TODAY: In 1946, William Strunk, Jr., professor of English at Cornell University and author of The Elements of Style (revised and updated by his former student, E.B. White), dies.
- “Privacy is a form of power, and whoever has the most personal data will dominate society.” Carissa Véliz on life under surveillance capitalism. | Lit Hub Tech
- What is so special about Balzac’s thousands of characters? Peter Brooks on the extraordinary fictional lives of the French master. | Lit Hub
- Was abstract art actually invented by a mid-19th-century spiritualist? Jennifer Dasal on the 1871 art exhibition of Georgiana Houghton. | Lit Hub Art
- Dynastic privilege, a terrible novel, and the race for a crucial senate seat: Anjali Enjeti on Matt Lieberman’s ill-advised Georgia campaign. | Lit Hub Politics
- James Parker on a Jimi Hendrix biography, Fintan O’Toole on the letters of Martha Gellhorn, Rebecca Onion on Octavia Butler’s apocalypse fiction, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
- Martin Edwards recommends 10 Golden Age detective novelists who deserve to be better known. | CrimeReads
- “A medium-sized cream envelope landed in my mail slot. On the back flap: ‘Chambers of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.’” David Ebershoff on editing Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. | The Paris Review
- “The translator is a writer. The writer is a translator. How many times have I run up against these assertions?” Tim Parks on the writer-translator equation. | NYRB
- “It is a matter of style, where style is verifiable presence on the page.” Brian Dillon on the perfect prose of Joan Didion’s photo captions. | The New Yorker
- “Here’s a writer who is at her most lucid precisely when she’s articulating the highest insanities.” On the sublime madness and mystery of Susanna Clarke. | WIRED
- From online author readings to outdoor story walks, here’s how libraries have been responding to readers’ needs during the pandemic. | National Geographic
- From the 19th-century celebrity chef and writer Marie-Antoine Careme through modern chef-authors like Anthony Bourdain and David Chang, personal food writing has always been about more than what you have on your plate. | Shondaland
- Why Dune is so hard to adapt. | WIRED
- Here are the books designers are reading right now. | Architectural Digest
- “If Scorsese takes an interest in something, it must have become part of America’s DNA.” How Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, published a century ago, defined an American era. | BBC
- When it comes to choosing a book to read in quarantine, “maybe escapism versus reality is a false choice.” | NPR Code Switch
- Everything you wanted to know about how the New York Times Best-Seller List gets made. | The New York Times
- Want to remember more of what you read? Try reading it out loud. | BBC
- “Sounds like Laura Palmer went to UCLA and wrote melancholy love poems in her dorm.” Actual poets review Lana Del Rey’s new poetry collection. | VICE
- “This enjoyment, this recognition, is for her the revolution. It’s in your face. Sometimes it’s a protest. Sometimes it’s just feeling free.” Claudia Rankine profiled Lizzo, proving there is still some good in the world. | Vogue
- “We should look anew at 1920 not because centenaries have magical properties but because Fitzgerald’s remarkably sensitive inner ear helped him register, before almost anyone else, when America started losing its balance.” On F. Scott Fitzgerald, the oracle of our spiritual malaise. | NYRB
Also on Lit Hub:
There is something foul about speaking of Breonna Taylor’s death “in the Greek sense.” In which Aaron Robertson responds to a very bad Tweet • The ultimate best books lists for this fall • Gerry Spence on the case of Collins Catch the Bear, the Lakota man wrongly accused of murder at Wounded Knee • Noam Chomsky in conversation about the Green New Deal • Lawrence Wells on life, love, and Beowulf in the deep south’s most literary small town • Lucille Clifton didn’t just write poems, she inhabited them • In Vigdis Hjorth’s Norway, perfect happiness amounts to complacency • Lynn Steger Strong mourns Ruth Bader Ginsburg • Wendy Woloson provides a brief history of useless American crap • Géraldine Schwarz on her family history and what made Nazi Germany possible • Kerry Greenwood on Lindy Cameron and war narratives that beyond brute force • Dan Beachy-Quick’s on the ancient Greek poet Anacreon • Amaud Jamaul Johnson writes from Wisconsin on being Black in a battleground state • Jon Sternfeld on writing history as it’s happening in the middle of a pandemic • Annie Lyons on writing about death, the hardest subject of all • Maggie Lane on the life of the poet elf • Climactic moments in literature rescheduled as Zoom meetings, as drawn by Kate Gavino • What does it mean to buy from Black-owned businesses? • Jessica Gross provides possibly the definitive literary survey of… constipation • Jock Serong on James Hamilton Paterson and the book that changed his life • Jane Ward wonders how love can fit into patriarchal ideas of marriage • Bettany Hughes offers a brief history of the ancient cult of Aphrodite • Tim Weiner on early days of the Cold War • Frank A. von Hippel on how chemicals of war became “chemicals of peace” • Amy Shearn on her favorite spectral characters • Niloufar Talebi picks 33 essential works of fiction by Iranian writers
Best of Book Marks:
New on CrimeReads:
10 American masterpieces that are actually crime fiction, from Smith Henderson and Jon Marc Smith • Richard Osman explains why all British people are potential murderers • Philip K. Zimmerman on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s enduring passion for pulp fiction • Zack Budryk revisits Miller’s Crossing, 30 years later • A brief history of juvenile mysteries, from Keith Roysdon • Rachel Howzell Hall on the art of disappearing • Lizzy Steiner with eight true crime podcasts to discover this fall • All the debut crime and mystery fiction to pick up this September • A roundtable discussion on sex and crime fiction • Debora Harding on reconstructing the details of a childhood trauma