Lit Hub Weekly: August 12 - 16, 2024

• Take a literary road trip across America, with book recommendations for all 50 states. | Lit Hub
• “We were searching for a writing method that was less like writing and more like living.” Sofia Samatar on balancing self-compartmentalization with the joy of creation. | Lit Hub Craft
• Sarah Seltzer on why Jane Austen has more in common with sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll than you think. | Lit Hub Criticism
• Camille Peri on the creative and romantic partnership between 19th-century literary power couple Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson. | Lit Hub Biography
• “Restorative nostalgia has been part of conservative American politics for as long as there’s been a mass media to exploit the public’s hunger for it.” On the aesthetics (and politics) of nostalgia. | Jacobin
• Why the stock image of an anarchist shouldn’t be a rioter, but a printer. | JSTOR Daily
• Elizabeth Minkle explores the power of fictional food. | Atlas Obscura
• “I had to choose between an enraged middle-aged cat who hated me versus an adorable kitten who loved me or at least acted that way.” Mary Gaitskill considers the bad behavior of a pet. | The Cut
• “For eighty-one years, my father was up to the same game, though his situation wasn’t so comical; at least, the living of it wasn’t.” Zadie Smith on family and comedy. | The New Yorker
• “I’ve been flirting with the anima and have written a very few poems. But there are weeds in the cracks at last.” Five letters from Seamus Heany. | The Paris Review
• Henry Ivry on why “an increasing number of critics are interested in the literary life of material infrastructures.” | Public Books
• “It is hard to live within the word ‘degenerative’, which means that, however I strive, I do not win.” Anne Carson on Parkinson’s, handwriting, and concentration. | London Review of Books
• Huh! Turns out, conservative indie publishing was not quite the moneymaker the Daily Wire hoped it would be. | Semafor
• Tajja Isen on the hidden racism of book cover designs. | The Walrus
• Joy Williams recalls her infamous stories for Esquire. | Esquire
• Owen Lewis considers the “repetitive genius” of Ishiguro. | Defector
• “I think there’s a reason why there’s not a bunch of leftist art on the radio.” Noname talks to Christopher Soto about poetry, rap, and Black radical literature. | Los Angeles Times
• On the pitfalls of writing chronically online. | The Baffler

Also on Lit Hub:

Poetic embodiment and queerness in Judaism • The possibilities and limits of machine assisted art • The lie behind the Republican Party’s claims to moral superiority • On the real-life inspiration for Uncle Tom’s Cabin • Navid Sinaki on Scheherazade, secrets, and finding his voice • Danzy Senna, Kristopher Jansma, and more take the Lit Hub Questionnaire • How Jacqueline Susann and Jackie Collins revolutionized the book world • On family, place and inheritance in South Asia and North America • Snowden Wright digs into the visceral, versatile stories of Brad Watson • How four-legged friends bond with their human caretakers • Theodore H. Schwartz on the supervillain of malignant tumors • This fall will also bring an incredible crop of books • How playing with Legos helped Colleen McKeegan • On Ann Patchett’s novels of maternal ambivalence • Diana Arterian examines Bill Schutt’s reading list • What clickbait can tell us about 21st century journalism • Afrofuturism as a solution to climate catastrophe • Steve Paul remembers Evan S. Connell • Jessica Anthony on the art of fictional time • Literary translations on the American Ballet Theater’s summer stage • The predatory, menacing bite of…a shrew? • On finding your way into the story you want to tell