Best of the Week: August 17 - 21, 2015

• President Obama’s summer reading list and the inevitable think piece it spawned. | Entertainment Weekly, The Guardian
• A history of the written word that examines humanity’s relationship to writing (for Plato and Rousseau, it was contentious; for Jesus, it was complicated). | Slate
• James Baldwin’s FBI file contains 1,884 pages, the result of years of stalking, harassment, and wildly incorrect information. | The Intercept
• In which Etgar Keret reveals his heroic birth story and very dispiriting writer origin story. | Guernica
• Benjamin Moser on (figuratively) waking up next to Clarice Lispector and realizing she was the love of his life. | The Paris Review
• Is it possible to write a poetic thriller? An interview with Helen Phillips. | Slice Magazine
• “There was never a sort of star quality to any of this.” Renata Adler on fear, embarrassment, and the peril of writing. | BuzzFeed
• Today in honoring our literary past: a virtual recreation of Jazz Age Harlem allows users to immerse themselves in the Harlem Renaissance. | Hyperallergic
• The Scofield, which offers homage to The Dial and an opportunity to transcend loneliness, has launched. | The Scofield
• A probing investigation into how Europa has turned its books into “social currency,” “a coveted intellectual brand,” and, most significantly, “Instagram fodder.”| T Magazine
• Pseudo-Aristotle as a proto-E.L. James: on the bestselling sex book of the 1700s. | The Public Domain Review
• The cultural evolution of melancholy, from source of Romantic genius to cousin of depression. | The Point
• The body is a person: two poems by Morgan Parker. | PEN American Center
• New Jersey, the butt of one thousand unimaginative jokes, provides the backdrop for some incredibly imaginative fiction. | Oyster Review of Books
• Translating texts (ranging from Plato to Radiohead) into forests with Katie Holten’s arboreal typeface. | Asymptote Journal

And on Literary Hub:

• “When I first arrived at Shakespeare & Company, carrying a small suitcase—George took me in that night, I didn’t have a key, and wouldn’t for weeks.” | Literary Hub
• Richard Beck on the moral panic of the 1980s, the safety of children, and the myth of recovered memory. | Literary Hub
• The literary genealogy of Lucia Berlin: American women, masters of the short story. | Literary Hub
• Andrew Malan Milward went to college to play basketball but left wanting to be a writer. | Literary Hub
• Kathleen Alcott and Alexandra Kleeman on writing, friendship, and meeting that person whose “brain you’d like to smash into yours until they form a single powerful thinking entity.” | Literary Hub
• The confessions of a reformed book thief in Wichita, Kansas. | Literary Hub