Lit Hub Daily: January 21, 2021

• “Maybe I had to be brought back to that state, ugly and unloved inside and out, to become the right reader for ​Gatsby.” David Stuart Maclean on his journey to appreciating Fitzgerald’s classic. | Lit Hub
• André Aciman reflects on being homesick for an Alexandria he never knew. | Lit Hub
• Ladee Hubbard on Aunt Jemima and the problem of trying to erase racism, instead of reckoning with it. | Lit Hub
• Afrofuturism has been around long before we had a name for it. For Tim Fielder, radical black imaginaries have been speaking to him since his Mississippi childhood. | Lit Hub
• Parul Sehgal on Tove Ditlevsen’s Copenhagen Trilogy, Dwigth Garner on a biography of Lucian Freud, and more Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
• “Doyle’s genius is not in what he reveals, but what he conceals.” Timothy Miller on the eternal mystery of Sherlock Holmes. | CrimeReads
• “In pain or grief, love, rage, or illness, in hormonal extremes or sleepless desperation, the body gifts us a window onto the world that changes what we see by virtue of shifting how we see it.” Marina Benjamin on the codependence of language and the body. | The Paris Review
• America’s new favorite poet Amanda Gorman talks about the inspiration behind “The Hill We Climb,” and the Maya Angelou–inspired ring that was a gift from (who else) Oprah. | Vogue
• “Were Wharton writing their story… one fears the prince might not fare well.” Claire Messud makes the case for Meghan Markle as a present-day Undine Spragg. | T Magazine
• Héctor Tobar, Annette Gordon-Reed, and more discuss the disinformation crisis, and the path to a more stable democracy. | The Los Angeles Times
• “You have to remind yourself, “This is what I’m for, I’m not good at anything else.” And you just have to keep going.” Read an interview with Kevin Barry. | LARB
• “I am interested in things that are popular. … But also, I understand what a good book is, and what an intelligent set of ideas is.” Lauren Oyler on literary criticism. | The Wall Street Journal
• The pulp noir books of Richard Himmel, a former “star” of the Chicago design scene, are back in print for a new generation of readers. | Chicago Tribune

Also on Lit Hub: Douglas Penick considers Buddhist traditions of compassion • Simon Winchester on how we divide our world • Read an excerpt from Mariana Enriquez’s The Dangers of Smoking in Bed.