Lit Hub Daily: February 9, 2022

TODAY: In 1888, Walt Whitman writes to the publisher of “O Captain! My Captain!” calling out multiple errors: “Somehow you have got a couple of bad perversions.”  

• How Rachel Carson managed to leave her day job at Fish and Wildlife to become a full-time writer. | Lit Hub Nature

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• “Music can save your life: it saved mine.” Brendan Slocumb on being the only Black violin player around. | Lit Hub Music

• A neuroscientist explains why lists and journaling relive anxiety. | Lit Hub

• What John McPhee’s book about a single tennis match can teach the rest of us about writing sports. | Lit Hub Craft

• “Major’s character knows his pursuit of the blues is not a duty but a calling.” Yusef Komunyakaa on Clarence Major’s Dirty Bird Blues. | Lit Hub Criticism

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• Olivia Rutigliano reflects on the Coen brothers’ bitter, booze-soaked gangster ballad, Miller’s Crossing. | Lit Hub Film

• Dantiel W. Moniz talks Trust Exercise, Luster, and good sex in fiction. | Book Marks

• A. Barnes with a brief history of ghost ships. | CrimeReads

• But for a small press… these three beloved authors may never have been discovered. | Book Marks

  Ada Limón considers friendship and savoring in California wine country. | Condé Nast Traveler

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• “In trying to define this moment, I find myself jumping back in history, thinking if it provides any answers.” Marlon James discusses internet rabbit holes, dream dinner guests, and looking to the past. | Platform

• Computer programmers are helping scholars decode Charles Dickens’ secret notes to himself. | The New York Times

• Imani Perry recommends eight southern travelogues that shed light on the particularity of the area, from its cultural beauty to the cruelty of its racial regime. | The Atlantic

• “I notice that a lot of young academics write from a place of fear.” Toril Moi and Jessica Swoboda talk about the boundaries between academic and public writing. | The Point

• Steph Auteri lists darkly humorous books to make you laugh. | Book Riot

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• Katrina vanden Heuvel details some of the ways that librarians and authors are fighting recent book bans. | The Washington Post

Also on Lit Hub: Climate Lessons from the Epic of Gilgamesh • Georgia Pritchett recounts a TV industry #MeToo experience in three acts, with no closure • Read from Sarag Manguso’s debut novel, Very Cold People

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