Lit Hub Daily: February 24, 2023

TODAY: In 1852, Nikolai Gogol burns some of his manuscripts, including most of the second part of Dead Souls, telling acquaintances the action is a practical joke played on him by the Devil. He takes to his bed and dies a few days later.  

• Mutiny on Martha’s Vineyard: How a 26-year-old Steven Spielberg made Jaws… and nearly lost his career in the process. | Lit Hub Film & TV

• Claire Heywood recommends Greek plays for modern readers. | Lit Hub

• Turns out, fig pollination and literary criticism have more in common than you’d think. | Lit Hub Nature

• Rebecca Makkai’s I Have Some Questions For You, Nona Fernández’s Voyager, and Jac Jemc’s Empty Theatre all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks

• Bookshop.org will begin selling e-books… and publish its first print book, a story collection by Lydia Davis. | Publishers Weekly

• “How did an acclaimed Australian author become one of the most prolific literary plagiarists in history?” Taking a deep dive into the John Hughes plagiarism scandal. | The Monthly

• In which we are all forced to reckon with the term “Perception Box.” (Where, exactly, is Elizabeth Koch taking Catapult?) | The New York Times

• 9 books that rethink illness narratives. | Electric Literature

• Publisher John Macrae III has died at 91. | The New York Times

• Three Ukrainian writers have withdrawn from Adelaide Writers Week over a pro-Putin tweet shared by festival participant Susan Abulhawa. | The Conversation

• “Ephron owned her story, then and now.” Karen Heller revisits Nora Ephron’s Heartburn, 40 years later. | The Washington Post

Also on Lit Hub: Lynn Cullen on Dorothy Horstman, the woman behind the polio vaccine • An interview with Split/Lip Press • Read from Lorenza Pieri’s newly translated novel, Lesser Islands (tr. Peter Digiovanni and Donatella Melucci)

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