Lit Hub Weekly: August 24 – 28, 2020

TODAY: In 1992, Mary Norton, author of The Borrowers series, dies.

“Animals aren’t just repositories for human meanings, even if we unthinkingly use them to reflect our own selves and concerns.” Helen Macdonald offers some hard-won wisdom for writing about the natural world. | Lit Hub Craft
“You were a sweet and powerful man, walking through the fire of your time.” Nikky Finney writes a letter to John Lewis. | Lit Hub Politics
When Muhammad Ali first met the Black Prince of Harlem—also known as Drew “Bundini” Brown, one of boxing’s great hype men. | Lit Hub Biography
Trump as Hiaasenian Florida Man, Beowulf for the social-media era, Parul Sehgal on Elena Ferrante’s new novel, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
Was El Chapo a bandit, a ruthless killer, or a sacrificial lamb set up by the real kingpins? Alan Feuer searches for elusive answers. | CrimeReads
“His point is clear: There can be no in-between. You can’t be passive in this conversation.” ZZ Packer profiles Ibram X. Kendi | GQ
A profile of Ann Goldstein, the translator as meticulous and self-effacing as her best-known collaborator, Elena Ferrante. | The New York Times
What will post-pandemic fiction look like? The books that followed 9/11 could be a clue. | Santa Fe New Mexican
How does Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half respond to Toni Morrison? | Vox
Writers in Kuwait are celebrating an “anti-censorship” amendment to a publishing law that ends the need for the Ministry of Information’s prior approval. | The National
“As writers, we must not say that the fire is coming, but that it was never extinguished in the first place.” Mychal Denzel Smith on how we will remember the protests of 2020. | GEN
How Edith Wharton addressed the public self, intimate spaces, and the “very American myth of home-building as an exercise in self-creation.” | Los Angeles Review of Books
“Every wood-wrapped window was a canvas. Minneapolis quickly has become an art gallery, and every neighborhood curates a different emotion.” Danez Smith on the protest art of Minneapolis. | Vanity Fair
“Swift’s and Sade’s literature was neither the literature of majestic vision nor of pure shock.” On Jonathan Swift, the Marquis de Sade, and the art of upsetting people. | Lapham’s Quarterly
Kuwait, which has banned thousands of books in recent years, is scaling back its censorship laws. | The Guardian
“There is no industry standard for which books get fact checked . . . There is no industry standard for what it means for a book to be ‘fact checked.’ There is no industry standard for where the fact check should go in the production process of a book.” Emma Copely Eisenberg on the lack of standard fact-checking in nonfiction and why we all should care. | Esquire
How Chekhov invented the modern short story. | New Statesman
Nobel-prize winning Belarusian author Svetlana Alexievich called on Russia to help persuade President Alexander Lukashenko to negotiate. | Yahoo News
2020 will be remembered for a lot of disasters, but some good things too, like the surge of Black women who have topped bestseller lists. | Elle
Alexander Chee writes about his grandfather’s memories of the decades-long Japanese occupation of Korea. | The New York Times Magazine

Also on Lit Hub:

It’s that time of year: Emily Temple considers the new generation of great campus novels • Jhumpa Lahiri, Eduardo Halfon, and Ilan Stavans share views of the pandemic as immigrant writers • On William Faulkner’s pride in—and quarrels with—his ancestral legacy • Exploring the gulf between history and national myth in Israel • Nick Flynn on the hard art of teaching your child where you come from • Rev. William J. Barber on the scourge of environmental racism • A poem by Dawn Lundy Martin • Clifford D. Conner looks at the many ways in which corporate money has distorted American science • Ros Anderson on the difficulty of finding

a distinct human voice for her AI protagonist • In lockdown, David Farrier rediscovers drawing • The frustrated migrations of Greece, in mythology and life • Joy Harjo on the diverse, groundbreaking world of Indigenous poetry • David Giffels considers rural addiction and the need for a multitude of voices • Was The Graduate inspired by a Brontë family scandal? • Jason Diamond on the sprawl of suburban culture • Sarah M. Broom looks back at the devastation of New Orleans East, 15 years after Hurricane Katrina • Daniel Torday on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 100 years later • Heather O’Neill on reading Virginia Woolf and looking back at her younger selves • Bask in some welcome beauty with the best book covers of August

Best of Book Marks:

Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and more rapid-fire book recs from Margaret Wilkerson Sexton • Héctor Tobar recommends five iconic literary road trips, from On the Road to 2666 • A month of literary listening: AudioFile’s best audiobooks of August • Helen Macdonald talks Sherlock Holmes, Ursula Le Guin, and hating On the Road in the Book Marks Questionnaire • Ali Smith’s Summer, Helen Macdonald’s Vesper Flights, Daisy Johnson’s Sisters, and Carl Hiaasen’s Squeeze Me all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week