Lit Hub Daily: May 18, 2020

TODAY: In 1944, W.G. Sebald is born.

• “A chorus of voices have warned that a catastrophe such as the one that we are now living through loomed on the horizon”: Mike Davis on the inevitably of a pandemic. | Lit Hub
• If you’re not already rereading your favorite books all the time, Natalie Jenner recommends it. | Lit Hub
• Gabrielle Bellot looks at the parallels between “The Machine Stops,” E.M. Forster’s only foray into sci-fi, and our current socially distanced reality. | Lit Hub
• “The Adjustments”: A poem by Alberto Ríos from the collection Not Go Away Is My Name. | Lit Hub
• “The Tree and the Vine is one of the richest texts I’ve had the pleasure of translating and one that will stay with me for a long time.” Kristen Gehrman on Dola de Jong’s novel of resistance in love and war. | Lit Hub
• Loving Joan Didion, hating Infinite Jest, and more rapid-fire book recs from Stephanie Danler. | Book Marks
• Travels in Scandinavian Noir, hunting Whitey Bulger, and America’s first female serial killer: five nonfiction picks for May. | CrimeReads
• “Economic distress is nothing new to us, but this is something totally different.” On Oakland’s Marcus Books—the oldest black bookstore in the country—trying to survive during the pandemic. | The Guardian
• “Ultimately, access to a democratic, universal, and open culture must be the goal. Achieving that will take a monumental effort.” On radical publishing in a pandemic, and after. | Tribune
• The Washington Post’s Books staff has launched a wide-ranging calendar of literary events. | The Washington Post
• “In these images we seem to be in our own world, alone together.” Beth Nguyen on family photographs. | The Paris Review
• Nick Ripatrazone on the prolific poet-nuns of the mid-20th century. | America Magazine
• Why has Michel Houellebecq, “a favorite intellectual of right extremists,” also attracted so many fans on the left? | Boston Review
• “Like everybody there looking to get out, I was working without a compass, taking guesses.” Oscar Villalon on the places that formed him. | Zócalo Public Square

Also on Lit Hub: How energy, chaos, and a flair for entertainment created nightly news • On Florence’s struggle to get Dante’s body back • Read from Kent Carroll and Jodee Blanco’s new novel, I, John Kennedy Toole.