TODAY: In 1947, Lydia Davis is born.
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How J. Robert Oppenheimer used one of his favorite books, the Bhagavad Gita, to make the most consequential decision of the 20th century. | Lit Hub History
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Truman Capote became the “it” author of his generation after publishing In Cold Blood. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing. | Lit Hub Biography
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C.K. Chau considers the importance of place in Pride and Prejudice: “We, along with the Netherfield players, join the story by moving into it.” | Lit Hub Criticism
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“I remain fascinated by Casablanca, not so much because of the stories about love it may tell, but because of the many stories the film does not, cannot, or simply was not ready to tell.” Tabea Alexa Linhard on the refugee stories that begin where Casablanca ends. | Lit Hub Film & TV
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Tessa Hadley’s After the Funeral, David Lipsky’s The Parrot and the Igloo, and Nicole Flattery’s Nothing Special all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
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“I found myself haunted by the war, yet again.” John Milas on writing a horror novel about wartime. | CrimeReads
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Jaren Marcel Pollen on the lessons of Milan Kundera’s work. | The New Republic
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In which Kyle Chayka attempts to replace himself with a robot. | The New Yorker
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“The great theologian of our America, I propose, is the novelist Thomas Pynchon.” Alan Jacobs on Pynchon’s teleology of the human. | Hedgehog Review
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Joshua Fagan considers the scientific socialism of H.G. Wells. | Jacobin
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Julie Irigaray revisits Sylvia Plath’s “The Applicant.” | The Poetry Foundation
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“For me, writing and erasing myself are one and the same; a sentence succeeds because it conjures up something other than me.” Hernan Diaz on the adaptation of his novel Trust. | The Guardian
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The Napkin Project, rebooted: Read ten (very) short works of fiction, written on cocktail napkins, by Emily St. John Mandel, Danielle Evans, and more. | Esquire
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Take a line-by-line look at the art of translation. | The New York Times
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Stephen King gives advice on division of labor, dealing with in-laws, and librarian burn-out. | Slate
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Was Cormac McCarthy a true “Texas novelist”? Texan writers weigh in. | Austin American-Statesman
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“Whereas some people have a passion for sex, my mentor has a passion for otters.” Read a new work of flash fiction from Patrick Cottrell, from the latest issue of BOMB. | BOMB
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“‘It looks really overwhelming in there,’ she says, peering into the crowd.” A chaotic 48 hours with Colleen Hoover. | TIME
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Rachel Gutman-Wei considers the decline of penmanship. | The Atlantic
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Jonathan Taylor looks back at the early years of Reading Rainbow. | LA Times
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Livia Gershon explores the complicated history of pointy hats. | JSTOR Daily
Also on Lit Hub:
Ruth Madievsky on burying her darlings • Writing straight characters while queer • On the dehumanization of migration • Self-soothing with satire • A brief history of New England Noir • Jackie Collins’s daughter describes her mother’s creative process • Tessa Hadley won’t apologize for rereading • Writing about past Hollywood abuses in the midst of #MeToo • Why North America’s black bears have stopped hibernating • On hip-hop’s role in powering Egypt’s ongoing revolution • How Lauren Bacall secured her legendary love story with Humphrey Bogart • Jeff Goodell on the perils of urban heat • On loving and fictionalizing Ruth Bader Ginsburg • Andrew Ridker on learning to love historical fiction • Amy Rowland on writing about rural America • On Marianne Faithfull, one of the women behind The Rolling Stones • How 9/11 led to the lost world of New York City nightlife • Amita Murray on navigating the Regency romance genre as a brown writer of South Asian descent • When your life starts to resemble your novel • Teaching Brian Doyle’s “Leap” to the post-9/11 generation • How the machinery of social media is changing the rules of human discourse • What it looks like to tackle exclusion in housing • On the benefits of polyvocal stories