Best of the Week: September 26 – 30, 2016

TODAY: In 1985, grammarian and animal love E. B. White dies. 

• In an important conversation (that will go on so long as two writers draw breath), Kaitlyn Greenidge has delivered a wonderful rejoinder to Lionel Shriver on the subject of who gets to write what. | The New York Times
• Margaret Atwood on rewriting her favorite (and “conveniently dead”) author, William Shakespeare. | The Guardian
• “We are in a state of emergency, and as American citizens, we should acknowledge it. Silence is a form of complicity.” An interview with Claudia Rankine. | BuzzFeed News
• All crime novels are social novels: On the genre-transgressing work of Tana French. | The New Yorker
• It’s a reciprocal, participatory literature: On literary advice columns and the writing of Kristen Dombek, Heather Havrilesky, and Sheila Heti. | The Point
• “I realized that perhaps I was in a good position to help introduce my fellow Anglophone readers to the exciting fiction coming out of China.” An interview with Ken Liu, translator of The Three-Body Problem. | The National Book Review
• “Zink’s novels, while undeniably excellent, are so strange that it is hard to understand why anybody actually likes them.” On two forthcoming books by Nell Zink. | The New Republic
• On the masterful, dangerous late writing of Henry James, proud recent recipient of a commemorative stamp. | The Smart Set
• “You were with your people. You found them.” Michael Chabon takes his fashion-obsessed, 13-year-old son to Paris Fashion Week. | GQ
• “My aim is to model a far more idiosyncratic way of reading as self-making, in which women of color can seek and find texts by other women that triangulate their own identities back to them.” Rafia Zakaria launches a new series on global women writers. | Boston Review
• Everything happens at once or nothing happens: On the loves, loss, and literature of Marguerite Duras. | London Review of Books
• “The more beautiful the image, the more frustrated I am in my writing.” On the highly artistic Twitter feed of Rabih Alameddine. | The New Yorker
• The National Book Foundation has announced its 5 Under 35 honorees for 2016: Brit Bennett, Yaa Gyasi, Greg Jackson, S. Li, and Thomas Pierce. | National Book Foundation
• Alexandra Kleeman on the deep connection between literature and dreams, the scripts for femininity and masculinity, and her gravitation towards menace, fear, and dread. | Bookforum
• I know that I’m in the depths of a living, breathing thing: J. Drew Lanham reflects on man’s relationship with nature. | Places Journal
• How a translator is like a ninja, and 35 other comparisons: Writers and translators share their most apt metaphors for translation. | Words Without Borders

And on Literary Hub:

• Roxane Gay in conversation with Rion Amilcar Scott: on representation, superheroes, and the failure of the market.
• The secret to faking your own death: Elizabeth Greenwood on the middle-aged fantasy of pseudocide.
• Lily King and Margot Livesy on loss, inspiration, and ambition.
• On solitude, compromise, and publishing that first novel: Merritt Tierce in conversation with Anuk Arudpragasam.
• Mark Greif is not actually against everything: on Thoreau, the presidential race, and the search for yes.
• On the heterodox jewishness of Clarice Lispector.
• How long until a robot wins a Pulitzer?
• The Grumpy Librarian: recommendations weird, bleak, hilarious, and gritty.
• It’s Shirley Jackson Day on Lit Hub! • Biographer Ruth Franklin on the marketing of Shirley Jackson as a witch • Laura Miller on the haunting of Jackson (and other young women in big, isolated houses) • Lisa Levy on biography, pathography, and the need for more big literary biographies of women • In search of Shirley Jackson’s house in Bennington, Vermont • From Jackson’s grandson Miles Hyman, a graphic adaptation of “The Lottery.”of “The Lottery.”
• Bookselling in the 21st century: when your bookstore gets robbed, from Brazos Bookstore.
• Twenty-six maps reveal a New York City hiding in plain sight: from Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro’s Nonstop Metropolis.
• Poetry is a pipe: selected writings of René Magritte.
• “The time I wrote a 150,000-word pulp novel in a month to win a bet.” Stanley Donwood on the story behind Catacombs of Terror!
• Finding a forgotten book on surviving the Holocaust: P.N. Singer on rescuing his grandfather’s book from oblivion.
• Bethanne Patrick recommends five great books to read amid the September onslaught.

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