Lit Hub Daily: February 9, 2023

• “It is feminist protest, Cold War history, medical exposé, Bildungsroman, recovery narrative, and quest.” Heather Clark considers Sylvia Plath’s genre-defying The Bell Jar at 60. | Lit Hub Criticism

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• Veronica Esposito explores what therapy does for a writer’s work. | Lit Hub

• “If the Church can support group homes for elderly clerics, why shouldn’t the literary world support group homes for writers, who have likewise devoted their lives to a higher calling?” Alane Salierno Mason calls for a writing community that takes care of its own. | Lit Hub

• “She can virtually murder a man with a simple declarative sentence.” 5 Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks

• When courtship turns to commitment in long-running mystery series, how does an author keep the magic alive? From Deborah Crombie. | CrimeReads

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• “I’m going to settle for small, random stabs of extreme interestingness—moments of intense awareness of the things I’m about to lose, and of gladness that they exist.” Helen Garner on happiness. | The Guardian

• Ron Charles digs into some common readerly pet peeves, from dream scenes to clever children. | The Washington Post

• “During this long passage about writing, Proust is, step-by-step, forging the original soul of his book and, at the same time, his own deliverance.” William Benton considers Proust’s thoughts on writing. | The New Yorker

• Presidential speechwriter (and joke master) Bob Orben has died at 95. | The New York Times

• “Being silly together, joking as much as they did, was a balance to the depth of their honesty and their vulnerability they shared with each other.” Jenny Shank on the playful postcards of Lucia Berlin. | The Millions

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• How to help the people affected by the earthquake in Turkey and Syria. | TIME

Also on Lit Hub: On the beauty and complexity of the German language • New poetry by LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs • Read from Dizz Tate’s debut novel, Brutes