Lit Hub Weekly: May 11 – 15, 2020

TODAY: In 1933 Joseph Stalin orders the NKVD to “preserve but isolate” Osip Mandelstam, after having been informed of the “Stalin Epigram”; Mandelstam is then arrested. A protest by literary figures, including Anna Akhmatova and Boris Pasternak, prompts Stalin to declare that he might “review the case” (he never will).

Because not everyone has extra time during quarantine, here are the 50 best contemporary novels under 200 pages. | Lit Hub
“Ongoing environmental devastation has brought about renewed interest in the fungal world, and radical mycological possibilities abound.” Merlin Sheldrake talks to Robert Macfarlane about mushrooms. | Lit Hub Science
“What occurs to me, as I sit down to write, is that this is the time to stand up for language.” Lydia Millet on the necessity of defending the truth against propaganda. | Lit Hub Politics
Laura Miller on Curtis Sittenfeld’s alternate Hillary, Jo Livingstone on the life and legacy of Odetta, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
“We find ourselves in a liminal zone of heightened temperatures, tempers, and lusts.” Elisabeth Thomas gives us eight novels for the eerie days of summer. | CrimeReads
“Our culture is drowning in explicitness—thanks to the internet. And yet we suffer from a dearth of representations of embodiedness, by which I mean bodies imbued with consciousness.” Garth Greenwell on (good) writing about sex. | The Guardian
Pulitzer Prize administrator Dana Canedy discusses un-sensationalizing diversity. | Vogue
On Joseph Brodsky’s writing in exile, which “took his twin themes of travel and time and fused them: the past is a place to which you cannot return; the future is a place of infinite emptiness.” | New York Review of Books
In the 1920s, the NYC-based “Algonquin Round Table” group of writers set the bar high for cliquey literary viciousness. | Biography
Stéphane Bourgoin, who sold millions of books claiming to be an expert on serial killers, has come under fire for fabricating details of his life. | The Guardian
“Saunders’s characters are beaten down by mind-numbing entertainment, uncaring bosses and broken healthcare systems, yet they still care about each other.” What George Saunders got right about 2020. | Inside Hook
What does the Imperial War Museum’s Wartime Classics series, which features novels by authors who experienced WWII firsthand, say about representations of global conflict? | New Statesman
How is “herd immunity” linked to the violence of social Darwinism? Take in Judith Butler’s lessons on nonviolence. | The Nation
A case of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” as “the dream-poem of right now.” | The Atlantic
“The kids who need queer books still need them. They probably need them actually more than they did before.” Nicole Dennis-Benn, Garth Greenwell, Naoise Dolan, and Akwaeke Emezi in conversation. | EW
In the work of Mary McCarthy, Margaret Foster, and other English and American writers, contraceptives have been used as symbols of class status, emotional and sexual development, and more. | The MIT Press Reader
Readers imagined how authors like Hilary Mantel, Sally Rooney, Raymond Chandler and others might write themselves into their own best-known works. | The Spectator
“From behind the counter, I learned that a supply chain isn’t an abstract concept; a real person forged each link.” Min Jin Lee on the labor of essential workers. | The New York Times
“I resist the notion that literature should have to teach us anything, that it must necessarily be of use.” The case against seeking comfort or consolation in books during the pandemic. | Los Angeles Times
African authors, frequently published by French presses, are leading a movement to keep their rights with African publishers. | The Guardian

Also on Lit Hub:

Lydia Millet talks to Kristen Iversen about end times, smug liberals, and good teens • How will restaurants reinvent themselves post-lockdown? • On the unlikely optimism of Viktor Frankl • Amanda Craig on why children’s books make good companions in a crisis • Wayne Koestenbaum considers incense, Irish Spring, and a few other smells • Part two of Maya Alexandri’s diary of an EMT on the front lines of a pandemic • Esther Kim talks to Immanuel Kim, translator of Friend, the first state-approved North Korean novel in English • Samantha Harvey on grappling with insomnia and reckoning with the past • “How many drawings will there be? God knows.” How Edward Carey is passing the time • Reckoning with the career of Isaac Asimov, sci-fi giant and serial sexual harasser • Joseph Brodsky on glimpsing the jazz, jeans, and movie stars of America • Maria Reva recommends surreal books for surreal times • How elephant matriarchs gain power as they age • Round eight of our personalized quarantine book recommendations • David Kamp on the radical creators of Sesame Street • David Farrier on the coronavirus and the limits of our metaphors for illness • Why do some writers burn their work? Alex George investigates • Richard Lopez on the potency of single-syllable slurs

Best of Book Marks:

James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, and more rapid-fire book recs from Quotients author Tracy O’Neill • To celebrate the 95th publication anniversary of Mrs. Dalloway, here are the first reviews of every Virginia Woolf novel • Pale Fire, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, A Feather on the Breath of God, and more rapid-fire book recs from Susan Choi • And Tango Makes Three, The Yellow House, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, and more rapid-fire book recs from 2020 Dylan Thomas Prize-winner Bryan Washington • Lydia Millet’s A Children’s Bible, Richard Ford’s Sorry For Your Trouble, and Samantha Harvey’s The Shapeless Unease all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week