Lit Hub Weekly: August 6 - 10, 2018

• “One has to be somewhat badly behaved to write above the fray in a society most comfortable with palatable mediocrity.” Ottessa Moshfegh recalls a relationship with an older writer. | The Guardian
• “It’s hard to remember now, but for decades after the publication of Webster’s Third, people still had intense opinions about dictionaries.” A brief history of dictionary drama. | The Atlantic
• “T’aint your fault, guv’nor, it’s a rotten play.” On Henry James ill-advised foray into playwriting. | The New York Times
• “This is where librarians get librarian-y.” On the squad of literary sleuths who track down half-remembered books. | Atlas Obscura
• “[She was] a major public intellectual—responsible, self-questioning, and morally passionate.” Sandra M. Gilbert on the prose of Adrienne Rich. | The Paris Review
• On the perils of being a librarian in the Victorian era—which were bad enough to necessitate “a seaside rest home for those who had broken down in library service.” Which is obviously the dream. | JSTOR
• Carey Polis recommends a series of travel books that go away beyond the “look-I-ate-somewhere-cool-now-I’m-going-to-wax-way-too-poetic” genre. | Bon Appetit
• Deborah Eisenberg on a new documentary about a cache of lost silent films—and also “the eternal, macabre romance between life and death, generation and devastation, the abiding and the evanescent.” | New York Review of Books
• “In the book, I never call it absence, nor desertion, nor neglect. I use the words distance and loss.” Cinelle Barnes on her father. | Catapult
• “These women have hit on the strangeness of occupying a queer or female body, and they’re making the world around those bodies strange as well.” On Carmen Maria Machado, Daisy Johnson, Melissa Broder, and the new surge of queer literary fabulism. | The Outline
• “If Dylan is a poet, Smith was a novelist.” A case for the music of Elliott Smith as literature. | The Independent
• “There is an extra­ordinary degree of agreement, on the part of those who have successful “trips” under suitably controlled conditions, that the fundamental principle of reality is love.” Galen Strawson on LSD. | The Times Literary Supplement
• “What I remember most of all is washing Leo Tolstoy’s ears.” Poet Ilya Kaminsky returns to Odessa decades after his deaf childhood there. | The New York Times
• Who gets to claim Kafka? On Germany and Israel’s battle for the great writer’s legacy. | The Atlantic
• “The suicidal impulse, a sign he is at an impasse, would fade and intensify in a haunting pattern throughout Jimmy’s life.” Harmony Holiday on James Baldwin’s depression. | Poetry Foundation

Also on Lit Hub:

R.O. Kwon courts internet controversy with the following take: what if we shelved our books spine in • What is the astrological significance of June 18, 1982, the day that both Djuna Barnes and John Cheever died? • It turns out The Wind in the Willows isn’t really a children’s book (BONUS FACT: the word “willow” appears nowhere in its pages) • 1921. 1946. 1984. 2018… the more we change, the more we stay the same. Gabrielle Bellot offers a genealogy of the totalitarian novel • “Thus,the mindfuck began.” Rachel Yoder gets a little lost in search of her Mennonite roots • From Finland to Earthsea, the complexity of keeping house is worthy of great literature • Valerie Trueblood: Writing a short story collection is a lot like starting a zoo • On the birth of everybody’s favorite princess (Margaret, obvs) and how it gave rise to the horoscope as we know it • Shirley Jackson, possibly a witch, definitely played the zither • What does immersing yourself in a book do to your brain? • How one of archeology’s great mysteries was solved: uncovering China’s lost warriors • On the new episode of Fiction/Non/Fiction, James Traub and Margot Livesey discuss decency (and its loss), and writing morally weak characters • “April in Minnesota is when utilities are shut off for non-payment.” Joshua Mattson on struggling toward a novel-shaped thing • One year after Charlottesville: to better understand the terrible summer of 2017, Olivia Laing made the jump from nonfiction to novel • Irish in America, trying to understand Irish-Americans: Maeve Higgins on immigration, whiteness, and pulling the ladder up behind you • Inside the weddings of 10 famous writers

Best of Book Marks:

Iconic literary critic, novelist, and essayist Elizabeth Hardwick on eight icons of American letters—from Sylvia Plath to Philip Roth, Flannery O’Connor to John Cheever, and more • The Reservoir Tapes author Jon McGregor spoke with Jane Ciabattari about his 5 favorite books set in small English villages • This week in Secrets of the Book Critics: writer and critic Bridey Heing on Edith Wharton, Jia Tolentino, and women in world literature • From the archives of the New York Times: 11 book reviews from Sing Sing prisoners in 1911 • Loneliness in the Midwest, reflections on a royal, the young women who desegregated America’s schools, and more Reviews You Need to Read This Week • Corruption in Zimbabwe, vanishing islands, and women defying gravity all feature among our Best Reviewed Books of the Week

New on CrimeReads:

10 classic crime novels that showcase the art of the heist • The strange case of Jean Harris, the schoolmistress who snapped • From France to Japan, August’s best international crime fiction for the discerning armchair traveler • Our own Dwyer Murphy, former attorney, rounds up the best legal thrillers to hit the silver screen in the past 20 years • “What could be so villainous about stoic, silent, apple-cheeked people with dirt-floor cellars and no neighbors for miles?” Lori Rader-Day on the Midwest’s thriving crime writing scene • Every summer, thousands of pilgrims flock to a small town in Wyoming for Longmire Days, thanks to a wildly popular mystery series • Koren Zailckas rounds up five fictional imposters whose imposter syndrome is bound up in social norms • David Joy on redefining “rural” literature •  True crime author Robin Bowles investigates a botched Australian investigation that led to a bizarre ruling of suicide • Jeff Guinn on the night Charles Manson partied with the Beach Boys • Rena Olsen, marriage therapist and crime writer, on how to craft realistic relationships in crime fiction • Searching for the French psychic who scammed millions from the elderly • Louise Candlish recommends 7 books featuring swapped, stolen, and substituted identities • After 10 years in the making, Baghdad Noir is now out from Akashic Books–read an excerpt here