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Abstract composition by Valentijn Edgar Van Uytvanck, 1918

Still Farther South: Poe and Pym’s Suggestive Symmetries

In 1838, Edgar Allan Poe published a novel that masqueraded as a travelogue. John Tresch guides us along this strange trip southward.
Old cars piled up under a bridge overpass.

New York: The Invention of an Imaginary City

How nostalgic fantasies about the “authentic” New York City obscure the real-world place.

What We Want from Richard Wright

A newly restored novel tests an old dynamic between readers and the author of “Native Son.”
Illustration of Pimento Cheese on Bread by Carter.

Pimento-cracy

The history of pimento cheese as a working class fixture and a symbol of Southern culture as seen through mystery novels.
H.P. Lovecraft.

The Shadow Over H.P. Lovecraft

Recent works inspired by his fiction struggle to reckon with his racist fantasies.
Headshot of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Trouble with Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman authored the beloved short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," but also supported eugenics and nativism.
F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Why Do We Keep Reading the Great Gatsby?

Ninety-six years after the book's publication, the characters of "The Great Gatsby" continue to mesmerize readers.
Headshot of William Faulkner

‘A Land Where the Dead Past Walks’

Faulkner’s chroniclers have to reconcile the novelist’s often repellent political positions with the extraordinary meditations on race, violence, and cruelty in his fiction.
A house.

Poe in the City

Peeples helps us to see that Poe’s imagination was stoked by his external surroundings as well as by his interior life.
Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl's Anti-Black Racism

The first edition of the beloved novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory featured "pygmy" characters taken from Africa.
An image of William Faulkner and author André Malroux.

Faulkner Couldn’t Overcome Racism, But He Never Ignored It

That’s why the privileged White novelist’s work is still worth reading, Michael Gorra argues.

Charles Averill’s The Cholera-Fiend: Fiction for a Pandemic

The 1850 novel reveals disturbing continuities between the 19th century cholera pandemics and global health crises today.
William Faulkner writes at a typewriter in front of a messy bookshelf, not looking at the camera.

What to Do About William Faulkner

A white man of the Jim Crow South, he couldn’t escape the burden of race, yet derived creative force from it.
A printed advertisement for "The Bookman" depicting a fish reacting to "The Bookman" on a hook.

The Power of Flawed Lists

How "The Bookman" invented the best seller.
Illustration taken from The Great Gatsby, The Graphic Novel

Greil Marcus Takes a Deep Dive Into "the Stubborn Myth of The Great Gatsby"

An insightful exploration of the ways America has read ‘the Great American Novel.’
The title page of Life and confession of Ann Walters, the female murderess.

How “Female Fiends” Challenged Victorian Ideals

At a time when questions about women's rights in marriage roiled society, women readers took to the pages of cheap books about husband-murdering wives.

What Our Contagion Fables Are Really About

In the literature of pestilence, the greatest threat isn’t the loss of human life but the loss of what makes us human.
A photo of Nelson Bellamy next to a photo of a boardwalk full of people sunbathing and wading.

“The Splendor of Our Public and Common Life”

Edward Bellamy's utopia influenced a generation of urban planners.
Illustration of WWI soldiers hiking thorugh a field; the painting uses light pastel colors and surrounds the soldiers with mist

On the Sexist Reception of Willa Cather’s World War I Novel

From Hemingway to Mencken, no one thought a woman could write about combat.
Protester at an "America First" rally.

The Great-Granddaddy of White Nationalism

Thomas Dixon’s racist discourse lurks in American politics and society even today.

Pulp Fiction Helped Define American Lesbianism

In the 50s and 60s, steamy novels about lesbian relationships, marketed to men, gave closeted women needed representation.
The secret message in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Gold Bug"

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Gold-Bug” (1843)

Poe’s story of a treasure hunt, revealing the fantastical writer’s hyper-rational penchant for cracking codes.
Painting of people examining a globe that depicts California as an island.

California, an Island?

Meet cartography's most persistent mistake.
Book cover of Upton Sinclair's book, featuring text and his profile

Mankind, Unite!

How Upton Sinclair’s 1934 run for governor of California inspired a cult.

A Book of Necessary, Speculative Narratives for the Anonymous Black Women of History

Unearthing the beauty in the wayward, the fiction in the facts, and the thriving existence in the face of a blanked out history.

It's Time to Stop Talking About a 'National Divorce'

The right's eagerness for a "peaceful separation" of the nation echoes pieces of race war fiction.
Book cover of the novel Trinity, depicting a man in a business suit casting a long shadow.

On Oppenheimer

A conversation with Louisa Hall about her novel, “Trinity.”

Literary Hoaxes and the Ethics of Authorship

What happens when we find out writers aren't who they said they were.
Film still of Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch.

The Contested Legacy of Atticus Finch

Lee’s beloved father figure was a talking point during the Kavanaugh hearings and is now coming to Broadway. Is he still a hero?

What War of the Worlds Did

The uncanny realism of Orson Welles’s radio play crystallised a fear of communication technology that haunts us today.

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