
Best of the Week: August 10 - 14, 2015
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET
TOMORROW: In 1920, Charles Bukowski, “laureate of american lowlife” is born in Germany.
- Elena Ferrante’s letter clarifying why she refuses to come forward publicly: “I’ve already done enough for this long story: I wrote it.” | London Review Bookshop
- Kathleen Alcott reflects on “the poverty and itinerancy of [her] childhood” and having stairs for the first time. | BuzzFeed
- The lost story of a meet cute: the recently uncovered account of one woman’s encounter with the 72-year-old W.B. Yeats at a meeting of the Sex Education Society. | The Guardian
- “How white people react is not in my control, and thus can never be in my consideration.” Ta-Nehisi Coates and Roxane Gay in conversation. | Barnes & Noble Review
- “But neither of the pipes with cocaine came from my garden,” the ghost of Shakespeare protests to the very disappointed scientists who found his weed pipes. | The Independent
- Twitter sage Joyce Carol Oates investigates the motive for metaphor. | NYRB
- It can be like James Joyce out there: on the importance of creating narratives to understand our own existences. | The Atlantic
- “Who needed girls when you could have stuff like this?” On “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” a poem for teens. | The New Republic
- Amitava Kumar describes how Philip Roth, he of “monumental dumbness,” became central to his thinking. | Library of America’s Reader’s Almanac
- A transformation, not a distortion of the truth: Lydia Davis on Lucia Berlin, the mother of auto-fiction. | The New Yorker
- An essay on contemporary novels that T.S. Eliot’s mom forgot to forward to his editor. | The Times Literary Supplement
- Alexandra Kleeman on the fairy polish of MFAs, male fumbling vs. female reflexivity, and pink slime, a non-fictional entity. | The Awl
- What do you do, so I have a context for who you are? On the fine line between potential and failure. | Vol. 1 Brooklyn
- “One never really understands a book unless one copies it.” A collage of quotes offering thoughts on translation. | The Los Angeles Review of Books
- Humanity’s quest for immortality through writing continues, even as the apocalypse looms ever closer. | Cleaver Magazine
And on Literary Hub:
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- A decade after Hurricane Katrina, a reading list of fiction and nonfiction from, by, and about the people of the Gulf Coast. | Literary Hub
- One year after Michael Brown’s death, reflections on #BlackLivesMatter from thirteen young, black writers. | Literary Hub
- Christopher Robinson and Gavin Kovite on their unpublished “drawer novel” plus the novels that won’t see the light of day from Anthony Doerr, Lauren Holmes, and Marlon James. | Literary Hub
- Wendy S. Walters on Portsmouth, New Hampshire’s African Burying Ground and memorializing the unknown dead. | Literary Hub
- Tanwi Nandini Islam on writing about diaspora, the family you choose, and transnational trans characters. | Literary Hub
- Charles Bukowski’s rules for writing: be honest, have a few drinks, submit everything, among other gems. | Literary Hub
Barnes & Noble Review
BuzzFeed
Cleaver Magazine
Library of America's Reader's Almanac
lithub daily
London Review Bookshop
NYRB
The Atlantic
The Awl
The Guardian
The Independent
The Los Angeles Review of Books
The New Republic
The New Yorker
The Times Literary Supplement
Vol. 1 Brooklyn

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