Lit Hub Daily: Do Fictional Critiques of the Wealthy Ever Really Work?

Click here to read this email in your browser.

Lit Hub Daily

September 24, 2021

In 1940, French writer Yves Navarre (left), pictured here with journalist Jean Le Bitoux at a march for gay rights in Paris, is born.

TODAY: In 1940, French writer Yves Navarre (left), is born. He's pictured here with journalist Jean Le Bitoux at a march for gay rights in Paris.

“Fitzgerald likes to rub rich people’s monstrousness against their beauty and thereby make sparks fly.” Andrew Martin and Benjamin Nugent discuss F. Scott Fitzgerald on his birthday. | Lit Hub Criticism

Yiyun Li takes ten writing lessons from War and Peace. | Lit Hub Craft

“People just really love reading about kinky sex.” Leigh Cowart on the centuries-long success of sadomasochistic books, from Venus in Furs to Fifty Shades of Grey. | Lit Hub Criticism

Is restoring “wildlife corridors” the key to solving climate change? | Lit Hub

“You’d be reading the script and it would be like, ‘We’ve got to medical the medical until medical happens to medical.’” Behind the scenes of the Grey’s Anatomy writers’ room. | Lit Hub TV

INTERVIEW WITH A JOURNAL: Everything you need to know about The Georgia Review. | Lit Hub

Biographer Jacques Berlinerblau on why it matters that the literary world lacks critical distance when it comes to Philip Roth. | Lit Hub Biography

Which international thriller should you binge this weekend? CrimeReads editor-in-chief Dwyer Murphy has some suggestions. | CrimeReads

Wondering what to read next? Here are the Best Reviewed Books of the Week, both fiction and nonfiction. | Book Marks

WATCH: Kima Jones reads new poetry by James Cagney · Jeanette Winterson on how artificial intelligence will change the way we live and love. | Lit Hub Virtual Book Channel

Brian Fagan and Nadia Durrani look to the past for solutions to handling “a crisis-ridden climatic future.” | Lit Hub Climate Change

Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke

“I want to know what it is about the truth that prevents me from writing it. Why do I prefer my own version to the ‘real’ version?” Joshua Cohen talks to Lincoln Michel about The Netanyahus and interpreting truth. | Frieze

On the big business of online book clubs and the female founders who are at the helm. | Marie Claire

Alice McDermott discusses making the big leap to nonfiction and the mechanics of craft. | Bomb

“There are many fine writers of literary fiction, maybe too many... but only one world’s richest lady.” Considering the novels of MacKenzie Bezos in the (all-consuming) context of her proximity to Amazon. | The Paris Review

Incarcerated writers reflect on the mental, physical, and emotional toll the pandemic has taken. | The Drift

You’ve seen this book cover: “amorphous daubs of warm, bright color,” “a blocky but refined sans serif.” R.E. Hawley breaks down the trend in book design. | Print

Steve Kettmann pens a love letter to Green Apple Books in San Francisco, where each visit “had a way of both inspiring and exhausting me.” | The Bold Italic

These Toxic Things by Rachel Howzell Hall

NEW ON LIT HUB RADIO

Celeste Mohammed on writing about the complexities

of island life, on The Common.

*

How can we recapture the ambition and hope of the space-race days? This week on Open Source.

*

P. Djèlí Clark on imagining an anti-colonial 1900s Cairo,
on New Books Network.

STAY IN TOUCH WITH FRIENDS & FAMILY

Letterloop is a fun way to have a group newsletter without the work. You pick questions for your group to answer, then Letterloop creates a fun and beautiful newsletter with everyone's replies. All you need is to do is invite your people!