Best of the Week: October 19 – 23, 2015

TODAY: 1788, Sarah Josepha Hale, author of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” is born. 

• “Where’s your fear of God, you mad beast?” On Oliver Ready’s nimble new translation of Dostoyevsky’s riven, raving Crime and Punishment. | The Los Angeles Review of Books
• You, too, can search for belonging in a new video game inspired by the short stories of Haruki Murakami. | Hyperallergic
• “Not only did I love everything she had written but I was passionate about her anonymity.” Elena Ferrante on Sense and Sensibility, a book by a lady. | The Guardian
• Justin Taylor on the “crises of identity, language, and meaning” that populate the works of Percival Everett. | Harper’s Magazine
• A new report on the demographics of publishing, which is now younger but still sexist and racist. | Publishers Weekly
• Ottessa Moshfegh on abusing the dominant paradigm, writing as digestion, and why an enemy is the ideal target audience. | The Masters Review
• In which a teenaged Marlon James listens to the Smiths, realizes how alone he is, probably cries. | WSJ
• My ticket-taker’s demon must have come back to play with my mind: a short story by Bohumil Hrabal. | Asymptote Journal
• On Walter Benjamin’s fascination with the visual, similarities to Wittgenstein, and contributions to philosophy (take that, Stanley Cavell). | The New Statesman
• Meet the Young Poet Laureate of London/of Twitter, Alexis Okeowo. | The New Yorker
• Eileen Myles and Alexander Chee talk Mercury retrograde, manageable messiness, and Rosie Myles, pitbull/ex-vice presidential candidate. | LA Times
• Constance Wilde, who is (still) misunderstood, minimized, and ridiculed, should be pretty pissed off. | McSweeney’s
• An annotated version of everyone’s favorite office comedy-cum-ghost story-cum-Zen koan, “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” | Slate
• From SciFi to naked women to an undefined future: a look at Playboy’s (more) literary past. | Kirkus Reviews
• A guide to whether you should write a personal essay. | Medium

And on Literary Hub:

• Kirk Lynn, a playwright who wrote a novel, can’t seem to choose between the two forms. | Literary Hub
• Jane Smiley on the emotional toll of finishing a trilogy. | Literary Hub
• Did Margaret Atwood just suggest vampires will one day rule the world? | Literary Hub
• The future is ruining our lives, and has been for 45 years. Hal Niedzviecki on the anniversary of Future Shock. | Literary Hub
• Paul Holdengraber talks to sleep-deprived genius Ben Lerner about fatherhood, failure, and the poetry of both, in the latest episode of A Phone Call From Paul. | Literary Hub
• How Garth Risk Hallberg’s City on Fire came to be (in a period of 90 seconds, through dreams). | Literary Hub
• Lily Tuck finds herself within a history of auto-fiction. | Literary Hub

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