Literary Hub - Lit Hub Weekly: April 19-23, 2021

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Lit Hub Weekly

“I will get my second vaccination in a few weeks and today I wondered if I should practice wearing shoes with heels again.” Ada Limón on preparing the body for a reopened world. | Lit Hub

Why does walking help us think? Jeremy DeSilva looks to great writers, from Charles Darwin to Toni Morrison, for answers. | Lit Hub

“It is not enough to eat food: I need to wallow in the whole process.” Nigella Lawson on the sublime act of eating. | Lit Hub Food

The cartography of wolves: Tony Hiss on Pluie the lone wolf and her lessons on landscape. | Lit Hub Nature

Reginald Dwane Betts on Richard Wright’s recovered novel, Jill Bialosky on Moby-Dick, Daphne Merkin on Jenny Diski’s essays, and more of the Reviews You Need To Read This Week. | Book Marks

How do you keep a long-running series fresh? For C.S. Harris, the secret is character. | CrimeReads

“This is the gift that Wesley Brown gives to his readers: a new way to speak, a language that we have to excavate and rescue from murky depths.” Rereading Wesley Brown’s Tragic Magic. | The New Yorker

What forces go into determining the length of a novel? (Sadly, it’s not just the will of The Muse.) | Countercraft

Judy Blume’s books defined an era, but how do they read today? | The Washington Post

Nadya Agrawal discusses the legacy of Bend It Like Beckham and the scarcity of representation. | Catapult

“Black and brown people are told in endless ways by fraternal orders of police and their powerful enablers: Comply and survive.” Ibram X. Kendi on police brutality and the false promise of compliance. | The Atlantic

Michael Seidlinger breaks down how “bookishness” in digital culture affects the publishing industry. | Publishers Weekly

There’s no shortage of writing about Patricia Highsmith’s fascinating, complicated life—but what was she really like? | T Magazine

“[The work] is not something that I’m trying to do as a rebuttal of the white gaze—it’s honestly something I don’t give a shit about.” Camonghne Felix talks to Barry Jenkins about adapting The Underground Railroad. | Vanity Fair

The country has mourned more than half a million COVID casualties largely in private. Zoé Samudzi wonders if “an unobstructed engagement with death [would] make these deaths less unfathomable.”  | Ssense

Critic J. R. Ramakrishnan examines how comps aid a translator’s pitch. | Words Without Borders

Cynthia Ozick muses on why “we are all in thrall to plot, the unexpected and often exciting turnings of events that call out from every source of life.” | LARB

Alexander Chee offers advice for listening to your inner writer’s voice (because chances are, it’s there). | Medium

From “brogurt” to Guy Fieri: Emily J. H. Contois considers consumer culture and how food is marketed to men. | Bitch Media

If you miss small talk, you’re not the only one. | The Walrus

On Giacomo da Lentini—the “engineer of the modern sonnet”—and the poetic possibilities of heresy. | JSTOR Daily

Will Self: Why do we read, anyway? • Check out a 1964 collaboration between Frank O’Hara and Italian painter Mario Schifano • Isabel Wohl considers the possibilities and constraints of place in fiction • Alia Volz on growing up in a cannabis bakery • How a queer couple masterminded a Nazi resistance campaign • Khalisa Rae on what it means to write poetry in the “Southern tradition” • Martha Cooley considers cats (and cat deaths) in literature • Kyra Wilder on motherhood and madness in Victorian literature • Lynn Berger has some thoughts on raising a second child • Maryanne O’Hara reflects on turning to nonfiction after the death of her daughter • How a Catholic priest changed Einstein’s mind about the universe • Tyler Gillespie traces the rise and fall of the Florida Man meme • KT Sparks recommends literary characters who make graceless exits • How Lying George Carmack set off the Klondike Gold Rush •
J. Robert Lennon on spending his pandemic year inside a video game • Drew Johnson recommends treating yourself to a Hot Balzac Summer • A photo essay on living in exile • Rereading The Phantom Tollbooth during pandemic doldrums • Madeleine Watts talks about coming of age amidst climate catastrophe • Emmanuel Mbolela on the plight of migrants • 19th-century socialites threw parties that would put Gatsby to shame • Audrey Clare Farley on the eugenicists who weaponized biology • Fatima Bhutto on channeling the fearlessness of Malcolm X • Kate Aronoff draws a line from the Green New Deal back to FDR’s New Deal • How the ICU influenced Paul Griner’s novel • Lilly Dancyger on the many costs of an Ivy League grad degree • Pike on the fine line between a signifier and a trope • Cassandra Lane on conception stories and the weight of memory • Throwing a rave in Chernobyl’s exclusion zone

To celebrate Earth Day, Olivia Rutigliano recommends 50 of the best new nonfiction books about the natural world • From climate change to car crash sex: a look back at five classic J. G. Ballard novels • “Here is the master technician once more at the top of his form”: a 1952 review of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea • “He writes with impassioned control, out of a maniacal serenity”: Thomas Pynchon’s 1988 review of Love in the Time of Cholera • New titles by Richard Wright, Jenny Diski, and Anthony Bourdain all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week

Crime and delves into noir in Italy’s capital of style • Mark Aldridge on Hercule Poirot’s first appearances on radio and television • April’s best debut crime and mystery fiction • Amy Suiter Clarke wants crime writers to reimagine public safety without police • From Hitchcock to heists, a host of new crime nonfiction out this April • Audrey Clare Farley on the sensational trial that uncovered a secret world of medical atrocities • Sabina Stent gives a close reading of The Thomas Crown Affair as a masterpiece of surrealism • Mindy McGinnis on resurrecting Edgar Allan Poe while continually disappointing her mother • Zhanna Slor with seven suspenseful novels that examine immigrant identity • A look at the nominations for the 2021 ITW Thriller Awards

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