Lit Hub Weekly: July 31-August 4, 2023

TODAY: In 1959, Edgar Guest, a British-born American poet who became known as the People’s Poet, dies at 77.   

• Victoria Gosling interrogates the legend of King Arthur: “Is Arthur why Britain, despite its history, continues to see itself as the good guy?” | Lit Hub Criticism

• Wylie Dufresne on the fun, never-ending process of becoming a chef. | Lit Hub

• Julie Schumacher on 30 years of correspondence with her late friend, Melissa Bank: “I feel the impulse to write to her when I see the coil of postage stamps on my desk, or when I read a book that I wish she could read.” | Lit Hub Memoir

• How author Aimie K. Runyan found a new way to approach story for her “reluctant reader” children. | Lit Hub Parenting

• Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake, Jamel Brinkley’s Witness, and Yepoka Yeebo’s Anansi’s Gold all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks

• Peter Heller remembers his mother, a private investigator, and the first case she took on in the wilds of Connecticut. | CrimeReads

• Henrietta Lacks’ family has settled their lawsuit with Thermo Fisher Scientific, which used her cells in their research without consent. | AP

• Julia Poole bravely reads all five of Rush Limbaugh’s Rush Revere series, “a sanitized option for teaching fragile white kids history without hurting their feelings.” | The Baffler

• Joyce Carol Oates on the prose fictions of Rachel Ingalls, which “famously resist description, let alone classification.” | Times Literary Supplement

• “The book may be devoid of meat, but it’s by no means free of earthly indulgence.” Aimee Levitt on The Vegetarian Epicure. | Eater

• “The 8th Note Press news seems more ominous coming at a time of declining book sales, publishing layoffs, and crumbling social platforms.” Tajja Isen on TikTok’s new publishing venture. | The Walrus

• Grace Lavery writes about three recent books from the “gender critical” movement. | Los Angeles Review of Books

• “Short of abandoning the genre altogether, as Shields recommended in 2010, today a novel ought to help save the world.” Jessi Jezewska Stevens on “post-postfiction.” | The Point

• Greta Rainbow looks at the gamification of reading at the beige books site. | Shondaland

• “I think the publishing industry has an obsession with newness.” Imogen West-Knights spoke to Irish writers Megan Nolan, Naoise Dolan, and Nicole Flattery about their “difficult second books.” | The New York Times

• What happens when you ask AI to create fairy tale art? | Orion 

• “Perseverance is the prerequisite of all creativity. And pig-headedness, the determination to outride public neglect.” Jeremy Cooper on the perks of being an older writer. | The Bookseller

• What should you read (and watch) after Oppenheimer? | GQ

• Alejandro Chacoff considers how María Kodama’s fierce loyalty has shaped the legacy of her late husband, Jorge Luis Borges (tr. Jessica Sequeira). | The Dial

• “I think post-2020 in general, people are reimagining power structures and how they might contribute something in a way that they might not have thought about before.” Chelsea Hodson discusses her new press, Rose Books. | Nylon

• A.S. Hamrah considers the Mission: Impossible franchise. | NYRB

Also on Lit Hub:

Ann Patchett on grabbing galleys and getting drafts done • Lucy Scholes revisits Caroline Blackwood’s Great Granny Webster • On the sly language of climate change denialism • Pankaj Mishra considers the mesmerizing present of Amit Chaudhuri’s The Immortals • Inside the world of bodybuilding • How exile allowed Shastri Akella to write a queer novel • Michelle Wildgen extols the joys of food-centered fiction • Mindy Mejia litsplains physics • Rebecca Sacks reflects on fictionalizing her love story with an Israeli solider • When the Beatles found their voice • Insights into structuring the strange • J. Vanessa Lyon on finding inspiration in the photography of James Van Der Zee • Jamel Brinkley on his writing practice, favorite books, and more • Tamara Saade remembers the Beirut Port explosion, three years later • On the women aviators who helped win World War II • What Shane McCrae is reading now and next • A reading list of books where pets steal the show • Enacting the transness of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando • Adrian Tomine on the delight of collaborating on the Shortcomings film adaptation • Madeline Ashby revisits G. K. Chesterton’s The Napoleon of Notting Hill • On the pleasure of unexpected translations

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