Lit Hub Weekly: What Is “the Thinking Mind”? And Does My Robo-Dog Have One?

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Lit Hub Weekly

I bark, therefore I am: Meghan O’Gieblyn considers consciousness and robot dogs. | Lit Hub Tech

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

Misunderstanding Thoreau: Steve Edwards considers what we miss when we approach literature—and life—through a neurotypical lens. | Lit Hub

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’ The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, Peter Heller’s The Guide, and Deborah Levy’s Real Estate all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks

The best thrillers to explore the depths of human psychology, according to clinical psychologist and crime writer S. F. Kosa. | CrimeReads

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

Emily Gould considers how things have changed since Jonathan Lethem, Franzen, and Safran Foer first appeared on the literary scene. | Vanity Fair

Merve Emre considers The Inseparables, Simone de Beauvoir’s lost novel of friendship and queer love, which “posits separateness as love’s aesthetic and ethical essence.” | The New Yorker

Read this rediscovered interview with Jorge Luis Borges. | LARB

Myriam J.A. Chancy recommends books to help readers understand the complex history of Haiti. | NPR

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

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

“Why do such singular stories of abuse capture the American imagination of Islam at large?” Audrey Clare Farley considers the impact of Western bestsellers about the suffering of Muslim women. | The New Republic

From the Chelsea Hotel to Gumby Book Studio and more: dive into the history of New York City’s legendary literary hangouts. | The New York Times

Mychal Denzel Smith on the everlasting impact of Aaliyah. | Harper’s Bazaar

A look at the “growing national movement of abolitionist library workers who want law enforcement out of libraries.” | In These Times

Cheryl Strayed and Alison Bechdel discuss quests both physical and spiritual, literary transcendentalists, and the gendered history of exercise. | The Believer

Hilma Wolitzer discusses writing in the wake of her husband’s death from COVID-19. You can read her story “The Last Story in a Long Marriage” here. | Los Angeles Times, Electric Literature

“The book is both arrival and departure, for both author and readers.” Susan Choi revisits Sigrid Nunez’s 1995 debut, A Feather on the Breath of God. | The Paris Review

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.

A flowchart for choosing which fall book(s) to read • Deborah Levy on finding a house of one’s own • Francine Prose on teaching James Alan McPherson to incarcerated students • The most memorable trees in literature • On the crime and punishment of literacy in Frankenstein • Friends and colleagues remember the late writer and publisher Roberto Calasso • Louis Edwards on his literary comeback • An unofficial ranking of publishing colophons • Jonathan Walker on JRR Tolkien’s “eucatastrophe” • Ten stories with great dialogue that aren’t “Hills Like White Elephants” • The relationship between our biological and emotional hearts • Giles Tremlett on the inimitable war photographer Gerda Taro • On the botched symbolism of Christopher Columbus • Kat Chow on who we become in the face of a parent’s death • Why is Yves Saint Laurent’s “sardine dress” so compelling? • Tina M. Campt looks at the historic all-Black towns of Oklahoma • Wayne Koestenbaum’s advice for graduates (and the rest of us) • Ellen O’Connell on finding literary spaces as a new mother • Jan Grue navigates the social politics of visibility • Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint on war, reincarnation, and the changing names of Myanmar • Jeffrey Webb revisits the labor battle for Blair Mountain • Michelle Jana Chan on writing a novel that her father has yet to read • Sarah Jaffe considers class and privilege in female comedians’ memoirs • Rereading Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Kia Corthron on the syntactical challenge of historical fiction • Amy Wright on the art of the query

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