Lit Hub Daily: April 17, 2019

• “Trust Exercise is surely a mosaic of deceit, fused from narrative bits, calling into question the reader’s quaint notion of trust in an author.” A profile of Susan Choi. | Lit Hub
• When Nelson Algren fell in love with Simone de Beauvoir: on the start of an affair that changed both writers’ lives. | Lit Hub
• “Defining a group as a cult is not black or white—it’s a family resemblance.” On the wide reach of cult logic. | Lit Hub
• Why War and Peace may be the antidote to our continuous state of emergency. | Lit Hub
• Allison M. Charette travels 9,000 miles to translate (and live with) Michèle Rakotoson, the beating heart of Madagascar’s literary life. | Lit Hub
• “I try each year to be back in Japan for the season of fire and farewells.” Pico Iyer on autumn in Japan and the beauty of impermanence. | Lit Hub
• “I am aware of being in the elegy season.” Harold Bloom on Wallace Stevens, young love, and old age. | Lit Hub
• This week in Secrets of the Book Critics: Hermione Hoby on Infinite Jest, Patricia Lockwood, and hating Jane Austen. | Book Marks
• How to write gripping courtroom scenes that don’t remind you of jury duty: Angie Kim on bending the rules of evidence in the name of drama. | CrimeReads
• Warren Adler, author of over 50 novels including The War of the Roses, died Monday at 91. | Publishers Weekly
• “Perfection is impossible…there’s no ecstasy because strikes are so uncommon.” Candlepin bowling with Elizabeth McCracken. | The National
• On Antiques Roadshow, a woman discovered that a ring—inscribed “C. Brontë”— she had found in her father-in-law’s attic contained a lock of Charlotte Brontë’s hair. | Jezebel
• “You must share with each other, touch hands. It’s all very romantic, if romance is deciding who gets to take the bigger share of the carbs.” Why Kristen Arnett takes all her first dates to Olive Garden.  | Bon Appetit
• Books, good light, and a harp: peek inside Comma Queen Mary Norris’s apartment. | The New York Times
• “So that’s how love works.” An illustrated guide to what Mira Jacob learned from American movies. | BuzzFeed Reader
• “How to express, through fashion, that I had become a fully realized, politically aware, sexually liberated queer adult?” Andrew Sean Greer on learning the virtues of sartorial vulgarity. | Vogue
• Morgan Jerkins speaks to Claudia Rankine about her new play, white benevolence, and the dilemmas of the black artist. | Vulture

Also on Lit Hub: On part two of Reading Women‘s Ramadan Episode, Kendra Winchester and Sumaiyya Naseem talk Laila Lalami and Tahereh Mafi • Lori Gottlieb talks experiencing therapy as a therapist on Otherppl • Ahead of their time: a reading list of nonconformist women • What are we saying when we call an algorithm “creative”? • Read from André Alexis’ new novel, Days by Moonlight