Best of the Week: September 8 – 11, 2015

TODAY: In 1943, Michael Ondaatje, author of the longest movie ever made, is born.

• In which Salman Rushdie discusses Snapchat (“I know that it exists”), Game of Thrones (“I like the girl with the dragons, and I like the short guy”), and the possibility of working with One Direction (“I’m open for offers”). | The New York Times
• Toni Morrison on The Complete Works of Primo Levi, “a brilliant deconstruction of malign forces.” | The Guardian
• “Hitler’s youth resembles my own.” On Knausgaard’s fascination with and attempts to humanize Hitler. | The Los Angeles Review of Books
• On the lost meaning in the translation of The Lost Daughter’s title. | Asymptote Journal
• There’s always a silver lining, we guess: the “awkward” conversation between Roxane Gay and Erica Jong reveals just how far feminism has come. | The Guardian, Flavorwire
• “I’m nothing if not persistent,” asserts the white guy who submitted his poem, later selected for The Best American Poetry 2015, under the name Yi-Fen Chou after it was rejected 40 times. Sherman Alexie, the editor, responds with aplomb. | BuzzFeed News, Best American Poetry Blog
• Between Christian Grey and Jane Eyre, we have the sex writing of Lydia Davis. | The Critical Flame
• Authors on the personal impact and semiotics of the refugee crisis. | Granta, The New Inquiry
• Valeria Luiselli’s infallible writing formula (Dickens + MP3 ÷ Balzac + JPEG) has produced a “genuinely delightful read.” | The Slate Book Review
• Lauren Groff, Alexandra Kleeman, Helen Phillips, Matthew Salesses, Steve Toltz, and Claire Vaye Watkins navigate verbal restrictions to describe their books, the writing process, dealing with hubris. | Salon
• Moral craft and creating without prejudice, or how to not write racist stories. | Electric Literature
• We like our (male) geniuses tortured and, if possible, drunk: on drinking, gender, and self-destruction. | The New Republic
• Ursula K. Le Guin on not burning the past, insolent children, and craft that goes beyond “some little artisan putting the yeast in his handcrafted bread.” | Interview
• A convoluted trail of bovine publishers leads us, perhaps, to a new Thomas Pynchon novel. | Harper’s
• Jesse Eisenberg sees writing and acting as similar (both involve “trying to understand the emotion underneath a character”) and different (“my stupid haircut is nowhere to be seen” in his debut collection). | Barnes & Noble Review

And on Literary Hub:

• The time Colum McCann visited the tunnels of NYC, and the people who called them home: “The idea of living underground, in the dark, feeds the most febrile part of our beings.” | Literary Hub
• Matt Bell on becoming the jobs we do: a Labor Day reading list. | Literary Hub
• John Keene in conversation with Tanya Foster, on the “ontology of grief,” the day Harlem went quiet, and how not speaking can be incredibly powerful. | Literary Hub
• An interview with Padgett Powell, in which an extended scatological metaphor perfectly describes the writing process. | Literary Hub
• Debut novelists (and cousins!) Gabriel Urza and Sean Bernard on writing, family, and being Basque. | Literary Hub

---