TODAY: In 2003, George Plimpton dies.
- “Children were the one demographic left that I straightforwardly loved.” How Rivka Galchen decided to stop worrying (kind of) and write a kids’ book. | Lit Hub
- How did animals become symbols of grief? Rebecca Renner on dogs, horses, and our urge to anthropomorphize. | Lit Hub
- “Rowell’s Simon Snow series embodies the purest distillation of the best aspects of fanfiction.” Dana Schwartz on Rainbow Rowell and the power of falling in love with characters. | Lit Hub
- Dermot Bolger on Bruce Springsteen, who might as well be writing songs about working-class Dublin. | Lit Hub
- Don’t cross Meryl Streep, Dustin Hoffman sucks, and more important lessons from the set of Kramer vs. Kramer. | Lit Hub
- Friedrich Hayek wasn’t exactly the libertarian darling he’s claimed as (in fact, Ayn Rand described him as “our most pernicious enemy”). | Lit Hub
- “Music never simply is: it is always becoming.” On the difficulty of explaining why a piece of music is good. | Lit Hub
- Steve Vogel on the daring Cold War plan to build a tunnel between East and West Berlin. | CrimeReads
- This week on the Book Marks Questionnaire: Sharlene Teo on Shirley Jackson, Moby Dick, and hating Pride and Prejudice. | Book Marks
- “In English are impressions of the road’s landscape, many of which appear in Lolita. In his native Russian are practical notes on the price of oil, food or rooms for the night.” Elsa Court deciphers the notes Nabokov took on the road. | Granta
- In light of the UN’s designation of 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages, this year’s South African Heritage Day (Sep. 24th) celebrates the country’s indigenous-language literary classics. | The South African
- A new PEN America policy paper on prison book bans suggests that literature on race and civil rights is disproportionately restricted. | PEN America
- “Contrary to stereotypes of Asian-Americans as silent or submissive, we continue to speak out against sexual violence”: Lisa Ko on the significance of Chanel Miller’s Asian-American identity. | The New York Times
- Learn the basics of poetic meter and perhaps you, too, can have a viral tweet. | The Paris Review
- “Sentimentality is the anti-heart, a heart substitute, and nothing terrifies me more than tipping into it.” Kimberly King Parsons on short stories, desire, and the grotesque and holy body. | Bookforum
Also on Lit Hub: Carolina De Robertis discusses queer culture in Uruguay and her novel Cantoras on Reading Women • “I was thinking about the book as a sort of house”: Sarah Broom in conversation with Brad Listi on Otherppl • Elif Shafak on the Cairo of Naguib Mahfouz • Writing as therapy: a year of teaching in the locked ward • Read an excerpt from Elif Shafak’s novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World.
