Lit Hub Weekly: December 11 - 15, 2017

• He made his characters vulnerable: John Jeremiah Sullivan, Leslie Jamison, and more on the legacy of David Foster Wallace’s journalism. | Longreads
• “As a mongrelized human being, I don’t find the world around us satisfactory.” Mohsin Hamid on Pakistan, migration, and the limits of western humanism. | The Guardian
• Her griefs were ordinary; it is what she did with them that wasn’t: on the revelations of a new, unedited volume of Sylvia Plath’s letters. | The New Yorker
• “One begins a Krasznahorkai story like a free diver, with a deep inhalation before plunging in.” Nathaniel Rich on László Krasznahorkai. | The Atlantic
• “I think there are ways in which nuance and strong tides can work together. I don’t think they always have to be jettisoned one for the other.” An interview with Maggie Nelson. | The Fader
• “Above all, I am grateful for her imagination: what she could see.” Naima Coster on having a black editor in a white publishing world. | Catapult
• The definitive list of places Therese and Carol eat in Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt. | Autostraddle
• Nolite te bastardes carborundorum: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale was the most-read book on Amazon platforms this year. | Publisher’s Weekly
• From Andrés Barba’s Such Small Hands to Magda Szabó’s Katalin Street: 75 notable translations from 2017. | World Literature Today
• “Gass knew that language is nothing without metaphor.” On the philosophy of William H. Gass. | n+1
• “The dark arts better be worried, oh boy!” What happens when a bot trained with all seven Harry Potter books writes a new chapter. | Botnik Studios
• Heidi Julavits, Ruth Franklin, Vivian Gornick, Parul Sehgal and others on women and power in the workplace. | The New York Times Magazine
• “How can we best respond to Mary’s hideous progeny now, after so many bewildering transformations?” On the many adaptations of Frankenstein and their impact on the original work. | The New York Review of Books
• Barracoon, a previously unpublished book by Zora Neale Hurston, will be released in 2018. | Essence
• “She’s reclining on her bed. She wears no (let’s be real—minimal) makeup. You’re welcomed into her room to read with her. She knows that we want in.” On the faux intimacy of celebrity book clubs. | Paper Darts

Also on Lit Hub: 

Rebecca Solnit on women’s work and the myth of the art monster • Brandon Taylor on the Alabama special election results: “Political victories don’t put food on the table.” • Tracy O’Neill on growing up in thrall to a great American heroine: Tonya Harding • How many drafts does it take to write a novel? • The time W.H. Auden wrote a bunch of poetry for a short art film about running • The bloody catharsis of femme revenge: Emma Eisenberg seeks out stories of women who are done rising above it • Why do we fear wolves? When animals are made to answer for the sins of men • Why the Bad Sex Writing award isn’t really funny or necessary. Really •  On war, satire, and the novels of Irène Némirovsky: Patrick Nathan on how to cook your way through the end times • 13 literary-celebrity lookalikes (this is the news you need now)