Lit Hub Daily: August 20, 2021

TODAY: In 1918, Jacqueline Susann, author of Valley of the Dolls, is born in Philadelphia.  

• In the latest installment of The Longest Year: 2020+, Alexey Yurenev documents the COVID quarantine of the Red Army’s dwinding members, and Sari Botton reflects on the legacy of those 500,000 Russian Jews who fought the Nazis. | Lit Hub Photography

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• How gleefully reckless early motorists led to the creation of Mr. Toad of The Wind in the Willows fame. | Lit Hub History

• Rachel Greenwald Smith considers the compromises of writers and editors to make their work more sellable in a neoliberal market (case in point: David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest). | Lit Hub

• “Though cocaine ruined dozens of subsequent gigs, it certainly solidified the first one.” John Lurie recounts the days of sex, drugs, and car-crash jazz with The Lounge Lizards. | Lit Hub Music

• Jennifer C. Nash on the doulas whose work it is to “protect Black life in a space that has consistently rendered it vulnerable.” | Lit Hub Health

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• “I told them I wasn’t a fighter, that I didn’t hate America, that I wasn’t al Qaeda—but they didn’t want that.” Mansoor Adayfi on the 15 years he spent as Detainee #441 at Guantánamo. | Lit Hub

• “‘Let people enjoy things’ is essentially the twitchy fear of ‘cancel culture,’ translated over into the world of taste.” B.D. McClay considers the critics of criticism. | Gawker

• “I think part of starting this work was an attempt to corral all these various versions of myself and express them in an honest way.” Caleb Azumah Nelson discusses the creative choices behind his debut novel. | BOMB

• Jami Attenberg offers a peek inside her writing space. | Catapult

• Viet Thanh Nguyen on Vietnam, Afghanistan, and America’s moral responsibility to refugees. | The New York Times

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• Willa C. Richards considers her complex attachment to Milwaukee, intimacy between sisters, and the way institutional forces intersect with violence and power in the personal sphere. | The Rumpus

• The story of how a book on pandemic psychology, published in late 2019, became “like a Lonely Planet guide” to the coronavirus crisis. | The Guardian

• “We are constantly in profound need, which makes gratitude a deep and fundamental aspect of our lives.” Ross Gay on vulnerability and writing about joy. | NPR’s Code Switch

Also on Lit Hub: When the dismissive editor in your head is your father • Paul Halpern on what it took to confirm the Big Bang Theory • Read from Joanna Novak’s debut story collection, Meaningful Work

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