Lit Hub Weekly: November 28-December 2, 2022

TODAY: In 1857, Joseph Conrad is born.   

• Mary Gordon considers the “insufficiently treasured” short fiction of Jean Stafford. | Lit Hub Criticism

• “There is no normal, there is no feminine.” Wisdom from the world’s foremost purveyors of hip and butt pads. | Lit Hub

• How dogs explore the world through smell. | Lit Hub Science

• Bob Dylan’s The Philosophy of Modern Song, Bono’s Surrender, and Claire Keegan’s Foster all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Month. | Book Marks

• Molly Odintz with 11 mysteries and thrillers that are weird, wacky, and wildly entertaining. | CrimeReads

• “Especially when it comes to issues of social justice, we need writing dedicated to uncovering the truth and guided by a sense of ethics rather than neutrality.” Kavita Das on journalism and writing in times of unrest. | PEN America

• Shiva Akhavan Rad and Elena Ferrante discuss the fight for women’s equality in Iran. | The Guardian

• “The goal is to not only inform but to also capture who the deceased really was.” What obituaries can teach us about writing and living. | Catapult

• Read “The Generation,” a new short story by Hernan Diaz. | The Atlantic

• “Why must the bar be at a Faustian-bargain level of low?” Kathryn Jezer-Morton on the frustrating search for actually good kids’ books. | The Cut

• How did a Holocaust memoir become a self-help phenomenon? | Vox

• “I’ve survived [because] I want to live. Even in our troubled world… I want to be alive. I want to breathe. I want to do my work.” Chloé Cooper Jones profiles Patti Smith. | Harper’s Bazaar

• “Is Cormac McCarthy our most minor major novelist or is he our most major minor novelist?” Justin Taylor considers The Passenger and Stella Maris. | Bookforum

• These are the ten best books of the year, according to the staff of The New York Times Book Review. | The New York Times

• “I followed Proust in imagining food as a portal, an invitation.” Hannah Walhout takes a culinary excursion through In Search of Lost Time. | Electric Lit

• We Need Diverse Books is launching Books Save Lives, an initiative against censorship that will provide schools and libraries additional funding to purchase banned books. | Publishers Weekly

• Lucie Ives considers the “enlivening, challenging” and indispensable “weak novel.” | The Baffler

• “The ability to guess the Wordle based on context clues that would appeal to Andy Borowitz is soul-crushing.” Lizzie O’Leary makes a plea for a return to Wordle randomness. | Slate

• Merve Emre on the way Roald Dahl embraced the unexpected: “Cruelty begets cruelty, children grow large, adults grow small, and everyone is trapped in a fun house of dirty, depthless mirrors.” | NYRB

• The transgressive life and work of Katherine Dunn. | The New Yorker

Also on Lit Hub:

Paul Lafargue recounts Victor Hugo’s funeral, “the most magnificent of the century” • Ted Conover’s dispatches from off-grid life in Colorado • Paul Feig shares two Bridesmaids­-inspired cocktails • Read from Lu Xun’s experimental prose collection • Tracing Bong Joon Ho’s rise to fame, from secret government blacklist to making Oscars history • The case for selling Simon & Schuster to the employees of Simon & Schuster • Mary-Alice Daniel on understanding where we’re from, “a task of nuance and nuisance” • Michael Kimmelman and Lucy Sante discuss a shapeshifting New York City • Step right up and get your recipe for cricket biscuits • On the writerly need to find ideas in unexpected places • Read a new translation of “The Caucasus” by Ukrainian poet-hero Taras Shevchenko • Pico Iyer on the timeless images of Norwegian photographer Tom Sandberg • How Iain MacGregor followed the curveballs of research to find the untold stories of Stalingrad’s citizens • On the similarities between writing and… turning into a werewolf • On the early days of Sarah Kidd’s marriage to a notorious pirate • Ian Kershaw considers Hitler’s colossal “legacy of ruin and suffering” • Read a 1990 pre-show interview with Kurt Cobain • Baek Sehee on falling through life’s cracks • Yusef Komunyakaa on Etheridge Knight: “Here’s a poet who possessed a genius for surviving the harsh realities of America.” • Silas House recalls grieving, alone and collectively, while on book tour • How diet impacts your mental health • The best old books we read in 2022