Lit Hub Daily: October 16, 2023

• Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns on how the “Iron Horse” spelled doom for the American Buffalo. | Lit Hub History

• “The shit in the metaverse is spilling over into the shit in the real world.” On the grim realities of the metaverse. | Lit Hub Technology

• “Nothing is lost in translation.” Kirmen Uribe on writing and dreaming in Basque, Spanish, English and life in between languages. | Lit Hub On Translation

• Pamela Newton reflects on Alexander Stille’s The Sullivanians and the narratives and realities of her childhood in an urban commune. | Lit Hub MemoirSins of our fathers: Lily Dunn reflects on the aftermath of writing a memoir about her dad and on new books by Safyia Sinclair and Noreen Masud. | Lit Hub Literary Criticism

• Poet and Nobel laureate Louise Glück has died at 80. | AP

• Joy Lanzendorfer on Lenore Kandel, whose “psychedelic sex poems” kicked off San Francisco’s longest obscenity trial. | The New Yorker

• “She is remapping where we believe we must look if we are to understand [American] history and the world it has created.” Imani Perry profiles Jesmyn Ward. | The New York Times Magazine

• Ex-hippies and proto-techies rejoice: you can now access the entire Whole Earth Catalog archive online. | WIRED

• “Ye’s vicissitudes trouble me in particular because I had a father once. He was brave and chaotic too. Awful and beautiful too. A workaholic full of ennui too.” Harmony Holiday on Kanye West. | The Paris Review

• Fehmida Zakeer explores the gastronomic verse of Kushajim, the 10th century polymath, poet, and master chef. | Atlas Obscura

Also on Lit Hub: Katharine Quarmby on fiction’s friendly ghosts • J. Ryan Stradal on memorializing his mother through fiction