Lit Hub Daily: November 16, 2021

TODAY: In 1849, Fyodor Dostoevsky is sentenced to death for antigovernment activities.  

• “I don’t want to live like weasels; I have too many necessities. But I do want to live like sled dogs.” Blair Braverman in praise of mushing. | Lit Hub Sports

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• Tyler Barton muses on putting together a story collection, the power of epigraphs, and leaving home in order to write about it. | Lit Hub

• “They said, ‘When are you getting a teaching job?’ And I said, ‘Leave me alone.’” How Elizabeth Hardwick spent her “starving artist” years in New York City. | Lit Hub Biography

• Sarah Hall talks to Jane Ciabattari about perspective, art, and her new novel, Burntcoat. | Lit Hub

• Looking back at Elephant: On the creative use of ambiguity, journalism versus art, and how Diane Keaton helped Gus Van Sant make his controversial post–Columbine film. | Lit Hub Film

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• Lucy Jago asks if it’s possible to write about women lost to history without using them for our own ends. | Lit Hub

• Jeremy Dauber traces the pipeline from the first web comics to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. | Lit Hub Comics

• Amy Leach wants you to lighten up—here’s her reading list to get started. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• Behind that iconic image of Elvis and B.B. King, “arm in arm at the peak of each man’s youthful fame.” | Lit Hub Music

• Patrick Laurie considers how literary portrayals of farming have evolved in the shadow of climate change. | Lit Hub Climate Change

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• Read the never-before published Patricia Highsmith draft that would become Carol (The Price of Salt). | CrimeReads

• Jose Saramago’s Blindness and the “endless darkness of the human heart.” | Book Marks

• Olivia Rutigliano rounds up all the book-adjacent, mostly-mystery-themed items to buy for your loved ones this season. | CrimeReads

• “I’m interested in fitting in and not fitting in.” Lily King on her latest story collection, her childhood, and living in New England. | BookPage

• Isaac Fitzgerald takes a stroll in the French Quarter with Morgan Parker. | Walk It Off

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• “Now I am reacquainted with myself as a writer, which is to say that I am reacquainted with myself.” Naomi Jackson reflects on finding a way through a mental health crisis. | Harper’s

• On the literary legacy of Gianni Rodari, the Italian communist and author of radical children’s books. | The Nation

• Naomi Kanakia unpacks the idea of a Classical education. | LARB

• “The last two years I have become a symbol, whether a symbol for people who like me and respect my work or a symbol for people who revile me and hate my work.” Nikole Hannah-Jones on reactions to the 1619 Project. | Los Angeles Times

• Anita Felicelli considers two new books “notable both for their attention to Black bodies and their use of the potential music of written language to summon physical responses.” | Alta

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Also on Lit Hub: Happy New Books Tuesday! • A poem translated by Yasmine Seale, from 1,001 Nights • Read from Wolfgang Hilbig’s newly translated novel, The Interim (tr. Isabel Fargo Cole)

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