October 25, 2023 ‹ Literary Hub

TODAY: In 1962, John Steinbeck is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.   

• “The world and its martinis are mine!” Dwight Garner looks at martinis and the writers who love(d) them, including Patricia Highsmith (quoted), Karl Ove Knausgaard, and more. | Lit Hub Food (& Drink)

• KJ Dell’Antonia on the rules of literary magic. | Lit Hub Craft

• “To recognize fascism’s anachronism is cold comfort.” Alberto Toscano considers what “fascist” really means today. | Lit Hub Politics

• Beyond “how-to”: A reading list for understanding the “how-comes” of contemporary life. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• Is ketamine therapy all it’s hyped up to be? | Lit Hub Science

• “The case might be made for Werner Herzog, in documentaries and features and novels, as the narrator of our time, or at least of his time.” Samuel Rutter on Herzog’s voice. | Dirt

• Penguin Random House has launched the Freedom of Expression Prize, which asks teens to write about a banned book that changed their life. | The Guardian

• On Marguerite Young’s Miss MacIntosh, My Darling, “the longest, least-remembered Great American Novel.” | The New Yorker

• “To act at all today—in relation to communities, in relation to the climate—requires an embrace of one’s own insignificance in the larger scheme of things.” Jasmine Liu on Lydia Davis’s stories and politics. | The New Republic

• In the new issue of Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, Marguerite Bunce tells the story of a lost dog in rural France. | Dorothy Parker’s Ashes

• Nancy Conyers on her Aunt Helen’s wailing wall: “She helped me envision a day when I too would be able to travel to faraway places.” | The Keepthings

Also on Lit Hub: The recurring dreams of Roz Chast • Christopher Kennedy on defining prose poetry and working-class stories • Read from K-Ming Chang’s latest novel, Organ Meats