Lit Hub Weekly: February 7 - 11, 2022

• Our years of magical thinking: Mary-Frances O’Connor on the neuroscience of grief. | Lit Hub Science

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• Lauren Groff ruminates on Yūko Tsushima’s Woman Running in the Mountains, which “tracks one insignificant person’s defiance in the face of the overwhelming darkness of the world.” | Lit Hub Criticism

• How Einstein got to his theory of general relativity. | Lit Hub Physics

• After divorce, Florence Williams considers the connection between heartbreak and health. | Lit Hub Health

• Sarah Manguso’s Very Cold People, Heather Havrilesky’s Foreverland, and Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks

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• A. Barnes with a brief history of ghost ships. | CrimeReads

• Merve Emre on the great subject at the heart of Ulysses: love. | The New Yorker

• Marlon James discusses writing realistic Black characters, finding inspiration in African folktales, and exploring power in fiction. | Boston Review

• Alex Sujong Laughlin talks to the creators and stars of the new adaptation of Pachinko, which confronts Japan’s colonization of Korea. | Harper’s Bazaar

• Ada Limón considers friendship and savoring in California wine country. | Condé Nast Traveler

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• “The beef is painted as Woolf painted everything, in search of its inner truth.” Valerie Stivers cooks boeuf en daube like Virginia Woolf. | The Paris Review

• Who is Filippo Bernardini, the man accused of impersonating literary figures in order to obtain unpublished manuscripts? | Vulture

• “Good criticism should establish what is at stake in a book, that there is, in fact, something worth arguing about.” An interview with New Republic literary editor Laura Marsh. | NYRB

• Norman Mailer wasn’t cancelled—but David Klion makes the case that the whole affair embodies several aspects of Cancel Culture discourse. | The Nation

• Siobhan McDonough delves into the takeaways from Northanger Abbey, “no one’s favorite Jane Austen novel.” | Vox

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• Computer programmers are helping scholars decode Charles Dickens’ secret notes to himself. | The New York Times

• “One of the most striking things about reading Blood Meridian now is that it anticipates some of the major historical turns of the past decades.” Bennett Parten on Cormac McCarthy and American history. | LARB

• “It’s come out, I think, at exactly the right moment.” Jane Goodall discusses her recent book on environmental issues. | Los Angeles Times

• These books delve into the history of Russia and the conflict in Ukraine. | The Wall Street Journal

• “When so moved, he could be highly expressive.” Geoffrey Roberts considers Stalin’s marginalia. | Lapham’s Quarterly

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• “I’m impatient to get to the end of my story, although I don’t know what or where that ending will be.” Miriam Toewes journeys through time and family history. | The New Yorker

Also on Lit Hub:

Rebecca Sack’s rules for writing great sex • Benjamin Percy on when plants attack! • Maeve Higgins on the toxic power of political euphemism • How Rachel Carson dumped her day job to write • Exploring the strange world of the meteorite trade • Alex Zamalin against civility in politics • De-mystifying the commodities bubble • Laura Kipnis on love in the time of COVID • Revisiting Jean Rhys’ “women on the margins” • How slavery was written out of the Declaration of Independence • Why Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon flopped in China • Lessons from John McPhee’s book about a single tennis match • Yusef Komunyakaa on Clarence Major’s Dirty Bird Blues • Climate lessons from the Epic of Gilgamesh • Georgia Pritchett recounts a TV industry #MeToo experience • Stephen Marche on the decay of American political discourse • A neuroscientist explains why lists and journaling relive anxiety • Silvia Vasquez-Lavado confronts the old boys’ club at Everest Base Camp • Ken Kesey’s letter to friends after the death of his son • Danielle J. Lindemann traces the boomeranging evolution of reality TV • On Africatown’s fight to honor the survivors of the Clotilda • Destiny O. Birdsong on Afro-Diasporic collective memory • In praise of platonic love • On the power of narrative therapy