Best of the Week: July 6 – 10, 2015

TODAY: In 1960, Lippincott published Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird.

• The dubious circumstances surrounding the discovery of Harper Lee’s second novel have gotten more dubious. | The New York Times
• On the domestic horror of Shirley Jackson, friendly neighborhood witch/raiser of demons. | The New Republic
• “Racism is a visceral experience… it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth.” A letter from Ta-Nehisi Coates to his son. | The Atlantic
• Ottessa Moshfegh, alien in a human body, shares her notebooks, tarot readings, and plans for dealing with life in 2015 with Sarah Gerard. | Hazlitt
• Highly anticipated books for 2015, ranging from Cancer to Aquarius. | The Millions
• A critical analysis of assimilation, the “elephant in the room in Chicano/a literary studies.” | The Los Angeles Review of Books
• Taking sides on the theft of Grandma’s silver, when “theft” means “plagiarism” and silver represents poetry. | Little Atoms
• Florida man drinks to excess, picks fights, writes The Old Man and the Sea: a literary field guide to the Sunshine State. | The Oyster Review
• An interview with Jay Rubin, author, longtime translator of Haruki Murakami, and (former) advocate for the word “lavatory” over “bathroom.” | The Rumpus
• Filling the page with redundant, anonymous, always defective words: on Borges’s infinite library and the futility of writing. | Gorse
• The novel is dead and the novel will never die: revisiting John Barth’s final book. | Public Books
• On the modern finance novel, which illuminates our ignorance through information. | Dissent Magazine
• Rereading To Kill a Mockingbird reveals the characters’ relative nonchalance and futile optimism for a future that hasn’t yet come. | LA Times
• Not raw but alive: on the humanist infra-realism of Denis Johnson. | The White Review
• A report from Lima’s first independent book fair, which did not take place in the Javits Center. | Hyperallergic

And on Literary Hub:

• A spy’s daughter on her last summer in Saigon, before the Fall. | Literary Hub
• Porochista Khakpour revisits Ben Okri’s masterpiece of the New African canon. | Literary Hub
• From slave ships to the 9th Ward, Brenda Quant traces desire lines, “earthen paths etched by repeated footfalls.” | Literary Hub
• A helpful primer by Nell Zink on how to send stuff to Germany. | Literary Hub
• Terrible, embarrassing writing by great writers, including Daniel Clowes, Isaac Fitzgerald, Gillian Flynn, and Steve Almond. | Literary Hub

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