Best of the Week: August 8 – 12, 2016

TODAY: In 2004, Julia Child, America chef, author, and television host dies. 

• “There has been a growth in the literary depiction of a particular type of friendship, one that has in the past found itself vulnerable to dilution and deflection by the ostensibly more powerful imperatives of heterosexuality and motherhood.” On literary renderings of female friendship, from Elena Ferrante to Zadie Smith. | The Guardian
• On the commonalities between artistic recluses Harper Lee and Frank Ocean (beyond the inspiration of countless thinkpieces). | The Atlantic
• On the paintings of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet who “never wanted to be a poet.” | Hyperallergic
• Clancy Martin on his father, a weightlifter/New Age guru. | The New Republic
• “Cole attempts to untangle the knot of who or what belongs to us and to whom or what do we belong as artists, thinkers and, finally, human beings.” Claudia Rankine on Teju Cole’s new essay collection. | The New York Times Sunday Book Review
• “I want to affirm the work of writers that have the burden of feeling like a publisher doesn’t know how to market them, how to talk about them, how to ‘find their audience.’” Speaking with Kima Jones about the importance of diversity in all aspects of publishing. | NPR
• Perhaps language was the very first augmented reality ‘app:’ On Pokémon GO, capitalist drives, and the construction of fantasy worlds. | 3Quarks Daily
• “you who were compressed into a dense calyx,/nib which dips into a forty-year river:” Sharon Olds’ “Ode to the Tampon.” | Tin House
• “Long before words like transgender and gender dysphoria even existed, Djuna Barnes put a trans woman at the heart of her dark masterpiece.” On one of the first trans characters in western fiction. | The Awl
• Ocean Vuong on speaking to phantoms, how art is like public transportation, and enacting queerness in language. | Harriet
• “In that desert, on the eve of the ground assault, as Warthog jets and tactical missiles slashed the sky, and as Republican Guard mobilized within striking distance of our compound, Breakfast’s complexity and humor, its polemic and timing and asterisk assholes were a revolution.” Odie Lindsey on receiving a care package of Vonnegut in a warzone. | The Millions
• Annie DeWitt on the sex lives of elderly people, bristling at the term “coming of age,” and the brutality of nature. | The Rumpus
• Sara Nović on leaving her first adult crisis for Newfoundland, “a name with the promise of a fresh start built into its very syllables.” | The New York Times
• “Ferrante deploys the run-on to create a momentum that is headlong and occasionally breathless but still intimate—here you are, inside the operation of Elena’s head, everything she thinks coming out in the order it occurs to her…” On Elena Ferrante’s run-on sentences. | Arcade
• “The female gymnast’s condition is an exaggerated version of the condition of every teen-age girl.” On the US gymnastics team and Megan Abbott’s You Will Know Me. | The New Yorker

And on Literary Hub:

• The uncertainty of literary community: Anne Korkeakivi on writing as a roving expatriate.
• Ten writers who did quit their day jobs.
• When a descendent of witch hunters writes a novel about Salem.
• Lara Vapnyar on empathy, assimilation, and writing immigrant characters as a “rookie American.”
• To all the characters I’ve killed off who haunt me still… Stuart Nadler remembers the darlings he’s drowned.
• Eating carrion and writing under the midnight sun at the Icelandic writers retreat.
• Werner Herzog on the books that every filmmaker should read; part two of his conversation with Paul Holdengraber.
• “Poems r just less popular memes.” On the lines and lyrics that stick out in our mind.
• How to solve a book emergency: what to do when you find yourself trapped without reading material.
• The moral arc of N.K. Jemison’s universe bends toward apocalypse.
• Vu Tran on living with the uncertain memories of a four-year-old refugee.
• Blair Braverman is obsessed with the things that scare her most: Gemma de Choisy heads north to visit the author of Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube.
• The pros and cons of getting inside a villain’s mind: how to raise the stakes without ruining the mystery.

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