TODAY :In 1982, French author Georges Perec dies.
- “Portnoy’s descriptions of the parenting he was subject to, how it was rooted in the family’s identity as part of a religious minority, bore striking resemblance to what I’d written about in my teenage journals.” Huda Awan makes a case for the universality of Portnoy’s Complaint. | Lit Hub Criticism
- Hari Ziyad recommends eight books that inspired him to coin the term misafropedia, the specific oppression that Black children experience. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
- Anne Lamott on her internal creative partner dubbed the Rag Bag man, and other insights into her writing life. | Lit Hub Craft
- Forsyth Harmon recommends a reading list of women obsessing over women in fiction, featuring Gabriella Burnham and Raven Leilani. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
- Two tributes to the late, great Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Annice Jacoby on cohosting a poets kadish for Allen Ginsberg in the face of anti-Semitism; and Robert Andersen on breaking bread with the “American Original” in North Beach. | Lit Hub
- One-part timeworn recipe book, one-part government leaflets: Jennifer Ryan describes weaving WWII history and a family heirloom in her new novel. | Lit Hub
- “I feel like Geppetto, in the shark, is asking the same question. ‘Am I still a human being now?’” Edward Carey talks to Alexander Chee about rewriting a myth. | Lit Hub
- Luanne Rice pays homage to novels that explore the majesty and suspense of the great outdoors. | CrimeReads
- Bless Me, Ultima, The Jungle, Thy Neighbor’s Wife, and more rapid-fire book recs from Noé Álvarez. | Book Marks
- “Misogyny is only a single side of his multifaceted bigotry, but it was the side that grasped me most reflexively.” A. Natasha Joukovsky on Versailles, opulence, and a post-Trump world. | The Common
- On the psychology of grief, fandom, and fanfiction. | Vox
- Reading this year’s NBCC Award finalists: Tara Wanda Merriga on Heather Clark’s Red Comet. | Lit Hub
- Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado on having a complicated relationship with Harold Bloom, whose “faith in literature makes his own love sound acritical and one-dimensional, almost unworthy of the deep knowledge of the literary that he clearly possessed.” | LARB
- It’s time to stop publishing Dr. Seuss’ racist images, and the decision “should not shock anyone who’s been following discussions about Dr. Seuss in particular or children’s literature in general.” | Washington Post
- “If your platform isn’t your passion, you’re going to tumble off it into an empty void that will suck the joy and comfort from your writing.” Courtney Maum recommends focusing on joy, not follower count. | Medium
- How Lydia Maria Child, once the best-known woman writer in the US, succumbed to “censorship American style” over her abolitionist principles. | JSTOR
- “From the novel’s opening, race is slippery, uneasy and unstable.” Brit Bennett on Nella Larsen’s Passing. | T Magazine
Also on Lit Hub: Pia Araneta tracks the changing ways we talk in the COVID-19 era • W.S. Winslow tries to define Northern Gothic literature • Read from Naima Coster’s latest novel, What’s Mine is Yours
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