Lit Hub Daily: November 19, 2021

• The extraordinary man downtown: Edith Schloss on meeting Willem de Kooning in his paint-splashed New York loft. | Lit Hub Art

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• Roosevelt Montás reflects on first encountering Saint Augustine’s Confessions as an unmoored 18-year-old… and teaching it to today’s doubtful students. | Lit Hub Philosophy

• Priya Fielding-Singh investigates dietary acculturation, the “symbolic victory of feeding kids American foods,” in immigrant households. | Lit Hub Food

• Ross Frylinck relives an encounter with a great white shark while diving with Craig Foster of My Octopus Teacher. | Lit Hub Nature

• “My parents never got The Office. They were mortified by it, all of the awkwardness and the tension.” The cast and creators of the beloved sitcom weigh in on the cringiest episodes. | Lit Hub TV

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• Gary Shteyngart’s tried-and-true method for writing a novel fast! | Lit Hub Craft

• “It was almost certainly the only monster suit in movie history to be featured in two separate roles… and get laid in both.” Charles Booth on borrowing that costume from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. | Lit Hub Film

• The 1619 Project, Patricia Highsmith’s diaries, and a Neal Stephenson cli-fi thriller all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks

• “It was always a message of liberation, if we knew how to listen to it.” Marco Roth remembers Sylvère Lotringer. | n+1

• Why and how books get banned in schools. | CBS News

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• Julie Fine on postpartum depression, hauntings, and the legacy of Margaret Wise Brown. | Guernica

• “I squeezed myself in around other people’s priorities and problems, all the while saying: Take up all the room you want.” Rainesford Stauffer considers the trap of being a “nice girl.” | Catapult

• Vivian Gornick reconsiders Elizabeth Hardwick. | The New Republic

• “We’ve got to ask: How do we fight what we’re up against?” Derecka Purnell on abolition, fighting racism, and Black political thinkers. | Boston Review

• Lincoln Michel returns to the ongoing MFA debate, “a stand-in for whatever trend in literature someone dislikes.” | Counter Craft

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Also on Lit Hub: 15 quintessentially midwestern movies to watch After Fargo • Bobby Duffy on what it means to have happiness as a goal • Read from Uwem Akpan’s latest novel, New York, My Village