The Best of the Literary Internet, Every Day
TODAY: In 1632, John Locke is born.
- “Phoebe brings Rachel to a class at The New School, where they study the Bronte sisters. The first thing they discuss is, of course, the patriarchy; the last thing they discuss is Robocop.” Greg Cwik on the surprisingly clever literary references in Friends. | Lit Hub TV
- Rob Larson on how billionaires became more influential than world leaders and why money is synonymous with power. | Lit Hub Politics
- Everyone keeps saying we’re living in “uncertain times,” but Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza asks, haven’t we always? | Lit Hub History
- “Just as there is no single method of selling out, there is no single art monster.” 5 book reviews you need to read this week. | Book Marks
- “How difficult and treacherous our paths are, always, within this country and its institutions.” On being an Arabic literature professor in a time of genocide. | Lit Hub Memoir
- In “Man in a White Overcoat,” by Oğuz Atay and translated by Ralph Hubbell, a mute man journeys across Istanbul after buying a woman’s coat that brings out the worst in the strangers he meets. Read more short stories in the new Fiction issue of The Dial, including work by Lucrecia Zappi, Eva Baltasar, and Claudia Pińeiro. | The Dial
- “I’m struck by how many of the books written during the first decade of this new millennium seem to thrum with a particular kind of apprehension and unease.” Francine Prose looks back on the National Book Awards of the aughts. | The Washington Post
- Benjamin Kunkle considers the intractable puzzle of economic growth. | The Nation
- “Like Prince Myshkin, I’d explain to them politely that, no, this is art. I don’t want to destroy Russia; I want the best for Russia.” Vladimir Sorokin and Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova in conversation. | Interview
- “The story’s violence is both onscreen and offscreen at the same time, as if the one-dimensional characters are simply part of…an enormous production complex.” On Bolaño’s story, “The Colonel’s Son.” | 3:AM
- Linnea Gradin examines the complexities of translating literature between Korean and Swedish. | Asymptote
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