Lit Hub Daily: May 24, 2021

• Clinton Heylin considers how Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg helped a young Bob Dylan find his voice. | Lit Hub Music

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• “Asked if these deaths touched him, Dylan said, ‘Sure, they all did—we were like brothers.’ Howard Sounes on the lonely later years of Bob Dylan. | Lit Hub

• How stories allow us to “rehearse through a continuous stream of what-ifs,” a human skill that’s actually a lot more useful than it sounds. | Lit Hub

• “It might take an immense cosmic event, like an alien invasion, for humans to coexist without prejudice.” Gabby Bellot on W.E.B. Du Bois’ radical sci-fi story “The Comet.” | Lit Hub Criticism

• Arielle Zibrak against the concept of “guilty pleasure” literature (and dudes lying about reading Faulkner on their dating profiles). | Lit Hub

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• “What power of dissent, if any, does a child wield in his or her powerlessness?” Linda Rui Feng on writing from the precarious hunger of childhood. | Lit Hub

• Thessaly La Force considers the complexity of creatively charged romantic partnerships, from the Shelleys to de Beauvoir and Sartre. | T Magazine

• “The word homes is antithetical to the idea of ‘home.’” Aminatta Forna travels to the Shetland Islands in search of her family’s past. | Orion

• Nico Walker takes a deep dive into his childhood memories and his favorite authors. | Vol. 1 Brooklyn

• “We protect kids from racist ideas by pointing them out.” Ibram X. Kendi, Sonja Cherry-Paul, and Jason Reynolds discuss the new “remix” of Stamped. | Kirkus

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• How does the media cover extremism and white nationalism? A divisive editorial choice by the Montana Standard has sparked debate about ethics and journalistic responsibility. | Study Hall

• “To read Jelinek is to find oneself confronted with the liberating realization that a book can be ugly—as ugly as the world it describes.” On the linguistic possibilities of Elfriede Jelinek. | The Point

• A new wave of nonfiction books is “keen on indexing the breadth and significance of Black expression, especially through the lens of women’s lives,” Danielle A. Jackson writes. | Vulture

• Here’s what the controversy over Simon & Schuster’s decision to publish Mike Pence looked like from inside the company. | The Wall Street Journal

Also on Lit Hub: Your week in virtual book events • Toward a typology of titles: Chris Drangle takes an objective look at an excruciatingly subjective endeavor • Read from Nancy Tucker’s debut novel, The First Day of Spring