Lit Hub Weekly: August 31 – September 4, 2020

TODAY: In 1921, The Cervantes Theatre in Buenos Aires opens with a production of Lope de Vega’s La dama boba.

“He died a terrible death, his chest working overtime like he often did in the mill.” Kerri Arsenault on life and death in a Maine mill town. | Lit Hub Memoir
She hoped that children who played her game would grow up understanding the injustice of our economic system.” Eula Biss on the anticapitalist origins of Monopoly. | Lit Hub History
What are we going to do about voter suppression? An important conversation with Stacey Abrams, Kevin M. Kruse, Jim Downs, Carol Anderson, Heather Ann Thompson, and Heather Cox Richardson. | Lit Hub Politics
Brandon Taylor on Emma Cline’s Daddy, Merve Emre on Elena Ferrante’s The Lying Life of Adults, Ron Charles on Yaa Gysai’s Transcendent Kingdom, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
“Even in a pandemic, even in grief, I found myself commanded to amplify the voices of the dead that sing to me, from their boat to my boat, on the sea of time.” Jesmyn Ward on losing h er husband and grieving—and writing—through the pandemic. | Vanity Fair
“What does it say about capitalism that we have money and want to spend it but can’t find anything worth buying?” Eula Biss on buying (and furnishing) a home under capitalism. | The New Yorker
Jo Livingstone considers the feminist power of Beowulf in the context of a new translation by Maria Dahvana Headley. | Poetry Foundation
The numbers are in: no matter their political orientation, readers just can’t get enough of Trump-related books. | The New York Times
How did Arkady Strugatsky, a former officer in the Soviet Army, become a key figure in the evolution of Russian science fiction? | Pledge Times
“The memoir attests to how skilled Talley and countless queer people of color are at laboring under violent conditions to produce stunning visuals.” What André Leon Talley’s memoir reveals about the fashion industry as a whole. | Boston Review
“There is a deep congruity between the movements of Faulkner’s mind, with its sense of an inescapable family trauma, and the history and culture of his region.” On Faulkner and the Jim Crow South. | New York Review of Books
Meet the parents who walked into a bookstore looking for books starring Black children to read with their son—and started their own independent pop up bookstore when they couldn’t find them. | Washington Post
Meet Alice Birch, the British playwright quietly writing all your favorite shows (including Normal People, of course). | Elle
“In the education world, we always talk about giving students a voice. What does that actually look like?” On the high school English teacher who has helped over 100 students publish their work. | The Atlantic
Mitchell S. Jackson on names as a means for reinvention and self-assertion. | The Believer
“But the fantasy had become a reality for me, and I was determined not to waste the incredible good fortune that had come my way.” Janet Malcolm on failing to defend herself on the stand—and what she did with her second chance. | NYRB
“I realized just how subtly radical it was of Weiner to insist on giving every single one of her fat heroines a happy ending, book after book after book.” On the grounding power of Jennifer Weiner’s body positive novels. | Vogue
A trip to Canmore, the small Canadian mountain town that boasts between 60 and 100 authors as residents. | CBC
What are Americans reading most during the pandemic? Books about race, romance novels, and Hilary Mantel. | The Washington Post

Also on Lit Hub:

Hari Kunzru is never, ever going to read To Kill a Mockingbird • As The Met reopens, a former employee longs for its lost art • Arundhati Roy on life under the world’s most repressive lockdown • Carolina De Robertis on translating her own novel • Some one-star Amazon reviews of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood • Jenny Erpenbeck, a totally normal teenager, on Thomas Mann • Inside the intricate translation process for a Haruki Murakami novel • Lauren Markham on the daily magic of the US postal system • Henri Cole in conversation with David Roderick • Why can’t we take our eyes off cinematic monsters? • Angela Davis on international solidarity and the future of Black radicalism • On the humble confidence of Seamus Heaney • Geraldine Woods considers the power of repetition as a literary tool • On the experimental realism of an eccentric Russian Anglophile • Can poets show the way forward for an uncertain Europe? • Jo Marchant on obsession and desire in an ancient Assyrian library • The great singer-songwriter Valerie June with some advice for all writers • Jennifer Howard on how the Victorians invented clutter • Patricia Morrisroe goes deep on researching a novel about Beethoven • On Louis Armstrong’s first tour of the south • Joshua Bennett on the fullness of Black life in a time of siege

Best of Book Marks:

Gitta Sereny’s Into That Darkness, Pamela Des Barres’ I’m With the Band, John Cheever’s journals, and more rapid-fire book recs from Emma Cline • Roberto Lovato recommends five books (and a movie) about the underworld and salvation from below, from Beloved to The Matrix • Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and more rapid-fire book recs from Helen Cullen • Mill Town author Kerri Arsenault recommends five books that changed her ideas about storytelling, from Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle to Bonnie Jo Campbell’s American Salvage • New titles from Elena Ferrante, Emma Cline, Yaa Gyasi, and Eula Biss all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week