Lit Hub Weekly: August 26 - 30, 2024

• “One of the biggest dangers of Vance is his implication that Appalachians are not only stupid but ineducable; such is the malicious misconception of thinking people choose to be ill, poor, or down on their luck.” Justin B. Wymer examines JD Vance’s Appalachian grift. | Lit Hub Politics
• “In the Red Dead Redemption games, the West wasn’t won—it was robbed, deceived, and cheated.” Tore C. Olsson on what Red Dead Redemption II reveals about the American West. | Lit Hub Technology
• Jonathan Lethem explores graffiti as visual and written expression within a rapidly-gentrifying New York City. | Lit Hub Art
• “How difficult and treacherous our paths are, always, within this country and its institutions.” On being an Arabic literature professor in a time of genocide. | Lit Hub Memoir
• Lincoln Michel poses some theories about why some books stand the test of time and others are forgotten. | Counter Craft
• Susan Bernofsky on translating Yoko Tawada: “Great writers use language in really weird ways, but if it’s a great writer, the work absorbs the linguistic strangeness…” | Asymptote
• Amy Joyce on how Judy Blume shaped a generation of readers. | The Washington Post
• “If the hour was late and you heard someone in your alleyway with a bombastic voice shouting iambic pentameter into the night, that was probably me.” Al Pacino remembers his early years in the South Bronx. | The New Yorker
• Natalie Middleton explores the many (many) ways to name rain in Hawai’i. | Orion
• On Dostoevsky’s “The Crocodile” (and why it’s his weirdest short story.) | JSTOR Daily
• Małgorzata Gorczyńska considers the differences between Eastern European and Western ways of reading literature and the world. | Words Without Borders
• “The concern with inequality is like a stepping stone to a higher perspective, which means welcoming these histories of inequality for helping readers move beyond their own terms.” Samuel Moyn on recent books about the surprising origins and politics of inequality. | The Nation
• Has old timey animalcore replaced blobcore as the book cover art trend du jour? | Defector
• “I’m struck by how many of the books written during the first decade of this new millennium seem to thrum with a particular kind of apprehension and unease.” Francine Prose looks back on the National Book Awards of the aughts. | The Washington Post
• “Like Prince Myshkin, I’d explain to them politely that, no, this is art. I don’t want to destroy Russia; I want the best for Russia.” Vladimir Sorokin and Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova in conversation. | Interview
• “The story’s violence is both onscreen and offscreen at the same time, as if the one-dimensional characters are simply part of…an enormous production complex.” On Bolaño’s story, “The Colonel’s Son.” | 3:AM
• Raven Leilani on the “digressive purgatory” of grief writing. | N+1
• Leo Lasdun wonders if we’re at the beginning of the end of alt-lit. | Los Angeles Review of Books
• “…when squatters called Le Bloc the biggest squat in Paris, one tended to believe them.” Inside an iconic Parisian squat. | The Paris Review

Also on Lit Hub:

The timelessness of modern malaise • The complex dynamics of animal rescue • Authors who speak to the Cambodian American experience • How Weimar Berlin inspired Christopher Isherwood’s Sally Bowles • Steve Edwards on the gathering of life’s infinite moments • The long history of dark money and shadowy influence in Washington DC • A husband’s suicide and the tension between fiction and memoir • The (not so) shocking similarities between quantum physics and queer dating • Medieval spiritual corruption and bloody religious warfare in Southern France • On loving author profiles, even though they can’t replace book criticism • Greg Cwik on the literary references in Friends • How billionaires became more influential than world leaders • Everyone keeps saying we’re living in “uncertain times” • Minrose Gwin on the challenge of creating complex villains • On queer athletic activism and the inaugural Gay Games • A new month brings new paperbacks • The literary film and TV you need to stream in September • August’s best reviewed books • The most anticipated audiobooks in September