Lit Hub Daily: May 3, 2019

TODAY: In 1896, Dorothy Gladys “Dodie” Smith, best known for the novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians, is born.

• “I’ll be dead before I find the proverbial girl of my dreams.” On the life-hacking origins of incel entitlement. | Lit Hub
• “She maintains her own integrity and she respects the integrity of her subject.” Anjelica Huston on finding her father in the writing of  Lillian Ross. | Lit Hub
• When Mary Karr won the Whiting Award 30 years ago, she thought the call was a prank and hung up. | Lit Hub
• The pleasures of eating the rich: on the modern American obsession with French Revolution narratives. | Lit Hub
• “As creators of color demand the right to tell our own stories, this man has already laid a blueprint for us.” Mateo Askaripour on Ousmane Sembene, the “Father of African Cinema.” | Lit Hub
• Five books you may have missed in April, from 4D casinos to witches in postbellum Georgia. | Lit Hub
• Husband, job, self: a story of three marriages, and three rings. | Lit Hub
• Politics will always make for great entertainment. Camille LeBlanc rounds up the 6 best geopolitical thrillers you’re probably not watching. | CrimeReads
• Ali Smith’s latest, a novel of doomed relationships, and a memoir by Dustin Lance Black all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
• Bret Easton Ellis’ White: timely injection of corrective truth OR a very needy book? | Book Marks
• Ottessa Moshfegh’s favorite things include Billie Holiday, Back to the Future, and Bach. | Artforum
• “A deeply strange book with wildly shifting tones, odd word choices, and often baffling metaphors.” On The Manchurian Candidate, still timely at 60. | Vulture
• “Even if nobody knew it at the time, there was a desire for a story like the one you were telling.” Celeste Ng and Amy Tan in conversation. | The Lily
• David Schurman Wallace revisits the 1979 film adaptation of Carlo Levi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli, a story that “emerged from the absurdities of life under fascism, blending fact and fiction in innovative ways.” | NYR Daily
• The world may be terrible, but at least no one will publish Woody Allen’s memoir. | The New York Times
• Read a profile of Elizabeth McCracken and Edward Carey, “the most unassuming literary power couple in Texas.” | Dallas News
• According to “professional controversialist” Will Self, literature is “morphing into a giant quilting exercise,” and creative writing graduates will never make their livings as novelists. | The Bookseller

Also on Lit Hub: On the New Books Network, Meg Elison talks imagining a world with no men • The pleasure of annotating one of literature’s most challenging works, Finnegan’s Wake • On poetry, magick, and witchcraft • Read from Juliet the Maniac.

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