Lit Hub Weekly: June 11 - 15, 2018

• “Bourdain used his tremendous platform to explain to his audience how their own lives were entangled with those of other people.” Kanishk Tharoor on Anthony Bourdain. | The Atlantic
• “Some essays are letters into the future.” Masha Gessen on George Orwell’s essay “The Prevention of Literature,” and what it says about writing and totalitarianism today. | The New Yorker
• How did Jane Austen’s well-read heroines get their books in Regency England? The same way Austen herself did: circulation libraries. | JSTOR Daily
• “I wanted to illustrate how odd the people who believe they are ordinary or normal are.” A profile of Japanese novelist Sayaka Murata. | The New York Times
• Roxane Gay, Min Jin Lee, Kristen Roupenian, and other writers and editors who are changing the national conversation. | Adweek
• “When the president appears on television, when his voice is broadcast over the radio, when he posts on social media. . . he reflects us back to ourselves.” Sarah Gerard on the President as orator and the importance of envisioning better futures. | McSweeney’s
• “There are interesting things happening in this place now and in the past, and there hasn’t been as much written about it.” How one small press is reviving the forgotten literary treasures of the American midwest. | Atlas Obscura
• “How should we navigate the nowhere of the present, and where else is there to go?” Alexandra Kleeman on Kathy Acker’s sci-fi novel, Empire of the Senseless. | The Paris Review
• “I harbored this idea that John Kidd had abandoned the perfect Ulysses to become the perfect Joycean—so consumed by the infinite interpretations of the book that he departed this grid of understanding.” On the mysterious disappearance of a celebrated Joyce scholar. | The New York Times Magazine
• Unless she is Mary Poppins-level perfect, in books and films the nanny is mostly a threat: Jessa Crispin on The Perfect Nanny and other ominous caretakers in pop culture. | The Baffler
• The Paris Review has launched a new column dedicated to underread female authors, starting with Olivia Manning (bonus content: 10 lost women’s classics). | The Paris Review, The Guardian
• The sport was dirty from top to bottom: On this, the first day of the 2018 World Cup, read an excerpt from Ken Bensinger’s Red Card: How the U.S. Blew the Whistle on the World’s Biggest Sports Scandal. | BuzzFeed Reader
• A more tender face of grief: on three books about the Grenfell fire, one year later. | The Times Literary Supplement
• “More boys need to read female authors; more male critics need to write on female authors; more female critics need to be asked to write, period.” Anthony Domestico asks: why is book criticism so gendered? | Commonweal
• Sarah Weinman on the time Arthur Conan Doyle, inventor of the world’s most famous fictional detective, helped exonerate an innocent man convicted of murder. | The New Republic

Also on Lit Hub:

Everybody loves a bad guy: 40 of our favorite literary villains • How too much research can ruin your novel: Nick Dybek discovers one too many details • From Norwegian icons to mysterious Mennonites, 5 books you may have overlooked in May • Jackpot! Eight recent rare book finds in the wild, from early Bat Man to Thomas Paine • In praise of an afternoon at the movies: Donna Masini on the pleasures of an empty cinema • Lydia Millet really likes going to your open house: on the pleasures of voyeurism in the real estate game • Wait, Gabriel García Márquez lived here? On discovering a literary icon once lived in your apartment • Crystal Hana Kim visits the Korean DMZ, and looks northward for answers • Oren Harman searches for dark matter at the beginning of the universe • 5 writers, 7 questions, no wrong answers: Tommy Orange, Aja Gabel, and more • Life in the aftermath: Elissa Altman on compassion and loss • Stephen King wields prolific mastery over many genres, and yet the word “literary” still eludes him… • Elizabeth Rush on how Hurricane Sandy turned regular people toward radical environmentalism • Joseph O’Neill doesn’t like writing, and other questions honestly answered • For the World Cup: 32 teams, 32 books you should read • Sayaka Murata on what it’s like to (literally) fall in love with a convenience store • What to expect when you’re expecting… your first book (Sorry) • Porochista Khakpour on living with the body • For Father’s Day: Harmony Holiday hears the sound of black voices and recalls her father; Kristopher Jansma on having a new book and a new baby at the same time; Susan Shapiro comes to terms with a father who disapproved of her writing; What happens when your dad reads the book you wrote about him?; Meghan MacLean Weir on growing up as the preacher’s daughter; photographs of 13 famous writers and their dads

Best of Book Marks:

To mark the ninety-second anniversary of the first meeting of fantasy titans C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, we took a look back through the archives to see what Lewis, W. H. Auden, & Edmund Wilson wrote about The Lord of the Rings • Days of Awe author A.M. Holmes spoke to Jane Ciabattari about 5 inspiring short story collections • Writer and critic Heather Scott Partington on gender-shifting novels and book twitter’s hype-machine • Alexandra Kleeman on Kathy Acker’s mind-bending saga, Dwight Garner on Tommy Orange’s sweeping debut, and more Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week • New titles by Porochista Khakpour, Seymour Hersh, Chelsea Hodson, and more all feature among our Best Reviewed Books of the Week

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