Lit Hub Weekly: April 3–7, 2023

TODAY: In 1928, the fourth and final section of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury takes place.  

• Daniel M. Lavery on doling advice to strangers as Dear Prudence: “An unexpected benefit of this assembly-line approach to offering advice is that one’s own judgment becomes cheap.” | Lit Hub

• “I think that women must write about their own experiences, just as they live them, subjectively.” Read a conversation between Yuko Tsushima and Annie Ernaux, available in English for the first time. | Lit Hub In Conversation

• Jeannie Marshall reflects on finding the sublime (alongside the irritating) during a year of visits to the Sistine Chapel. | Lit Hub Art

• The field of literary translation is more visible than ever. What does that mean for translators? | Lit Hub On Translation

• Curtis Sittenfeld’s Romantic Comedy, Isabella Hammad’s Enter Ghost, Nicole Chung’s A Living Remedy, and Susanna Hoffs’ This Bird Has Flown all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks

• The best new crime shows coming out this month. | CrimeReads

• “There were stretches when I made so little money writing or editing that I couldn’t blame my parents for assuming they were hobbies.” Nicole Chung on the cost of being a writer. | Esquire

• “Whether an English department is thriving or dwindling, the institutional approach generally remains the same: direct resources elsewhere.” A letter from a thriving English department on the brink. | New York Review of Books

• Dan Cohen looks into the Hachette Book Group, Inc. v. Internet Archive case: “It will impoverish readers across the country seeking access to digital books, and over time diminish the library as a democratic institution that provides broad collections to everyone.” | The Atlantic

• “I came through the Eighties when book banning was really at its height. And it was terrible.” Judy Blume on the dangers of censorship. | The Independent

• Women dominate book publishing, so why are they still underrepresented in other creative industries? | Planet Money

• “You’re welcome here, today and all the other days.” How Ann Patchett opened her bookstore to those affected by the Covenant school shooting. | Yahoo News

• Alison Bechdel revisits her eponymous cinematic test and finds it not always the best measure of a movie’s feminist bona fides. | NPR

• Is “fan fiction a distillation of the impulse behind all art”? Katy Waldman dips a toe into the wine-dark sea of one of the most popular literary genres in the world. | The New Yorker

• A look at The Stinging Fly, the Irish literary magazine where Sally Rooney, Colin Barrett, and Kevin Barry got their starts, and the brilliant editor who nurtured them. | The New York Times

• John Self on Beyond Black, a meditation on the power of memory and Hilary Mantel’s funniest work of fiction, as revealing as a memoir. | The Booker Prizes

• A few tactics for fighting book bans in your community. | The Washington Post

• Speaking of book bans, Florida Democrats are trying to use Ron DeSantis’s censorship law to ban his memoir. | The Guardian 

• “I want to turn 100 and marvel at my children’s gorgeous heads of gray hair.” Cheryl Strayed takes the Oldster Questionnaire. | Oldster Magazine

• “True Grit is a wild ride for readers.” Revisiting Charles Portis’s big (and only) hit. | The New Republic

• Someone ought to buy the Virginia house where Willa Cather was born and restore it. C’mon, people, it’s available for $200,000! | The Winchester Star

Also on Lit Hub:

Curtis Sittenfeld on the fine line between procrastination and research • What Nicole Chung is reading now and next • When Cate Blanchett played Tennessee Williams’s greatest character • Rafael Frumkin on the beauty of the trans body • How Fabio Pusterla discovered a lifelong love of poetry • Remembering Dubravka Ugrešić • Viet Thanh Nguyen on seeing his father’s face on his book cover • Lucy Scholes revisits Marina Warner’s The Lost Father • Considering the flaws in our contemporary climate behavior • On the revolutionary power of Palestinian theater • When the Klan ruled Indiana • On W.E.B. Du Bois and the disgraceful treatment of Gold Star mothers • The universal language of trees • The case for pursuing humanist freethinking, inquiry, and hope • On the life and work of iconic Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama • Matthew Vollmer shares his “Portrait of an Artist” workshop model • The art of the experimental memoir • Melissa Coss Aquino on being an older debut novelist • When the IRA attempted to blow up Margaret Thatcher • Why we should care about penguins • A brief history of the science of reading • Against suffering for your art

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