Lit Hub Weekly: April 17–21, 2023

• “Pugilistic metaphors and hard-drinking aphorisms … a brittle misogyny and a vainglorious narcissism. And then there are all the dead animals.” David Barnes considers the baggage of Ernest Hemingway, 100 years after his first published work. | Lit Hub Criticism

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• How language acquisition nourishes a love of literature. | Lit Hub

• “But where’s its anus?” Jaime Green on how (and why) we speculate about alien lifeforms. | Lit Hub Science

• Katy Simpson Smith on writing a Southern woman louder than herself: “Southern writers are tearing holes in the veils, recasting what’s considered speakable.” | Lit Hub

• David Grann’s The Wager, Han Kang’s Greek Lessons, and Ramona Ausubel’s The Last Animal all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks

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• C.S. Harris considers the art of historical fiction. | CrimeReads

• Memoirist Amy Silverstein on the “stagnant science and antiquated, imprecise medicine” of organ donation, and preparing to say goodbye to her transplanted heart—and life. | The New York Times

• Colson Whitehead on the books that have shaped his life: “In seventh grade English class we read the first chapter of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and I thought: here’s a Black weirdo who writes; maybe there’s room for a Black weirdo like me.” | The Guardian

• “Among the journalists, there was a sense of claustrophobic mania, of being on the brink, even before the profound disappointment of the tarot session.” Lauren Oyler (begrudgingly) goes on the Goop cruise. | Harper’s Magazine

• Christian Lorentzen revisits George Trow’s epic 1980 essay “Within the Context of No Context,” an essay that took up almost an entire issue of the New Yorker in 1980. | The Point

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• Wait—are you telling us one of the great chroniclers of adventure and derring-do, David Grann, gets put off by a few bugs? | The Wall Street Journal

• Seventy years after John Steinbeck visited Le Sirenuse, the Amalfi Coast hotel continues beckoning literary types with a springtime writers’ retreat. | Air Mail

• “‘Creativity,’ as the name for a personal attribute or a mental faculty, is a recent phenomenon.” Louis Menand on the origins of creativity. | The New Yorker

• “I wasn’t sure what to expect when I signed up for one of the first ever sleepovers at California’s largest new and used bookstore.” One night at The Last Bookstore. | Los Angeles Times

• Check out anime legend Hayao Miyazaki’s favorite kid’s books. | Open Culture

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• Jennifer Wilson considers the pool parties and class war of Emma Cline’s latest novel, The Guest. | The Nation

• Rita Dove, Jeannette Winterson, Joy Harjo, Weike Wang, Margaret Atwood, Sigrid Nunez, Mona Awad, Raven Leilani, Layli Long Soldier, and more all feature in T Magazine’s “Legends and Heirs” feature. | T Magazine

• A new book tells the story of humanity from the perspective of the bugs that shaped us. | The Atlantic

• Almost every Judy Blume book has been banned somewhere in America. | Distractify

• Here are ten Black-owned bookstores you can visit this summer on your cross-country literary road trip. | Ebony

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• “Can a reader’s experience of fictional landscapes shape her interaction with actual landscapes?” Yes. The answer is yes. | Christianity Today

Also on Lit Hub:

Eileen Myles on discovering the poetic core of everyday life • Ramona Ausubel on falling in love with a dog (and the world) • Alison L. Strayer on translating Annie Ernaux • The many painted portrayals of Shakespeare • Contacting the spirit of brilliant, divisive Australian novelist Henry Handel Richardson • Blair Hurley on life between writer and daughter • Valerie Fridland on the clash of class culture in the social world of language • Molly Prentiss on trading chaos for quiet in hopes of writing • Kevin Chong suggests staying open to surprises while writing • You can hate leaving your child, and be glad you went • The case for having more dinner parties • How “unlikable” can a rom-com lead be? • How Board Game Geek made games more inclusive • On the not always civil divide between those who have children and those who don’t • How insects help farmers with their harvest • On trying and failing to meditate