Best of the Week: July 25 – 29, 2016

TODAY: In 1818, Emily Brontë, seen here in a portrait of made by her brother Branwell, is born. 

• Before he was “a big glooby blob of sad blufush,” Jack Kerouac was the best-looking male writer: Geoff Dyer on a photograph of the author by John Cohen. | The Spectator
• On the set of the TV adaptation of I Love Dick, which “might be the least obvious, and most difficult, candidate for adaptation since Game of Thrones.” | Vulture
• It seems that every lovely thing is tinged with mystery, danger, or complexity: Megan Mayhew Bergman on Cumberland Island, Georgia. | Oxford American
• Ann Goldstein, Deborah Smith, and other literary translators on why, and how, they translate. | The Guardian
• Annie DeWitt on the reality of being a writer, receiving advice from psychic friends, and making use of the unsaid. | The Believer Logger
• “I didn’t want to be another woman who interrogated her sexuality as soon as his lips touched hers. I didn’t want to be another anything.” Blair Braverman on falling in love with a trans person. | BuzzFeed News
• On The Girls and American Girls, which both “explore the story of the Manson murders by shoving the ringleader to the side and putting the girls (and girlhood itself) at the center of the narrative.” | The Atlantic
• “It never was about the work for him, about earning to take care of family, securing their futures, meeting responsibilities. It was about something darker, some festering pain that no amount of public adulation could heal.” Joe McGinniss, Jr. on his father’s fall from literary grace. | The New Yorker
• On the “small, but noticeable, sustained, and continuous” resurgence of indie bookstores. | The Seattle Review of Books
• Alexandra Kleeman on How It’s Made, which “reminds the viewer that time spent watching TV is time spent not with people but in the company of an incredible object.” | The New York Times Magazine
• “When I learned more about fiction and when I got to a graduate writing program, I saw that fiction gave me the most leeway to get at a deeper truth than what was in the facts.” An interview with Mitchell S. Jackson. | Moss
• Jay McInerney on his mentor, Raymond Carver, and Carver’s 1984 essay about his father. | Esquire Classic
• From Anne Carson to Zadie Smith, the most anticipated books of the fall. | Publishers Weekly
• Masha Gessen on “the recent Putin fixation,” which is “a way to evade the fact that Trump is a thoroughly American creation that poses an existential threat to American democracy.” | NYRB
• How What Belongs to You and A Little Life “show how shame — just as much as pride, if not more—still meaningfully forms part of the terrain of gay life, and must be acknowledged as such.” | Pacific Standard

And on Literary Hub:

• Knives, not baubles: Clive James on the poetry of Kingsley Amis.
• On gendered book covers: designer Jennifer Heuer wonders why she always gets offered women’s titles.
• What should fiction do? Bonnie Nazdam on the limits of cinematic storytelling.
• Lori Jakiela remembers the worst book signing ever.
• The untold story of a legendary Diane Arbus photograph.
• A hot day in Philly: Timothy Denevi encounters Bernie Bros, Trump Thugs, and possibly heat stroke.
• My longest healthy relationship is with the dead poet Catullus.
• Jay-Z and Morrissey, unexpected masters of the music memoir.
• Lisa Levy on the private pleasures of pre-internet fandom.
• Women writing Brazil: selections from PEN America’s new issue of Glossolalia.
• How the writer uses humor: Aleksandar Hemon in conversation with John Freeman.
• What I learned growing up gay in a south Texas dance hall.
• Madeleine Dubus on finding a way to mourn a father beloved by the literary world.
• Women crime writers are not a fad: on Terence Rafferty’s Atlantic essay and Megan Abbott.
• A historic night at the DNC: Timothy Denevi finds hope (and Katy Perry) at a hotel bar in Philadelphia.

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