Lit Hub Weekly: June 21 - 25, 2021

• “It’s a place for writers to publish and earn money directly and instantaneously without any traditional publishing gatekeepers. It’s also a brand-new subculture cut off from a larger writing culture that doesn’t understand it.” Walker Caplan on the writers using NFTs to make a living. | Lit Hub

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• On the racism and warped patriotism that underlies an old American myth: the Texas Alamo. | Lit Hub History

• Why budding writers should be less precious—and more cutthroat—with their drafts. | Lit Hub

• James Wolcott on James Ellroy, John Paul Brammer on Brandon Taylor, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks

• How the banning of Ulysses led to the “grandest obscenity case in the history of law and literature.” From Samantha Barbas. | CrimeReads

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• Rafia Zakaria considers the vexing questions raised by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “powerful yet puzzling” open letter. | The Baffler

• “Her writing turns us into better readers.” Helen Garner remembers Janet Malcolm. | The Guardian

• A close reading of one of the most revered poems in the English language, Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art.” | The New York Times

• Meet the book club that writes songs inspired by their latest reads. | AMNY

• Terrance Hayes on why Yusef Komunyakaa remains one of our greatest living writers and what it means to be a Black Jazz Poet. | Boston Review

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• Here’s how Ibram X. Kendi chooses justice-oriented books for kids. | NPR

• “A neat library is a dead one, and I’ll accept a little chaos as proof of my living.” In defense of a messy book collection. | Washington Post

• Bianca Stone on Emily Dickinson, strip clubs, and grieving over the loss of her grandmother. | Guernica

• Parul Sehgal considers “the new hive of capacious thinking” provoked by notions of consent. | The New York Times

• “I often have to ’translate’ a second time when I explain to editors my decision to resist the white gaze.” Yilin Wang addresses bias in translation from East Asian languages. | Words Without Borders

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• For Amazon workers, Prime Day isn’t a holiday—it’s a nightmare. | Jacobin

• Here are 53 LGBTQ-owned bookstores you can support during Pride Month and beyond. | Oprah Daily

• “These performances will nourish theater’s renaissance and leave the dregs of hierarchy behind.” Sabina Sethi Unni on the radical possibilities of virtual theater. | Catapult

• Meet Alexandra Huynh, Amanda Gorman’s California successor as youth poet laureate. | Los Angeles Times

• Inside the weird, lost world of Depression-era travel guides. | The Atlantic

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Also on Lit Hub:

Lit Hub’s favorite summer (re-)reads • The diaries of Dara McAnulty, activist, naturalist, teenager • Yan Lianke on literature as a link between people, characters, and language • Vinh Nguyen on the double loss of a father • Lauren Fox on the importance of family stories •  Claire Heywood on rewriting mythology from women’s perspectives • Real talk from Brandon Taylor • How Black writers capture the comedy and dark absurdity of life in America • What a 13th-century Medieval text can teach us about queerness and gender • Thomas Swick in praise of the epigraph • Elinor Cleghorn on healthcare’s insidious race and gender problem • How are we capable of imitating consciousness when we don’t understand what consciousness is? • Jennifer Baker considers gaslighting in fiction • Kelsey McKinney on writing about faith to reckon with the loss of her own • What if procrastination is essential to the writing process? • Emily Thomas Mani on winning and losing (i.e. living and dying) • Charles Johnson on his journey to celebrated cartoonist • How Wayne Miller (eventually, carefully) learned to write about his children • Les Standiford on the humble beginnings of the American circus • Rosecrans Baldwin on border crossings and Anglo mythologies in Los Angeles • Hebe Uhart recounts the zoos he’s visited around the world • Brian Phillip Whalen considers the agency of dead loved ones in fiction • Dispatches from government quarantine in South Korea

The Best of Book Marks:

Charlotte’s Web, Anna Karenina, The Lovely Bones, and more rapid-fire book recs from Sandra Tsing Loh • Shhh… Secrets of the Librarians: Toronto public librarian Michelle Leung talks The Chronicles of Narnia, Rupert Giles, and vaccine clinics in libraries • Their Eyes Were Watching God, Tender Is the Night, The Sound and the Fury, and more rapid-fire book recs from Susan Minot • Brandon Taylor’s Filthy Animals, Joshua Cohen’s The Netanyahus, and Laura Lippman’s Dream Girl all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week

More from CrimeReads:

Martha Hall Kelly recommends nine immersive historical fiction reads • Paul S. Hirsch on the wild, exploited, and sometimes radical early days of the comic book industry in America • Paul Neilan with a list of books that are not quite noir but also not not noir • Six debut novels you should read this month • Sarah Stewart Taylor on Elizabeth Bowen’s sinister “big houses” and the roots of Irish domestic noir • Curtis Wilkie on the Mississippi farmer who helped take down the Jones County Klan • Keith Roysdon on Bosch’s final season and changing representations of policing • Olivia Rutligliano with summertime crime movies set in small towns • Stephanie Dickinson goes inside New Jersey’s most notorious women’s prison • Katherine Dykstra on the long search for answers in a decades-old cold case