Lit Hub Daily: September 23, 2019

• Michael S. A. Graziano considers the astonishing alien intelligence of the octopus, and the evolution of animal consciousness. | Lit Hub Science
• “It was a funny thing to throw a book out… It was like burning a cake. You know that feeling? Oh, hell, I burned the cake.” Ann Patchett and Mary Laura Philpott in conversation. | Lit Hub
• Optimize your life with ancient philosophy! Or: how Stoicism and the Epicureanism speak to these uncertain times. | Lit Hub
• If you existed in multiple universes, how would you act in this one? And other questions of morality from the world of quantum physics. | Lit Hub
• Lida Maxwell explores the deep link between Chelsea Manning’s coming out and her whistleblowing. | Lit Hub
• “I needed to be cool with how pissed I was going to be.” At the Red Ink Series, Mira Jacob, Deborah Landau, and others discuss the writer’s quest for authenticity. | Lit Hub
• Start your week off right with two poems: Airea D. Matthews’ “Black Ecstatic Ode” and Liu Tsung-yuan’s “Occasional Poem on a Summer Day 夏晝偶作” (trans. Red Pine). | Lit Hub
• “We read different books.” On the trade law that blocks many Arabic-language books from coming to Israel. | The New York Times
• Edward Snowden on how getting sued by the Department of Justice helped his book sales. | The Hollywood Reporter
• “It’s like having Elle Woods recommend a book to you. Who’s going to say no to that?” How Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club became “publishing’s secret weapon.” | Vox
• Is the mall the “Platonic ideal of reading environments”? (Your answer might depend on how much you like the smell of Auntie Anne’s pretzels.) | The Washington Post
• “Do we now need to add literary fiction to the long list of things Donald Trump has ruined?” Rumaan Alam on Ben Lerner’s legacy and latest. | The New Republic
• “You’re trying to make out like you’re heroin-period Nick Cave when you’re ruddy as a fucking farm boy? Disaster.” Kevin Barry and John Jeremiah Sullivan in conversation about, among other things, the perils of being a ginger goth. | The Paris Review
• “Catholic catagonia caged poor Annie’s exculpatory rapture, leaving investigators singing psalms”: If Sean Penn is allowed to write like this, why aren’t we seeing more fiction published by female celebrities? | Slate

Also on Lit Hub: Embedded with the Arab elite in Jerusalem • The slow build up to the American Revolution • Read an excerpt from Ji-Min Lee’s novel The Starlet and the Spy (trans. Chi-Young Kim).