Lit Hub Weekly: March 8 – 12, 2021

TODAY: In 1892, American writer and journalist Janet Flanner, who served as the Paris correspondent of The New Yorker magazine from 1925 until 1975, is born.

Nineteen ways of looking at Marilynn Robinson: Kevin Brockmeier on the literary prowess (and workshop advice) of an American icon. | Lit Hub
“With each new agent, each foray into the dangerous business of hope and each corresponding bevy of rejections, I found myself shrinking a little bit more.” David Hollander on surviving the failure of his much-hyped debut novel. | Lit Hub
“To be Black in America is to have contemplated fleeing this country, but here we’re reminded that we also escape its bleak expectations every time we come together for dinner.” Harmony Holiday on the lost conversation between Josephine Baker, James Baldwin, and Henry Louis Gates Jr. | Lit Hub
Kelly Bowen goes behind enemy lines for a look at women in combat during WWII. | CrimeReads
Julian Lucas on Octavia Butler, Parul Sehgal on Shirley Hazzard, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
“When we go to music we’re often looking for something we can’t even name, but maybe music, or a song, will show us.” Joy Harjo talks to Rebecca Bengal about her latest album. | Vanity Fair
“Black history should not be segmented from how we think about American history. It should be baked into the curriculum.” Ilyasah Shabazz on the necessity of rewriting American history books. | Elle
“Change is constant, but it’s not real, I want to say.” Duchess Goldblatt on how life changed—and didn’t change—after writing a book. | The Cut
Butler’s great subject was intimate power, of the kind that transforms relationships into fulcrums of collective destiny.” Examining the novels and narrative themes of Octavia Butler. | The New Yorker
Three years ago, Sophie Baggott began a project to “read writing by a woman from every country in the world.” Here’s what she learned. | The Guardian
“I remembered how this mall had felt like a world with its own possibilities and laws.” Laura Van Den Berg on the strangeness of taking her mother to get vaccinated at the mall of her youth. | Harper’s Bazaar
“Who does American English belong to? Maybe it belongs to none of us, because none of us could possibly stuff it all, with all its ever-expanding edges, into our mouths.” Jennifer Shyue on translation and mother(s) tongues. | The Common
“My kitchen smells like all the bakeries we will not allow ourselves to go to. My kitchen smells like my grandmother’s kitchen.” On Crystal Wilkinson’s COVID kitchen. | Oxford American
“The system itself needs to change. And that is what is radicalising.” Naomi Klein on activism and her new nonfiction book for young people. | The Guardian
“I don’t live in that world of the imagination that I used to, but I would love to go back there because ultimately it felt so much more rewarding.” Jo Ann Beard on living and working in the virtual world. | LARB
Take a look at the neuroscience behind some of literature’s most powerful inventions, from the Empathy Generator to the Plot Twist. | Smithsonian
“To pay attention is to approach others with a fundamental generosity.” On Lady Bird, Consolation of Philosophy, and what it means to really pay attention. | Ploughshares
“A bad book deal, I understood finally, was worse than no book deal at all.” Lilly Dancyger on cancelling her first book deal (with no regrets). | Electric Literature
“I’m just doing my best to convey a lived experience in hopes [that] it would make others feel less lonely.” Forsyth Harmon on her new book, repressed queer desire, and her creative process. | Bitch Media
“In the future, I want us to organize ourselves around joy.” Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein on physics, anti-colonial theory, and Black representation in the sciences. | Shondaland

Also on Lit Hub:

Lauren Groff in praise of Shirley Hazzard • Megan Nolan recommends unrequited love stories • How to write an epic, intimate story • Betina González talks to Yuri Herrera about immigrant narratives • On the sublime horror of Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows • What modern parents can learn from hunter-gatherers • 50 very bad book covers of classics • Elizabeth Kolbert on rivers as metaphor • Donna Florio on having Sid Vicious as a neighbor • Simone Weil’s radical conception of attention • Theodore Dalrymple recommends books about doctors and patients • Michelle Nijhuis on the cooperative efforts to preserve public lands • John Archibald on the domestic terror of 1960s Birmingham • Ira Nadel dishes on 1970s literary drama • Joshua Mohr on becoming an older dad • Celebrating the life and career of Pantheon’s Kurt Wolff • Josephine Rowe encounters the work of Beverley Farmer • Gregory Brown on taking the writing slow • Jess Zimmerman considers women’s fury • Elizabeth Knox recommends books that contain fictional books • Mari Andrew takes a break from her on-again-off-again Creativity • Rebecca Handler on grief and alternate realities • Andru Okun wonders why we travel • On the dismantling of normative gender roles in film • Sarah Menkedick on the liberation of early airline stewardesses • How empathy becomes a survival strategy • Emma Brown on teaching social-emotional skills in schools • Victoria Schorr finds stories of Auschwitz escapes • Bicycling advice from a feminist pioneer • How Josephine Baker challenged misogynoir

Best of Book Marks:

Invisible Man, The Color Purple, the Tintin series, and more rapid-fire book recs from Viet Thanh Nguyen • New books by Kazuo Ishiguro, Samuel R. Delany, and Kevin Brockmeier all feature among March’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy • Song of Solomon, American Pastoral, The Sound and the Fury, and more rapid-fire book recs from Robert Kolker • Megan Nolan’s Acts of Desperation, Imbolo Mbue’s How Beautiful We Were, and Walter Isaacson’s The Code Breaker all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week