Lit Hub Weekly: March 18 - March 22, 2024

• “The routine was not all that remarkable for her, but from the outside looking in, it felt momentous.” Mia Manzulli considers proximity, distance, and living next to Joyce Carol Oates. | Lit Hub Memoir
• “Octopuses had been known to demonstrate rudimentary intelligence, but Mather recognized this as something far more sophisticated.” David Toomey on how octopuses play. | Lit Hub Nature
• James Goodhand recommends Kate Atkinson, Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Georgi Gospodinov, and more books about time travel. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
• “When the noise and ugliness got so loud, I focused in on a point of beauty.” Maniza Naqvi on saving Karachi’s oldest bookstore. | Lit Hub Bookstores
• “How can we think of and approach literature from a place that is suffering like this right now, that is being devastated as we speak?” Ursula Lindsey and Atef Alshaer on literature and Gaza. | The Point
• “The threat of being undercut by machines is an ongoing concern for translators.” Yet another way AI could change literature. | The Guardian
• “We’re not supposed to mourn his absence; we’re not supposed to want him back. But I kind of do.” Mark Harris on the Gay Best Friend. | T Magazine
• “The more the people working on books participate in their profits, the more, structurally, profit-seeking will shape what books look like.” Dan Sinykin on Author’s Equity and the “gigification” of publishing. | The Baffler
• The earliest writing by the English language’s greatest bard is also the most forgotten. On Shakespeare’s first published work, “Venus and Adonis.” | JSTOR Daily
• Keisha N. Blain talks to Amrita Chakrabarti Myers about the widely unknown story of Julia Chinn and what her narrative reveals about power dynamics built around race and gender. | Public Books
• Diane Seuss talks poetic rage, Andy Warhol, and the namby-pamby-ness of hope. | Interview
• “Intense anti-Arab racism, Islamophobia, and what the Palestinian American intellectual Edward Said described as ‘Orientalism’ has underwritten the West’s perpetual wars, sieges, and onslaughts against the Middle East.” Read Hammer & Hope’s special issue on Palestine, featuring work by Angela Y. Davis, Hala Alyan, Arundhati Roy, and more. | Hammer & Hope
• Byung-Chul Han on the disenchantment of the world: “Time is becoming increasingly atomized. Narrating a story, by contrast, consists in establishing connections.” | The Paris Review
• “I am committed to the idea that there is something, aside from utility, in the excess and play of imagination that fantasy allows as a genre.” Kelly Link on “worthwhile frivolity,” adolescence, and romance. | The New Yorker
• “The slides seemed like items you might find in a witch’s hut or an old apothecary shop: supplies for potions and spells.” Leslie Jamison writes about how antique medical slides helped her imagine a future. | The Yale Review
• Catherine Lacey, Min Jin Lee, and more authors discuss the women writers who inspire their work. | Cultured
• Turns out it’s not impossible to train AI models without using copyrighted materials. | Wired

Also on Lit Hub:

The early years of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar •  How translating a novel about Emily Dickinson got Rhonda Mullins through the pandemic • National Book Critics Circle Award finalists • Laura Chow Reeve considers her great aunt Virginia Lee’s novel • Musih Tedji Xaviere on telling the story of Cameroon’s struggles • Aphra Behn, the first woman to make a living writing in English •  The epistolary friendship between Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore • Rowan Beaird recommends divorce novels •  Jane Ciabattari talks to Marie Mutsuki Mockett • on the elaborate performance of cells • Here are twenty-five new books out today • Cameron Manley on the latest adaptation of The Master and Margarita • Howard Norman talks to Michael Ondaatje • The late Elspeth Barker on the most human of experiences • Ela Lee recommends readings on biracial identity • Janet Manley and Lauren Oyler discuss judgement • Jenny Irish leads a roundtable discussion •  A poem by Zefyr Lisowski • The role of fungi in treating the body and the mind •  How night skies inspire creative thoughts • Why Erewhon is the worst name for an overpriced grocery store • Kristen Arnett on the right time to mute your annoying online friend • 5 book reviews you need to read this week • Kao Kalia Yang on sharing the Hmong refugee experience • Read “La Doppelgänger,” a poem from Saul Hernandez’s new collection • María Alejandra Barrios Vélez recommends ghost stories • Lisa Ko on the similarities between writing and a flea market • The best reviewed books of the week • Aaron Goldfarb on Stephen Remsberg’s hunt for a legendary liquor • Jamie Figueroa on reclaiming Spanish • Sierra Greer recommends writing on robot-human relationships