unsettlement and uncertainty.