Lit Hub Weekly: June 15 – 19, 2020

TODAY: In 1903, Jack London’s novel The Call of the Wild begins serialization in the Saturday Evening Post

“I went quiet the very moment everyone else seemed to get louder.” Brandon Taylor on managing private anxiety during a very public pandemic. | Lit Hub
What is an escapist read in 2020? Deborah Shapiro suggests some fiction for the unsettling moods of summer. | Lit Hub
“This’ll hurt me more.” A poem by Camille T. Dungy. | Lit Hub
Before the uprising, comes the work: Rebecca Solnit on the decades of activism that leads to sudden historic change. | Lit Hub Politics
Sigrid Nunez on Garth Greenwell, Colm Tóibín on Edoardo Albinati, Parul Sehgal on Machado de Assis, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
“Our very existence has been outlawed, criminalized, medicalized.” James Polchin gives us a queer true crime reading list. | CrimeReads
When will publishing reckon with the “conservative publishing industrial complex”? | The New Republic
Black literature encompasses far more than politics: A case for literary explorations of joy. | Harper’s Bazaar
“For half a century, the particulars have been held close by executors, smoothed over by editors, and justified by exegetes.” On the racism of Flannery O’Connor. | The New Yorker
A new literary prize is meant to provide support to BIPOC writers in the UK. | The Bookseller
The legacy of Dickens fanfic is nearly as long and storied as the legacy of the man himself. | Scroll
Author Janie Chang recounts the perilous effort to safeguard one of the most important texts in Chinese literature, the Siku Quanshu, during the Second Sino-Japanese War. | TIME
Still don’t know why you should capitalize “Black” (and not “white”)? Here’s an explainer from the Columbia Journalism Review. | CJR
Reni Eddo-Lodge is the first Black British author to top the UK’s book charts after interest surged in her 2017 book Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race. | The Guardian
To fix racial disparities in book advances, Maris Kreizman argues, the publishing industry should start by paying assistants more. | LA Times
“There was a lot of living going on; a lot of black life in all its quotidian glory. And it was glorious.” Ayana Mathis on Black joy amid the protests. | Rolling Stone
Jericho Brown, Carmen Maria Machado, and Thoman Page McBee reflect on what Pride means today. | The New York Times
“Black readers need to see themselves in narratives outside of racism, slavery, Jim Crow, police brutality.” On publishing’s commodification of Black pain. | Tor.com
In celebration of Dublin’s literary magic. | National Geographic
A division of the American Library Association voted unanimously to rescind the Literary Landmark status of Confederate president Jefferson Davis’ house in Mississippi. | Book Riot
On the black women librarians who were making anti-racist reading lists during WWII. | Washington Post

Also on Lit Hub:

Read an excerpt from Ralph Ellison’s posthumously published novel, Juneteenth • Tara Isabella Burton presents a reading list on the search for deeper meaning in times of despair • Garrett Peck on a(nother) decade from hell: the first of the 21st century • Is Ball Four the greatest baseball memoir ever written? On the role of scientific data in climate literature • Letter from Houston: Daniel Peña on the Black and Brown voices bringing light to America • How Lit Hub editor and debut novelist Emily Temple learned to stop worrying and love the list • Chris Green on creating a collective poem in response to Chicago gun violence—with 100 poets’ voices • Sanaë Lemoine finds lessons in solitude from French cinema • Willow Curry on the relationship between art and action • Let us now praise Juliet Stevenson, brilliant audiobook narrator • Documenting ten days in New York during the Black Lives Matter protests: a photo essay by Rachel Cobb • Stephen Rebello, in praise of Valley of the Dolls, irresistible trainwreck • Readings in Black history and joy, from Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Robin Coste Lewis, Fred Moten, and more • Aaron Robertson: thinking of Black families, together and apart, on Juneteenth • Harmony Holiday on America’s history of policing Black music • Laura Briggs on America’s long history of imprisoning children • In which Irina Dumitrescu manages to vanquish pandemic distraction long enough to write about it

Best of Book Marks:

Geek Love, The Secret History, Giovanni’s Room, and more rapid-fire book recs from The Lightness author Emily Temple • Sheila Kohler recommends five short novels with water at the heart of the drama, from The Talented Mr. Ripley to Lord of the Flies • Each of these five acclaimed audiobook narrators has received AudioFile’s Golden Voice Lifetime Achievement Award • Animorphs, JK Rowling, Deacon King Kong, and more bantered about in The Week in Books LIVE • New titles from Joseph O’Connor, Emily Temple, Max Brooks, and Paul Preston all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week