The Best of the Literary Internet, Every Day
TODAY: In 1962, Sylvia Plath writes one of her best-known poems, “Daddy,” partly inspired by her own relationship with her father Otto, who was an expert on bees and who died when Sylvia was just eight years old.
- A guide to Cormac McCarthy’s literary influences, from Beowulf to Foucault. | Lit Hub Criticism
- From barroom chats with Raymond Carver to the aperçus of Thomas Piketty, Douglas Unger explores class consciousness in American letters. | Lit Hub Memoir
- Steve Wasserman deconstructs the environmental and philosophical factors of “writer’s space.” | Lit Hub Craft
- “I think it’s interesting that there’s such an overt transformation at the center of the book, but then it’s really about these subtle transformations within a relationship.” Director Marielle Heller and author Rachel Yoder discuss their creative collaboration on Nightbitch. | Lit Hub In Conversation
- “With words she not so much found the point to life as sharpened life to a point.” Deborah Levy on some of her literary loves. | Hazlitt
- Kyle Chayka considers the unavoidable ubiquity of A.I. | The New Yorker
- On Emile Habibi’s The Pessoptimist, fifty years later. | Jacobin
- The American presidential election through an international lens, courtesy of 12 different writers. | The Dial
- “…what does the moral indictment of one year of genocide mean that one hundred days of genocide or six months of genocide did not?” Sarah Aziza on Gaza, a year later. | The Baffler
- Meet the London cartographer who’s mapping all your favorite novels. | The Washington Post
- Camilla Grudova on what it means to be a working writer, bodily fluids and all. | Granta
- “I am tattooed now, yes, but mostly I’m nothing like the cool grown-up I thought I was preparing myself to be when I was 22, getting a tattoo from my friend’s husband.” Rumaan Alam on tattoos in middle age. | Esquire
- Michael DeForge on how how Canada’s most prestigious literary prize is weaponizing its wealth and power against pro-Palestinian speech. | Canadian Dimension
- As we approach the announcement of this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature, A.O. Scott wonders: “What good is greatness?” | The New York Times
- “I’ve come to understand the body as a depository of records—records of instinct, records of feeling and desire, etched in tissue and sinew, accrued over time.” Tan Tuck Ming on seeking answers about migraines. | The Yale Review
- What’s the point of epigraphs? Tajja Isen investigates. | The Walrus
- The first reviews of Melania Trump’s memoir are in and they are…not good. | Book Marks
- “If I have felt for these characters as if I knew them, it is not because of any empathic faculties within me, but by virtue of Ginzburg’s formidable design…” Tanisha Tekriwal on Natalia Ginzburg’s Valentino & Sagittarius. | Full Stop
- “Language has power. It can decide who lives, who dies, whose deaths are mournable and whose can languish under rubble as collateral damage.” On the responsibilities of journalists covering Palestine. | The Walrus
Also on Lit Hub:
Elias Altman remembers Lewis Lapham • Deborah Levy on Marguerite Duras’s The Lover • Jamie Quatro recommends 10 books for readers who vibe with Satan • On translating the ancient language of The Vetala Tales • The 10 best books for understanding America’s class system • Jane Ciabattari talks to Luis Jaramillo • Mike Fu, Kate Greathead, and more authors take the Lit Hub questionnaire • The incendiary power of literature in an era of censorship • The dark Nazi history of the Volkswagen Beetle • The stories (literary and otherwise) we pass down to our children • Ben Edge recommends books that showcase European folklore • Glamorous! How freeports enabled international art theft • How family stories can inform historical fiction • The relationship between memoir and the science of memory • The stories of women, immigrants, and poor Americans from the Great Depression • How American Jews carved out a place for themselves in show business • Aran Shetterly remembers anti-racist activists and the lead-up to the 1979 Greensboro Massacre • Maris Kreizman tackles the Great American Western • 5 book reviews (you need to read this week) • Why writers don’t always make great speakers • Samantha Greene Woodruff recommends books about the stock market • Mark Haber on the beauty of digression • The best reviewed books of the week • What fiction writers can learn from dance • The disappearance of indigenous orphan Tommy Atkins • Cherry Lou Sy asks, who defines what Asian American literature is?
