Best of the Week: May 23 – 27, 2016

TODAY: In 2002, Mildred Benson, best remembered for writing some of the earliest Nancy Drew mysteries, dies. 

• Presenting a past of competing perspectives, of multiple voices: Lucy Ives on Margaret the First and other works of “archival fiction.” | The New Yorker
• C.E. Morgan on moral beauty, permissible vs. non-permissible speech, and the primary gift of the animal. | Commonweal Magazine
• Tracy O’Neill on algorithms, #RIPinstagram, and the literature of the queue. | Catapult
• Sometimes telling a story is the thing that saves your life: Card-carrying misfit Lidia Yuknavitch delivers a TED Talk. | TED
• “When Knausgaard looks at a woman, he becomes a man. When Knausgaard looks at heaven, he becomes a person.” Gender, self-creation, and  “Norway’s hunkiest narcissist.” | The New Republic
• Sherman Alexie on running away, extending the borders of family, and the children’s book that made him into a writer. | NPR
• On Don DeLillo’s later fiction, which is “rich, chewy and best consumed in small mouthfuls.” | The Guardian
• Sarah Nicole Prickett and Gary Indiana discuss LA’s more glamorous secrets, people who read Atlas Shrugged when they’re twelve, and sexy serial killers. | Bookforum
• Yellow is the new black: On the rise of “brighter, bolder” book covers, for which Amazon may be (is probably) to blame. | Wall Street Journal
• “[W]here Ulysses swells with linguistic inventiveness and gleeful experimentation, Portrait swells with … well, what? Mood.” Karl Ove Knausgaard recalls first reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in honor of its 100th anniversary. | The New York Times
• “I knew what it was like to encounter the miniature and wish to have it for yourself.” Kaitlyn Greenidge on diminutive tacos, dollhouses, and desiring the unattainable. | Lenny Letter
• “I scanned them really quickly and thought, Holy shit, these are good.” On the discovery of 3 complete short stories by Raymond Carver 10 years after his death. | Esquire Classics
• In honor of Short Story Month, stories by Alexandra Kleeman, Lauren Groff, Garth Greenwell, and 14 others. | Huffington Post
• Tony Tulathimutte on the “nine-month war of attrition to secure the original title of [his] book.”| The Paris Review
• “Parenthood is not the enemy of anything; it’s the condition without which none of us would exist.” Rumaan Alam on being a writer and a father. | BuzzFeed 

And on Literary Hub:

• Dale Peck on the art and writing of the 1980s (hint: the 90s ruined everything).
• When my authentic is your exotic: Sonia Kamal agonizes over whether or not to have a mango in her novel.
• Prelude to a friendship: Paul Lisicky remembers the moment he met a lifelong friend.
• The anti-HB2 book tour: day one, Garrard Conley and Garth Greenwell read at Scuppernong Books in North Carolina; Garth Greenwell and Garrard Conley continue their North Carolina book tour at Flyleaf Books; and Garth Greenwell and Garrard Conley make their final stop on their anti-HB2 book tour and read at Malaprops Boosktore.
• Rufi Thorpe will steal the details of your life and put them into books (even cigarette brands, orgies, and your strong feelings About Boyz II Men).
• Guy Gavriel Kay on five books in his life, including Proust who he swears to read soon.
• Donald Trump has set fire to America: on Faulkner, white trash, and burning down barns.
• Interview with a mad cartoonist: the time I met the great Colonel Baxter.
• Over 450 writers have signed an open letter to the American people against Donald Trump.
• Lit Hub celebrates translation month: Do Americans hate foreign fiction? Anjali Enjeti on the serious lack of translated literature in America; Infinite Jest around the world: translating David Foster Wallace’s 1,000 page mega-novel; Adapting the Tibetan Book of the Dead; On translating Stoner in Japan and the determined translator who worked until the moment he died; 10 Chinese women whose writing should be translated; A newly translated story by Alexander Pushkin.
• Rebecca Solnit on narratives, journalism, and how to break the story.
• When a novelist becomes an ultramarathoner.
• How the writer edits: Julian Barnes in conversation with John Freeman.
• Going nowhere: Martin Seay’s book tour through America’s liminal spaces.
• On superheroes and the myth of American power.
• Miranda Beverly-Whittemore on the pleasures of plot and writing a bestseller. 
• Literature in a time of war: a reading list of Simone de Beauvoir, Hans Fallada, Marghanita Laski and more.

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