literature

Charles Dickens to Be Very Embarrassed When Everyone Reads all the Stuff He Crossed Out

Caity Weaver · 08/08/12 05:40PM

Imagine if 100 years after you died, people started analyzing every text you'd ever sent, uncovering deleted punctuation and word choices and debating among themselves why you messaged that guy you were merely "looking forward to the party," when earlier drafts revealed you were, in fact, "so excited to see [him]!!"

Snoop Dogg's New Book Will Literally Get You High

Emma Carmichael · 04/06/12 11:20AM

You know when you're reading a book, and the book is kind of meh, and so you decide to roll a joint, but then you realize you ran out of rolling papers and forgot to buy a new pack, because you are a stoner? Sucks, right? Problem solved, thanks to the melted brain of America's favorite burnout, Snoop Dogg.

The Five Types of Posts You Find at Thought Catalog

Hamilton Nolan · 12/15/11 01:05PM

Thought Catalog, the Slate.com of urban 25-year-old creative writing majors (and their spiritual kin) who are incapable of being boring, is redefining the art of blog post writing for a new and vibrant generation. Today's "The Different Types Of People You See At The Gym" is but one example of the fresh, unexplored literary frontiers that they are, you know, exploring. What other types of posts can you find on Thought Catalog?

Is This Comely Lady the Real Jane Austen?

Seth Abramovitch · 12/06/11 12:40AM

There is only one accepted portrait of Jane Austen, sketched by her sister in 1810, in which the author of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice looks to be extremely pissed off. But Austen scholar Dr. Paula Byrne, who is working on a definitive biography due out some time in 2013, has discovered a portrait in auction, and thinks there is an excellent possibility that the woman in it daintily holding a quill and staring out a window pensively — which, coincidently, is precisely how I look at this exact moment — could be Austen herself.

Report: English Lit Professors Write Too Much Boring Crap

Hamilton Nolan · 11/21/11 12:49PM

Here's what stupid uneducated people imagine that college literature professors do: teach. Har har, stupid ignorant idiots! Here is what college literature professors actually do: write obscure papers that nobody will read. Now that's where it's at!

On Poems That Have Nothing to Do With Their Titles

Hamilton Nolan · 09/20/11 11:22AM

We are uncouth. As is most of America. We are not highly literate; we are middlebrow and low-minded. But still. Do not try to trick us into reading shitty poems with an enticing title. We do not like that.

The Gawker Guide to Fall Books

Lauri Apple · 09/02/11 02:23PM

Fall's the time for sitting on the couch with an overflowing snack bowl and dogs in your lap, sunning yourself in the bright lamp light that helps you to manage your Seasonal Affective Disorder, and trying not to think of winter. In other words, a perfect time for reading—and this fall brings the release of so many intriguing-sounding books that narrowing down the options was so hard. But we did it, and now here you go.