Literature Archives - Public Books https://www.publicbooks.org/tag/literature/ a magazine of ideas, arts, and scholarship Sat, 17 Jan 2026 02:10:14 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://www.publicbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/cropped-favicon-2-300x300.png Literature Archives - Public Books https://www.publicbooks.org/tag/literature/ 32 32 The Empty Lab, in Science and in Fiction https://www.publicbooks.org/the-empty-lab-in-science-and-in-fiction/ Wed, 10 Dec 2025 16:00:28 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=61283 When literature refuses readers entry into the laboratory, it fosters suspicions of science itself.

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]]> What Future for Native Sovereignty? https://www.publicbooks.org/what-future-for-native-sovereignty/ Wed, 03 Dec 2025 16:00:31 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=61225 What does it mean to seek shelter on stolen land? asks Jon Hickey's new novel, Big Chief.

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]]> “Not So Ephemeral After All”: Talking Op-Eds, War, and Memory with Bécquer Seguín https://www.publicbooks.org/not-so-ephemeral-after-all-talking-op-eds-war-and-memory-with-becquer-seguin/ Tue, 02 Dec 2025 16:00:16 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=61239 “Why does the op-ed still hold sway over writers who want to be intellectuals or want to have some public presence?”

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]]> Fantasy, Pedantry, and Painting: Stefania Heim and Ara H. Merjian on the Novels of De Chirico https://www.publicbooks.org/fantasy-pedantry-and-painting-stefania-heim-and-ara-h-merjian-on-the-novels-of-de-chirico/ Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:19:28 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=60972 “I came to translating de Chirico very much by accident.”

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]]> Betwixt or Bewitched? Rethinking the “Middlebrow” with Dino Buzzati https://www.publicbooks.org/betwixt-or-bewitched-rethinking-the-middlebrow-with-dino-buzzati/ Wed, 17 Sep 2025 15:00:48 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=60608 Reframed as a “bewitched middlebrow,” Buzzati’s fiction re-enters literary history not as a comforting escape, but as a sharp tool for existential inquiry.

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]]> “Weird, but Fantastic”: Devoney Looser on Those Who Love Jane Austen https://www.publicbooks.org/weird-but-fantastic-devoney-looser-on-those-who-love-jane-austen/ Tue, 02 Sep 2025 15:00:59 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=60522 “The Austen biography space is fairly saturated and covered. But there’s still a lot more we can learn by seeing her in context: that is, by seeing Austen in relation to her society, her family, her friends.”

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]]> Our Golden Age of Reading (Online) https://www.publicbooks.org/our-golden-age-of-reading-online/ Thu, 14 Aug 2025 15:00:23 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=60440 There is an urgent need for new, more affirmative ways to participate in culture, especially against the ongoing systematic whiteness of publishing and the exclusivity of elite institutions.

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]]> “I Will Write to Avenge My Race”: Baglin, Louis, and Ernaux on Class Transition https://www.publicbooks.org/i-will-write-to-avenge-my-race-baglin-louis-and-ernaux-on-class-transition/ Wed, 13 Aug 2025 15:00:57 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=60421 “When people write about the working-class world, which they rarely do, it is most often because they have left it behind,” admits Didier Eribon, in his 2009 French memoir of class transition, Returning to Reims. “They thereby contribute to perpetuating the social illegitimacy of the people they are speaking of in the very moment of […]

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]]> The Origin of Love and Nightmares https://www.publicbooks.org/the-origin-of-love-and-nightmares/ Tue, 15 Jul 2025 15:00:21 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=60177 Hong Kong has become an apt prism through which to probe the skin tissue between state violence and victimization, and the widening wounds to personal freedom.

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]]> Time Interpolated https://www.publicbooks.org/time-interpolated/ Thu, 26 Jun 2025 15:00:37 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=60000 Disruptive and restorative, interpolation is the paradoxical form of life, literature, and time itself.

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