Lit Hub Daily: January 11, 2023

• He said, “I see you got some wheels. I want to get the hell out of here.” The late Russell Banks recalls the time he fled Bread Loaf with Nelson Algren. | Lit Hub

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• Pico Iyer considers the wonders and contentions of Kashmir. | Lit Hub History

• “I’d trade every vacation I’ve ever taken for a life of drop-ins with friends and family and a refrigerator that magically replenishes itself.” Sean Adams on Seinfeld and the simple bliss of the three-camera sitcom. | Lit Hub Craft

• Training schoolchildren in the art of cyber war: Matt Potter on Kosovo and the 1990s-era internet. | Lit Hub Tech

• An illustrated guide to death in Victorian society. | CrimeReads

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• “I think of my mother as an archeologist piecing together a long-buried creature, but the creature is not, as you would assume, her mother. The creature is herself.” Andrew Sean Greer on the mystery of his grandmother’s fried pie recipe. | Bon Appetit

• “Life haunted by its more beautiful sister-life!” Remembering Charles Simic. | The Paris Review

• How did Mike Pence’s book become a best-seller? Oh right, because his PAC spent $91,000 buying copies. | Forbes

• “The enigmatic Jan Valtin was called a charlatan, martyr, hero, and Judas. The most dismissive of Valtin’s critics claimed that he didn’t even exist.” Colin Asher on the championed and derided autobiography Out of the Night. | The Baffler

• Are these the best celebrity memoirs of all time? | Esquire

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• “In the commune I once called home, I was too young to understand what it meant to be born into a Black-liberation movement.” Dara Mathis on the ongoing struggle for Black liberation. | The Atlantic

Also on Lit Hub: What those escaping slavery found in Boston • New poetry by Eleni Sikelianos • Read from Deena Mohamed’s latest graphic novel, Shubeik Lubeik