Lit Hub Weekly: January 8-12, 2024

TODAY: In 1941, James Joyce dies in Zurich after surgery for a perforated ulcer. Death Mask courtesy of the Little Museum in Dublin, Ireland.

“Describing the slowness of change is often confused with acceptance of the status quo. It’s really the opposite.” Rebecca Solnit on the radical possibilities of slow change. | Lit Hub Politics
Murder, mayhem, moonstruck love, and… Timothée Chalamet. Here’s your 2024 literary film and TV preview. | Lit Hub Film & TV
Lauren Groff talks about what it’s like to open a bookstore in Florida right now. | Lit Hub
Your reading list for a dry January (should you choose to accept it). | Lit Hub
“Elon Musk has not changed the world. He is not a great innovator. He is not a genius. He is not taking the human species anywhere in particular. He’s boring. Even his faults are boring!” Sam Kriss considers Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk. | The Point
“All these artists who have been killed … what’s happened to their art? We talk about numbers of people dead, and we can’t even begin to comprehend this other loss.” An interview with Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish. | The Guardian
Today in predictable outcomes: scammy AI generated books are flooding Amazon. | Wired
Johannes Lichtman on visiting the CIA’s creative writing group (where no one is writing a spy novel). | The Paris Review
“Your guests should be neither too talkative nor too brilliant.” Amy McCarthy digs through the etiquette guides of yesteryear to find the strangest entertainment advice. | Eater
Marc Da Costa considers the digital archive of the migration crisis. | Lapham’s Quarterly
A Florida Republican lawmaker has introduced a bill that would make it easier for someone accused of racism, sexism, homophobia, or transphobia to sue for defamation. What could go wrong? | The New Republic
“It might not be much fun to play, but it’s fantastic as a vibe.” Adrienne Raphel explores the cultural impact of Monopoly. | Atlas Obscura
“This interlocked campaign of financial, political, and reputational attacks on dissidents in American universities is seemingly designed to secure the inter-generational transfer of unquestioned support for Israel.” Walter Johnson on the past three months at Harvard. | n+1
“‘Families are ingenious at teaching us how to love’… Friendship, on the other hand, is even more curious because ‘it implicates you into another’s life’ in a way that’s not at all fatalistic.” Hisham Matar discusses his new novel, My Friends. | The New York Times
“I still envy the author’s gift for devising titles for the Busytown series that speak directly to their audience.” Peter Behrens on Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things That Go at 50. | The New York Times
A Florida school district has banned three dictionaries for their descriptions of sexual conduct. | Vanity Fair
“Late at night, without the option to do my work (pulling ivy), I had to focus on my real work, the enormous pile of unchecked facts, the documents that needed scanning, the sources who needed calling yet again.” Mary Childs on ripping ivy and writing nonfiction. | The Paris Review
“Zambreno lets her subjects crawl all over her; she observes them patiently and without discrimination.” Katy Waldman profiles Kate Zambreno. | The New Yorker
How do your 2023 reading numbers stack up? | The Washington Post