Lit Hub Daily: April 14, 2021

• “He has done more, even, than Vonnegut in setting his characters free.” Jonathan Lethem in praise of Jaime Clarke’s short stories. | Lit Hub

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• Maybe it’s time to get in touch with your spite: Simon McCarthy-Jones makes a case for small vengeances. | Lit Hub

• “Rewilded literature is best when it recognizes the untranslatability of the wild and understands human knowledge as partial.” Phoebe Hamilton-Jones on contemporary literature of rewilding. | Lit Hub Criticism

• Kristin van Ogtrop considers the difficulty of maintaining friendships in middle-age—and the absolute necessity of book club, her “buffer against the modern world.” | Lit Hub Memoir

• Katherine Heiny recommends eight books that reveal the chaos of modern dating, featuring Raven Leilani and Elif Batuman. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

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• “There is no American writer who has left as much literary criticism and speculation in his wake as Hemingway. But after nearly 100 years, that criticism is finally becoming more honest, nuanced, and interesting.” Alex Thomas on the new Hemingway docuseries. | Lit Hub Film and TV

• Escape travel restrictions with these ten international thriller series, from Kris Calvin. | CrimeReads

• Wild Seed, The Dutch House, Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, and more rapid-fire book recs from Stephanie Dray. | Book Marks

• Joyelle McSweeney considers Douglas Kearney’s “vexed and ecstatic engagement with the complexities of Black performance” both on the page and on the stage. | Poetry 

• “If a writer presents themselves as the one with moral clarity, I’m suspicious.” Rachel Kushner on epigraphs, range, and the difference between inward- and outward-facing writers. | The Paris Review

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• “Is anyone dream-dancing now with loved ones who died of Covid-19?” Anne Carson, Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué, and more poets share their thoughts on death. | Entropy

• What does the genre of Black Horror look like in a world where Black death is commonplace in America? Brandon Taylor considers the limits of the genre and the anthology series Them. | sweater weather

• For Laurie Woolever, there was “no question” that the late Anthony Bourdain’s travel guide would be published after his death. | The New York Times

• Natasha Lehrer describes her career translating feminist texts and “work that challenges the patriarchy.” | Words Without Borders

• A new biography of Thorstein Veblen, long seem as an academic misfit, argues that he “was not an outsider, but an insider.” | The Baffler

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Also on Lit Hub: Salman Rushdie on the world of Midnight’s Children, forty years on • A poem by Yusef Komunyakaa • Read from Rikki Ducornet’s latest novel, Trafik