You can’t write about Robert Lowell without writing about mental illness — the poet went through many stretches of mania and psychosis in his life. In the Washington Post, Michael Dirda reads a “medico-biography” of Lowell, which takes a full measure of his lifelong illness and its consequences.
Pale Fire
“We need a theory of jerks.”
"Everywhere you turn, are you surrounded by fools, by boring nonentities, by faceless masses and foes and suckers and, indeed, jerks?" If so--as this insightful if somewhat confidence-shattering piece at Aeon suggests--the jerk may be you.
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Writerly Obligations
Do writers owe their readers engagement on social media? “Our sole obligation to readers is to write the best books that we possibly can,” our own Emily St. John Mandel told The Guardian. Pair with our piece on the best of literary Twitter.
Unsustainable Sustainability
Brian Nitz wants environmentalists and writers to seriously consider whether the word "sustainable" is, well, sustainable. (Related: this XKCD comic)
“I knew what I wanted to do all my life. I wanted to write senior theses.”
A Gut-Wrenching Account and an Ethical Nightmare
A dissection of Jonathan Franzen's recent New Yorker essay on David Foster Wallace finds Franzen's wires showing.
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Pre-Speed
Once upon a time, the poet Muriel Rukeyser wrote a very proto-Speedboat kind of novel. It's only just getting published now.
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Why Words Matter
"The hijacking of public language, as is happening now, is a way to shift perception—to bend and control thought—and must be resisted." Summer Brennan pens a powerful first entry for her twice-monthly column about language and power at The Literary Hub. Read also our own Lydia Kiesling, who tells us, "I have to believe that literature can be a weapon of a sort — it explodes comfort even while it delivers comfort; it reveals hypocrisy in a way that the mere presentation of facts often cannot."
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