Lit Hub Daily: October 9, 2018

• When you discover you’re a character in someone else’s novel: John Wray on the anxiety of reading about “John Wray.” | Lit Hub
• “Their vulnerability is their strength.” What Beowulf Sheehan learned while photographing literary greats. | Lit Hub
• 5 writers, 7 questions, no wrong answers: Nicole Chung, Casey Gerald and more take the Lit Hub Author Questionnaire. | Lit Hub
• How the communist blacklist shaped the entertainment industry as we know it. | Lit Hub
• Going hungry at the most prestigious MFA in America: Katie Prout on class, work, and making ends meet in Iowa. | Lit Hub
• “I have a shelf of books written by strangers with my name”: The Sadness of Beautiful Things author Simon Van Booy on his five favorite books about the sadness of love. | Book Marks
• “I love unreliable narrators, and I would absolutely love to think I have even a tiny part in there being more of them around.” An interview with Tana French. | CrimeReads
• Maggie Gyllenhaal has acquired the film rights to Elena Ferrante’s The Lost Daughter, and will write, produce, and direct the film in her directorial debut. | Deadline
• “I wonder if, like me, Matilda ever felt trapped by her past.” Mara Wilson on Matilda—and her—30 years on. | Vanity Fair
• “I should not have been entirely surprised when I saw How to Read Donald Duck being burned on TV by Chilean soldiers.” Ariel Dorfman on his subversive 1971 book—and its relevance in 2018. | The Guardian
• “I myself am a victim to narrative.” A philosopher explains how our addiction to stories blinds us to the truth of history. | The Verge
• “There’s a whole subculture blooming out of the collective and individual desperation for renovated minds.” Harmony Holiday on the poetics of the microdose. | BOMB
• Will television—with its insatiable hunger for new stories and snappy dialogue—save the novel? | The Times
• “The library is a gathering pool of narrative and the people who come to find them.” Susan Orlean on growing up in the library, and finding her way back. | The New Yorker

Also on Lit Hub: Excerpts from Uwe Johnson’s Anniversaries • Inside the rooms where famous books were written • Read from Bitter Orange