TODAY: In 1973, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien dies.
- The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize shortlist has been announced. | The Center for Fiction
- Whether George Smiley can match up to our deranged political times is another question altogether: On John le Carré’s first novel in 25 years. | The New Republic
- “The princess we invented to fill a vacancy had little to do with any actual person.” Hilary Mantel on Princess Diana, who died 20 years ago this week. | The Guardian
- YA Book Twitter has uncovered a vast conspiracy involving “multiple obscure celebrities from the early-2000s,” an “infamous piece of Harry Potter fan fiction,” and the New York Times best-seller list. | Entertainment Weekly
- In which Chelsea Martin uses promoting her book as “an opportunity to confront Scott McClanahan about a few things.” | Fanzine
- “The things I used to feel for broke off and became simply things I would look at when I had to look at something.” Short fiction by Ottessa Moshfegh. | Lenny
- On Rabindranath Tagore, the actual first songwriter to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the erasure of Indian writers. | Overland
- “White colleagues routinely. . . called me lucky. They meant that Southern black boys like me were more likely to end up incarcerated than working beside wonderful white faculty at so-called elite liberal arts colleges.” Kiese Laymon on “luck,” privilege, and power. | BuzzFeed Reader
- How Olivia Sudjic’s novel Sympathy and the Aubrey Plaza-starring Ingrid Goes West “demonstrate [that] Instagram relies on a feedback loop of self-absorption.” | Broadly
- “If a writer is nothing, does nothing, and has nothing to say, what can he write about?” On the work of Fernando Pessoa (and his many fictional alter egos). | The New Yorker
- On the essays of Elizabeth Hardwick, “who could do more in six words than any Hemingway type, including Hemingway.” | Bookforum
- “I’ve felt that all my writing is about complicating received narratives—because I grew up with so many.” Will Chancellor in conversation with Nick Laird. | BOMB
- The new issue of the Evergreen Review is now online, featuring work from Helen DeWitt, Robert Coover, and more. | Evergreen Review
- “This dried roach once swam in a cabbage stew that I ate at the counter of a railroad station.” A newly translated sketch by Anton Chekhov. | The Paris Review
- Poetry, too, is pivoting to video: On Button Poetry’s performance-based approach to publishing poetry. | Publishers Weekly
- Matt Furie, the cartoonist who created Pepe the Frog—originally a fun-loving amphibian that the alt-right appropriated as a mascot of sorts—has successfully prevented the distribution of a children’s book entitled Pepe and Pede that “espoused racist, Islamophobic and hate-filled themes.” | The New York Times
The privilege of escapism is not allowed for me: Reading Jane Eyre while black · In which the world’s most beautiful bookstores gather in one place · The secret e-book that changed my life: On genderfluidity and the unwavering power of words · Can your best friends be books? In praise of the solitary, the bookish, the diehard readers · Angela Davis on Black Lives Matter, Palestine, and the future of radicalism· “What am I trying to leave behind?” An interview with Jhumpa Lahiri· Why we keep waiting for Godot: On the enduring popularity of a bleak and difficult play ·Too smart or too pretty? Elisa Gabbert on the Anne of Green Gables paradox · From Mary Shelley to Maurice Sendak, the greatest goths in literary history · Jared Yates Sexton applies the rules of fiction in an attempt to understand Donald Trump · Where are the likes? Coming to terms with being a writer on social media
This week on Book Marks:
A 1952 review of Bernard Malamud’s The Natural, the first serious novel about baseball · Actors banished from the stage: On John Le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold · How reading Gabriel Tallent’s My Absolute Darling “is like watching an electrical storm” · A horrible and disgusting absurdity: Three 1818 reviews of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein · A look back at Rebecca West’s 1941 mosaic of Yugoslavia, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon · Horny teens, heartbreak, and hilarity in Daniel Handler’s All the Dirty Parts · Hogwarts as Never-Never Land: Stephen King’s 2000 review of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire · Psychopathic fathers, Viking sagas, Nora Ephron rom-coms, and more: the best-reviewed books of the week
