Lit Hub Daily: March 2, 2021

• “Once in a while the women of my generation grabbed the opportunities that were available—not that there were many—but we rarely had a plan for success.” Isabel Allende on literary ambition and the power of mentorship. | Lit Hub
• A brief history of numerical manipulation, from the best-selling How to Lie with Statistics to the total bungling of COVID-19 responses. | Lit Hub
• Gabriel Weisz Carrington reflects on his mother Leonora Carrington’s newly discovered tarot, which is “endowed with a subliminal iconography, a window opening to a performance of the marvelous.” | Lit Hub
• “Words, for the first time ever, were more predictable than my business career.” Isabel Yap on the surprising lessons she learned—about writing, and life—at Harvard Business School. | Lit Hub
• Sara Paretsky on Dorothy B. Hughes and the radical empathy of noir fiction. | CrimeReads
• “Ishiguro brings into sharp focus those left behind in the wake of societal change.” Lori Feathers on the novels of Kazuo Ishiguro. | Book Marks
• “More than realism or its rivals, the dominant literary style in America is careerism.” Christan Lorentzen on the “exquisitely managed career” of Philip Roth. | Bookforum
• “One thing that I have wished for and written toward is a reclamation of the land, particularly for Black characters—that is, for Black people.” Crystal Wilkinson on nature, the cultural importance of food, and representations of Black rural life in literature. | Image
• “Until I have characters with blood flowing through their veins, and unyielding, misguided desires, I’m easily distracted.” Carol Edgarian talks to Ann Beattie about her new novel, Vera. | Lit Hub
• “I think the narrator of this book, which is some kind of version of me, is not an authority.” Jeremy Atherton Lin discusses his new book and his writing process. | Buzzfeed News
• Melissa Febos considers the word “loose.” | The Paris Review
• “It is no coincidence that this key moment in the history of American mobility was also the small presses’ golden age.” A brief history of the bookmobile. | Full Stop
• Why is the internet full of Lewis Carroll misquotes? Several fans have investigated. | The Guardian
• “I was aiming for something much smaller than a vow of poverty, and was finding that small thing hard enough.” Ann Patchett on getting rid of objects. | The New Yorker

Also on Lit Hub: Julia Cooke on the story of Pan Am’s first Black stewardesses • Courtney Zoffness on the parental challenge of a child’s anxiety • Read from Kazuo Ishiguro’s latest novel, Klara and the Sun