TODAY: In 1979, J. G. Farrell, whose novel Troubles was retrospectively awarded the Lost Man Booker Prize, dies.
- Camille Bordas on living—and thinking—in two languages at once. | Literary Hub
- Why we need the mythic dangers of the fairy tale. | Literary Hub
- One way to survive the anxiety and frustration of writing? Make your own half-sour pickles. | Literary Hub
- On the unlikely rise of the Scandavian crime novel, global super-genre. | Literary Hub
- 31,000 words of searing testimony: on John Hersey’s Hiroshima. | Book Marks
- “There should be no shame in anger. There should be no shame in love. There should be no shame in wanting things.” Ruth Franklin profiles Claire Messud. | The New York Times Magazine
- He believed the loss of empire meant a revolution of the soul: On James Baldwin’s Istanbul years. | Public Books
- “I think I’m out of ways to write novels that are challenging to me. But these other forms are where I can be the artist I want to be.” Why Dennis Cooper made the jump from writing to filmmaking. | Vulture
- Hiking Walter Benjamin’s path out of France, “his final attempt to escape the Nazis” that ultimately ended in suicide. | Catapult
- “The world of images is not exactly a system, but it’s a kind of encyclopedia.” Teju Cole on photography, criticism, and social media. | Signature
- She saw hope, but only a long way off: On Octavia Butler’s never-completed novel The Parable of the Trickster. | Electric Literature
- “I don’t blame people for being boring, but I don’t want to write about boring people.” An interview with Ottessa Moshfegh. | The White Review
