Lit Hub Daily: On Finally Being Old Enough to Love Proust

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Lit Hub Daily

Turns out, there are plenty of stories with great dialogue that aren’t “Hills Like White Elephants.” Here are ten of them. | Lit Hub

Like Marcel, we’ve spent decades building our models of the world, and like him we’re starting to see them for the gimcrack that they are.” Why Proust is more palatable as we age. | Lit Hub Criticism

What’s love got to do with it: Reinhard Friedl on the relationship between our biological and emotional hearts. | Lit Hub Science

“That self-styled macho hero, Ernest Hemingway, was enraged by Taro’s bohemian sexuality, fearlessness, and ability to get much closer to the real fighting than he ever managed.” Giles Tremlett on the inimitable Gerda Taro. | Lit Hub Photography

How did Columbus—who resolutely didn’t discover America—come to be synonymous with its founding anyway? | Lit Hub History

Jesse Pasternak delivers an ode to the pretty, pent-up crime films of Wes Anderson. | CrimeReads

Ubik, Song of Solomon, The Phantom Tollbooth, and more rapid-fire book recs from Alexandra Kleeman. | Book Marks

On Keen On, Casey Schwartz on Adderall and attention, and David Sumpter on the mathematics of winning at life. | Lit Hub Virtual Book Channel

“My mother’s hands were warm only because I’d been holding them.” Kat Chow considers who we become in the face of a parent’s death. | Lit Hub Memoir

“Who are the people that we’re missing?” Thomas Gebremedhin discusses his experiences as a first-generation Eritrean-American and as a book editor. | SSENSE

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers on how the words of W.E.B. Du Bois played a pivotal role in her life. | BookPage

A.O. Scott reconsiders the fiction of William Maxwell. | The New York Times

How an outbreak of the plague killed the dream of an English Academy, helping cement the language as a “vehicle of discovery, experiment, and change—not of lifeless perfection.” | Lapham’s Quarterly

Amanda Gorman discusses her literary rise and presidential ambitions. | Wall Street Journal

“This year, we’re not letting the pandemic dictate our decisions.” Here's how publishers are approaching new releases this fall. | Los Angeles Times

Tessa Love reviews a new book chronicling the aftermath of California’s Camp Fire, which tore through the area where she grew up. | Outside Magazine

In this stunning follow-up to Hollow Kingdom, the animal kingdom’s “favorite apocalyptic hero” is back with a renewed sense of hope for humanity, ready to take on a world ravaged by a viral pandemic (Helen Macdonald). Start reading now.

Eula Biss on the essay’s amenability to ambivalence, on Thresholds. 

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Charlie Jane Anders and Becky Chambers discuss the power of storytelling (and tea!), on Voyage Into Genre with Tor Books.

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Katie Crouch in praise of the not-perfectly-plotted novel, on Otherppl.

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Meron Hadero talks about writing Ethiopia, on Reading Women.

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