TODAY: In 1856, Herman Melville visits his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne while Hawthorne is United States consul in Liverpool; Hawthrone describes in his journal, “We sat down in a hollow among the sand hills, sheltering ourselves from the high, cool wind and smoked a cigar.”
- “It feels fresh and urgent, but it’s an ancient, archetypal tale.” A 2011 review of Jesmyn Ward’s first National Book Award-winning novel, Salvage the Bones. | Book Marks
- Ursula K. Le Guin on accidental bullying, being in a “peculiar but exclusive club” with Philip Roth, and doing nameless things. | Los Angeles Review of Books
- “Natural disasters have a way of clarifying things. They sweep away once-sturdy delusions, to reveal old treasures and scars.” Molly Crabapple on Puerto Rico’s self-driven disaster relief. | NYRB
- A profile of Kate Hamill, who adapts “thick nineteenth-century novels” like Sense and Sensibility and Vanity Fair “into kinetic stage concoctions.” | The New Yorker
- “Spiritualism had done what it had meant to do—it gave women power.” Mira Ptacin on Camp Etna, a “141-year old community for clairvoyants, mediums, psychics, and Spiritualists.” | The Cut
- On Helen Smith’s new biography of Edward Garnett, a “publishing giant who virtually launched the careers of Joseph Conrad and D.H. Lawrence.” | 4 Columns
- Following Lena Dunham’s recent statements, novelist Zinzi Clemmons has released her own explaining why she will no longer write for Dunham’s publication. | Vulture
- From Fight Club to Big Little Lies, screen adaptations that surpass their source material. | AV Club
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