Best of the Week: November 2 – 6, 2015

TODAY: In 1913, author, philosopher, and the chillest Nobel prize winner Albert Camus is born. 

• Stacy Schiff on Letters to Vera, Nabokov’s collected correspondence with “his skunky, his bird of paradise, his mothling, kitty-cat, roosterkin, mousie, tigercubkin.” | NYRB
• A single novel, written over the course of 45 years, over 20 times: Examining the work of the still underread Patrick Modiano. | The Los Angeles Review of Books
• Selfish, but with codpieces: Looking at The First Book of Fashion, a hand-drawn book of selfies from the 1500s. | The Atlantic
• “Better to close your eyes and carry on with your own work, pretending the master carpenter doesn’t exist.” Karl Ove Knausgaard finally reads Michel Houellebecq and shares his thoughts. | The New York Times Sunday Book Review
• Fiction tells a truth that history cannot and cannot be taught: Lessons from Breyten Breytenbach and Paul Bowles, recounted by their mentees. | Guernica
• In which Mary Gaitskill presses into metaphorical wounds and figures out how to turn off her interviewer’s recorder. | The New York Times Magazine
• Gnarled trunks spoke a primeval tongue: fiction by Robert Walser, translated by Lydia Davis and Susan Bernofsky. | Asymptote Journal
• Talking with the founder of Cubanabooks, a non-profit publisher dedicated to disseminating work by Cuban women. | Cubanabooks, Broadly
• Rescuing five bestselling, 19th-century female authors from the abyss of the patriarchy. | NPR
• “RIP, irony, long live a more subtle irony.” A visit to Amazon’s “wildly banal,” newly opened bookstore. | The New Republic
• Why can’t book publishing be the way it is in books? Meghan Daum’s 1996 essay yearning for the publishing of yore ruminates on the experience of an editorial assistant, reveals how little has changed. | BuzzFeed Books
• The notebook as a journal, junkshop, and jumping off point: Sarah Gerard speaks to a friend about writing in prison. | Hazlitt
• The son of Shirley Jackson discusses his parents’ perfect combination of genius, darkness vs. humor, and the fictionality of his mother’s fiction. | Literary Bennington
• On the non-literary writing of Clarice Lispector and its bewildered reception. | The Nation
• It really does look like Pablo Neruda was murdered. | The Guardian

And on Literary Hub:

• Shann Ray on growing up in Montana mountain country with the Cheyenne. | Literary Hub
• Chris Shellen meets a ten-inch version of herself, and discovers other wonders in Mark Hogancamp’s miniature WWII town. | Literary Hub
• “What is to become of us?” Donna Tartt’s typewritten, 1986 valedictorian speech from Bennington College. | Literary Hub
• Herta Muller on the hardship of intimacy, the oppressiveness of the state, and the poetry of Liu Xia. | Literary Hub
• Elizabeth Gilbert talks to Paul Holdengraber about self-loathing and the joy of work, on this week’s Phone Call From Paul. | Literary Hub
• Lorrie Moore on why we read (and write) short stories. | Literary Hub
• Dodie Bellamy on digging through Kathy Acker’s Stuff. | Literary Hub

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