Lit Hub Daily: August 4, 2021

• “Driving around the mountain roads, I could hear the quiet around me, and it sounded like the foreboding, slinky, synthesizer-filled theme song to Twin Peaks.” Stephen Kurczy visits the “Log Lady” of the Quiet Zone. | Lit Hub

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• American policing is operating exactly as it was designed to, writes Philip V. McHarris: “a violent tool of race and class control.” | Lit Hub Politics

• War of the electric cars: How General Motors responded to Elon Musk’s plucky little startup. | Lit Hub Tech

• Why read agonizing books? Tracey Lange makes the case for messy, emotional family stories. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• Charif Majdalani considers the paradoxes of Lebanon, where the civil war led to building projects more destructive than the war itself. | Lit Hub

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• Robert Macfarlane and Johnny Flynn discuss The Epic of Gilgamesh, their album collaboration, and looking into the abyss. | Lit Hub 

• “Her style is not simplistic, but, rather, beautifully simple.” Sophie Hannah celebrates the literary Agatha Christie. | CrimeReads

• Michael Knox Beran talks to Andrew Keen about the rise and fall of WASP culture. | Lit Hub Virtual Book Channel

• “Almost everybody has main character syndrome.” Kristen Arnett discusses how to use humor, understanding a character’s psychology, and the “scary” parts of writing a book. | The Creative Independent

• Tamiko Beyer considers the radical power of poetry and its ability to help dismantle white supremacy and capitalism. | Harriet

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• “The campus is something of a microcosm of the world.” Mona Awad on reading Shakespeare and power dynamics in education. | Interview Magazine

• T Kira Madden reflects on a lifelong relationship with horses and the process of “reclaiming something by dropping the reins, letting go.” | Refinery29

• Suchitra Vijayan on the power of literary nonfiction, new possibilities of Indian American literature, neoliberal politics, and the importance of supporting underrepresented stories. | The Rumpus

• “There are benefits to not knowing the rules. In college and my career, I didn’t know not to knock so I learned to knock louder.” Melissa Scholes Young on fostering camaraderie between first-generation faculty and first-generation students. | The Atlantic

• Philip Lopate considers the Silver Age of essays. | The Paris Review

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Also on Lit Hub: How kids learn to read (and learn to like it) • Shugri Said Salh on what it means to be the sole keeper of her family’s stories • Read from David Hoon Kim’s debut novel, Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost