Lit Hub Weekly: May 28 - 31, 2019

• “These poems are arguments and conversations that America should be having with itself right now.” Dean Kuipers reads Jim Harrison’s posthumous poetry collection. | Lit Hub
• “Even feminists of the time oversimplified Lewinsky’s place in the affair.” Mandy Berman on Monica Lewinsky, and granting women the romantic complexity they deserve. | Lit Hub
• “What is it about women and competition and horses that creates such dramatic capital?” Alyson Hagy on the unlikely winner of the world’s toughest horse race. | Lit Hub
• Tressie McMillan Cottom on the case against R. Kelly, Michael Wolff’s return to Trumpland, and more of the Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
• Nathan Ward on Deadwood’s real-life origins and legendary figures, and why Wild Bill Hickok had to die so that the town could live. | CrimeReads
• “As some of you like to point out in your emails, I am 60 years old and fat, and you don’t want me to ‘pull a Robert Jordan’ on you and deny you your book.” What George R. R. Martin, Hilary Mantel, Anne Rice, and others have said about being under pressure from fans. | The Guardian
• “You can unite millions of people by making them believe in completely fictional stories about God, about race or about economics.” Historian Yuval Noah Harari on why fiction trumps truth. | The New York Times
• “Over the course of a season, Doolittle estimates he will read about 25 books, a lighter load than during the rest of the year”: On Washington Nationals closer Sean Doolittle’s mission to support independent bookstores during the travel season. | The Wall Street Journal
• “I heard her upstairs in the studio, in the kitchen, late at night when I was in my room.” Read a new short story by Ayşegül Savaş. | The New Yorker
• “Everyone says you should read Proust, but no one had ever told me that I, specifically, should read Proust”: Elisa Gabbert discusses the unexpected pleasures of finally reading (and willfully misunderstanding) Swann’s Way. | The Paris Review
• “The women from Johnson & Johnson had come to the school, and separated us from the boys so that they could tell us secrets about our own bodies.” On menstruation in fiction. | Ploughshares
• “What Café du Dôme was to the Lost Generation, the dining hall at Bennington College was to Generation X.” An oral history of Bennington in the words of Donna Tartt, Bret Easton Ellis, Jonathan Lethem, and those who knew them. | Esquire
• “We have read it on a boat. We have read it with a goat. We have read it here and there. We have read it everywhere.” How Dr. Seuss’s Oh, The Places You’ll Go! became a ubiquitous (and cliché) graduation gift. | The Washington Post
• From Toni Morrison to Janet Mock to Dorothy Roberts: Ibram X. Kendi has curated an antiracist reading list to help contemporary Americans transcend their country’s past. | The New York Times Book Review
• “When I’m being bad and procrastinating, I’ll stop writing to pace and eat Chili Cheese Fritos or make a Blue Apron or just like make a pot of rice”: Tommy Pico likes food, and he’s here to tell you all about it. | Entropy
• “Secrets have come to seem quaint, something vaguely legacy or vintage, like glossy magazines or flip phones.” On fiction in the age of radical transparency. | Bookforum
• “A woman is human; a female might be a sea cow (not that there’s anything wrong with that).” Comma Queen and woman writer Mary Norris on the “woman”-as-adjective debate. | The New Yorker
• “You have to want an escape—a vacation for body and brain.” What is a beach read, anyway? (And why?) | Vulture
• “Seriously speaking, what is the use of art-criticism? Why cannot the artist be left alone?” Read an excerpt from Oscar Wilde’s “The Critic at Large,” in which two semi-fictional characters discuss cigarettes, daffodils, and “the shrill clamour of criticism.” | Interview

Also on Lit Hub:

Adharanand Finn on striving for the edges of human endurance • Dennis Tang on growing into his appreciation of Alice Munro •  Are you a Roger or a Tiger? On specialization versus variety, and David Epstein’s Range • While hiking Cormac McCarthy’s Western wilderness Raksha Vasudevan comes face to face with the myths that make America • Gabrielle Bellot on the dreamy, queer space opera we need right now • Ian Fleming explains how to write a thriller • Ece Temelkuran on Erdogan, Trump, and the slow descent into the banality of evil • Walt Whitman, unsung newspaperman • Abi Maxwell on the vague, low standards set for “good men” • On Frank Lloyd Wright and the architectural war for New York’s skyline • What gets lost (and found) in translating prose to comics • Vasily Grossman and the plight of Soviet Jewish scientists • On the golden age of talking to dead people • Lynn Steger Strong on the radical power of writing in the first-person plural • Kathleen Volk Miller considers Whitman at her husband’s grave • The most-cursed dates for writers • On the existential fear of losing your online persona • “In a word: sex. Ayn Rand made acquisitive capitalists sexy” •  • Lit Hub staff favorite stories of the month

Best of Book Marks:

Comic prison riots, dictionary wars, the case for America, and more of the Best Reviewed Books of the Week • This week in Shhh…Secrets of the Librarians: Mary Catherine Kinniburgh on the treasures of the New York Public Library • The White Devil’s Daughter author Julia Flynn Siler recommends five books of narrative history, from Adam Hochschild’s Bury the Chains to Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns • Book critic Nathan Deuel on The Quiet American, Floridian fiction, and quitting social media

New on CrimeReads:

Hannah Mary McKinnon asks fellow crime writers what’s too dark for crime fiction (if anything)? • Sara Paretsky talks lessons from a lifetime of writing and activism, interviewed by Lori Rader-Day • Criminal profiler John Douglas on his life’s work: conversations with criminals • Amy Lloyd explores the assumptions we make when it comes to criminality and appearance • Tori Telfer investigates the bizarre story of 15-year fugitive Kazuko Fukuda, the woman with seven faces • The CrimeReads editors recommend their favorite stories of the month • The most visually stunning crime and mystery book covers of May • Erica Ferencik takes us on a literary journey through the world’s largest river basin • Tracy Clark on Chicago and the joys of writing what you know • J.S. Monroe chooses 7 literary thrillers that will keep you reading late into the night