Lit Hub Weekly: December 2 – 6, 2024

TODAY: In 43 BCE, Roman philosopher, orator, lawyer, and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero is executed by soldiers of The Second Triumvirate. 

• Eliza Moss on what novelists can learn from actors about self-expression. | Lit Hub Craft
• Michael Palma on why Dante’s Divine Comedy is more relevant than ever: “It is no wonder that the Internet abounds in reviews from readers who started the Divine Comedy expecting to be bored or confused but who instead have found themselves riveted.” | Lit Hub Criticism
• In case you missed them, here are the best (new) books the Lit Hub staff read this year. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
• “If books are banned, and people try to put them into the hands of young people, they lose their jobs.” Jacqueline Woodson on navigating book bans and staying resilient in 2025. | Lit Hub In Conversation
• “Paradoxically, the omnipresence of the Olympians explains why we seldom wonder where they have gone.” Ed Simon on the belief in Greek gods. | The Hedgehog Review
• Hua Hsu remembers Giant Robot, a magazine that explored Asian American culture, presenting “just one vision of a life among many, not an agenda to be followed.” | The New Yorker
• Charlie Robertshaw examines the impact of war on Burmese poetry and the “poetry of witness.” | Asymptote 
• “Ray Johnson, like Emily Dickinson, dreamed of an unworldly art: the sheen without the moon.” Ellen Levy on the connection between two artists. | The MIT Press Reader
• Mark Minster reflects on the difficulty of teaching the Bible to mixed groups of students. | Slate
• “There has been an extraordinary shift in public opinion about this war, relatively swiftly.” Rashid Khalidi and Mark O’Connell in conversation about Gaza, America, and genocide. | New York Review of Books
• Jackson Davidow revisits Elsa’s Housebook, Elsa Dorfman’s photographic document of the literary avant-garde, at fifty. | Poetry
• “Humanity itself appears to be locked in a grisly death-match, struggling desperately for its very survival. But against what enemy?” Sally Rooney on climate crisis. | The Irish Times
• Jennifer Wilson meditates on grief, heartbreak, and (tragically) romantic literature while exploring the burgeoning breakup industry. | The New Yorker 
• Mark Harris explores the history of lesbian pulp fiction. | T Magazine
• “Everyone, it seems, has a Harlan Ellison anecdote.” Anthony Aycock revisits the Dangerous Visions trilogy. | Reactor
• “In his work, White argued that the sparks are all around us waiting to be whole, if only we can make the journey through the desert of our own defeat back to human status.” Ben Woollard on Australian Nobel Laureate Patrick White’s search for spiritual meaning. | JSTOR Daily
• Dionne Brand on the novel’s relationship to colonization. | The Nation
• “It turns out that there is some benefit to working in an industry that is clearly contracting but has not yet died. It forces you to think.” Phil Christman considers the future of teaching literature. | Plough
• “Something about the act of writing by hand, and the production of a physical object, makes the older technology more effective than the new.” Roland Allen on the endurance of the Moleskine. | The Walrus

Also on Lit Hub:

On world AIDS Day and living in a culture of virality • A new month means new paperbacks! •  The sci-fi and fantasy books you should look out for in December • David Woo looks back on 2024’s best poetry collections • 10 children’s books you might have missed in 2024 • Art in the era of ChatGPT and why poetry isn’t dead • On last week’s episode of The Lit Hub Podcast •  Why cli-fi needs more queer sex • What Angela Baggetta learned from a year of rereading books • How existential anxiety can build a short story collection • These 23 new books are out now • Poets respond to Taylor Swift • John Brandon on feeling sick of technology • Anita Felicelli on surrealist writing • Why Mark Leyner never really disappeared • The incommunicability of silver screen icon Monica Vitti • Muriel Leung offers advice to those writing about ghosts • Are you the asshole if you just don’t feel like reading anymore? • Calvin Kasulke on AI slush • The history and future of African music • 5 book reviews you need to read this week • How to build a library, Montaigne’s way • Susan Abulhawa remembers Refaat Alareer • Janet Manley examines Marielle Heller’s adaptation of Nightbitch • This week on The Lit Hub Podcast • The best reviewed books of the week • The rise and fall of early 20th-century avant-garde • Read “Dissociation” and “Central Park, Nocturne,” two poems by David McLoghlin • The best audiobooks of 2024 • Beowulf Sheehan on author photos and the search for home