Lit Hub Weekly: April 18-22, 2022

• Missing mussels and omelettes for amateurs: An inside look at Judith Jones’ first editorial notes for Julia Child. | Lit Hub Food

  Article continues after advertisement

• “Everyone I met, French or foreign: we were all struggling to communicate.” Amanda Bestor-Siegal considers how losing the tether of language helped her process grief. | Lit Hub Memoir

• Lucasta Miller considers Jane Campion’s exquisite biopic of John Keats, which captures his relationship with the love of his life. | Lit Hub Film & TV

• “Doesn’t it scan as odd that the collective book industry reply to “your working conditions are so racist they’re a form of psychological horror” was an ecstatic yes, drag me?” Tajja Isen on The Other Black Girl and lip service in publishing. | Lit Hub Criticism

• Tove Ditlevsen’s The Trouble With Happiness, Gary Indiana’s Fire Season, and Sascha Rothchild’s Blood Sugar all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks

  Article continues after advertisement

• Anna Lee Huber’s top ten female sleuths in historical mysteries. | CrimeReads

• Forty poets, painters, photographers, filmmakers, actors, musicians, and writers discuss their creative processes. | T Magazine

• “How we as Americans approach restrictions on literature curriculums is not only flawed but also wholly reactionary.” Sungjoo Yoon, a junior in high school, weighs in on book bans. | The New York Times

• How the New York Public Library is preserving the sounds of the early 20th century. | Atlas Obscur

• Olga Tokarczuk talks about transgressive literature, which “comes with an inherent risk of not meeting the expectations of the majority of readers who may not want to be surprised.” | The Seattle Times

  Article continues after advertisement

• Exploring the legacy of Lesya Ukrainka, the beloved Ukrainian writer and activist. | JSTOR Daily

• Recommended reading from Red Planet Books and Comics, the world’s only Native American comic shop. | Hyperallergic

• “The trick isn’t convincing students to drop their dogmas. It’s convincing them that the stuff we’re talking about could matter in lives already complicated by many other things.” Lucas Mann on the underreported challenges facing college students and teachers. | Slate

• “We are now in this world where things are just moving and you just have to keep running to keep up with it.” Jane Pek on writing and 21st-century technology. | Los Angeles Review of Books

• “I love a poem that reveals its own subjectivity, that exalts in it.” Lucia Lotempio on poems and testimony. | Harriet

  Article continues after advertisement

• Sam Lipsyte explores the brave new world of “digisexuality.” | Harper’s 

• Summer Brennan debunks some myths about nonfiction trade publishing, from advance sizes to book tours. | A Writer’s Notebook

• Where “tea” becomes “the bitter brown infusion.” Behind the Second Mentions Twitter account, which documents attempts at elegant variations of the same word. | The New Yorker

• “For years, Rankine has been pressing on the visible bruise of the white glance.” Rhoda Feng on Claudia Rankine’s Help. | Public Books

• Shannon Keating marks the ten-year anniversary of Fifty Shades of Grey, which “brought to the fore our culture’s darkest fears and desires when it comes to kink, sexuality, and the role of feminism.” | BuzzFeed

  Article continues after advertisement

• “I think we’re laboring under a moment in which many believe that the sole function of art is to provide moral guidance.” Jen Silverman discusses art and cultural institutions. | MacDowell

Also on Lit Hub:

The citizen’s guide to climate change • Emily St. John Mandel on the narrative possibilities of time travel • Jesymn Ward on discovering the work of Ntozake Shange • Edward Hirsch traces the roots of American poetry • Arundhati Roy on the battle between myth and history • The digital age is destroying us • Considering Kathryn Davis’ meditations on grief •  Where are all the matriarchies in fiction? • On Jeff Bezos’ awkward journey to Hollywood • Emily Van Duyne on teaching as a rape survivor • Sanaë Lemoine on a tumultuous love • On the many (many) ways to die in Shakespeare’s day • Rebecca Scherm on the daily terrors of writing climate fiction • How do you fictionalize technology when it’s constantly changing? • Adrienne Celt on grad school and ambition • What does it mean to understand pain? • Following Henry David Thoreau’s walks • Alan Lee on illustrating The Lord of the Rings • Jendella Benson’s advice for writing about gentrification • Inside the surprising history of Chairman Mao’s love for dance • How has the pandemic changed our perceptions of loneliness? • When airline stewardesses were forced to retire at 32 • Using dictation software to navigate pandemic pain • On fictionalizing the long-suppressed histories of Holland and Indonesia • On the legacies of the transcendentalists • Imagining the aviators who inspired William Faulkner • On the limits of scientific terminology • The pleasure of British historical reality TV shows • Surviving a breakdown by reading nothing but royal biographies • On the erased lives of enslaved women forced to bear their enslavers’ children • When German business tycoons funded Hitler • Did Thomas Edison “disappear” his motion-picture rival? • Chloe Caldwell on the joys and invisibility of stepmotherhood • Lessons from Tacitus