Lit Hub Weekly: May 30–June 2, 2023

• The kids are OK: Kelly McMasters on the ethics of family memoir. | Lit Hub

• “Shall these horrors await our future generations?” How WWI inspired Black Americans to fight for dignity at home. | Lit Hub History

• Cat Sebastian on the unexpected power of Mary Renault’s The Charioteer, the 1950s novel that presaged queer liberation. | Lit Hub Criticism

• Edwin Heathcote in praise of the park bench, a place of both solitude and belonging. | Lit Hub Design

• Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life, Emma Cline’s The Guest, Jonny Steinberg’s Winnie and Nelson, and Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water all feature among May’s Best Reviewed Books. | Book Marks

• Five mysteries featuring musicians in Tinseltown. | CrimeReads

• Inside the black box: Scientists are trying to figure out what books ChatGPT is being fed. | Business Insider

• In a conversation with Sally Rooney, Annie Ernaux said the Nobel Prize fell into her life “like a bomb.” | The Guardian

• “The books are all in my orange-grove farmhouse, in towering stacks, like a movie set for an old bookstore. I see America through fiction.” Susan Straight maps 1,001 books across America. | Los Angeles Times

• Is art prostitution? Kate Wolf looks at two new books on sex work and commoditization. | Momus

• “Writing shouldn’t be so unstable that one needs another job to support it. But having another job doesn’t diminish the work of writing, either.” Rainesford Stauffer on the hobby/job dichotomy. | Esquire

• “It could be argued that she isn’t a writer but a performance artist’s take on a writer.” Lili Anolik profiles Caroline Calloway. | Vanity Fair

• In conversation: Walt Whitman and Taylor Swift. | McSweeney’s

• “In challenging economic times, readers are turning to books as affordable.” Are books actually recession-proof? | Fortune

• “We had the idea to try to collapse the space between young readers and publishers and authors…” Dave Eggers wants people to see how books get made. | The New York Times

• Diego Rodríguez Landeros draws a line between urban smells and revolution in Paris and Mexico City. | Words Without Borders

• “Before my father died in 2001, I knew that I loved him but only dimly. I didn’t really feel it, and to the extent that I did, I experienced it as painful.” Mary Gaitskill on the last days of her father’s life. | The Paris Review

• Aimee Levitt considers the impact of Madhur Jaffrey’s An Invitation to Indian Cooking on American home cooks. | Eater

• Jack Hamilton revisits Stephen King’s Night Shift, the story collection that represents “some of the most purely terrifying work of his career.” | Slate

• California is set to join Illinois in “banning” book bans. | Axios

• Rebecca F. Kuange explains why she finds the idea that authors should only write characters of their own race “deeply frustrating and pretty illogical.” | The Guardian

Also on Lit Hub:

Gabrielle Bellot looks to literature to better understand our relationship to artificial intelligence • Laura Tillman explores the contradictions of migrant chef Lalo Garcia • Amelia Possanza on the power of uncovering hidden LGBTQ lives • On the enduringness of Ernie Pyle’s Brave Men • Grace Lavery on the devices of trans identity in literature • Monica Potts on the pre-destination of motherhood in rural America • AudioFile’s best audiobooks of May • Alba Donati on returning to her rural Tuscan roots • 37 Drag Race contestants (and RuPaul) on drag as an art form and the show’s legacy • Alexis Gunderson talks to authors on the WGA picket line • A look at the long tradition of sexism in wine culture • Joanna Biggs on reading Ferrante with other women • On Cary Grant, crop dusters, and character arcs • On learning life lessons from Anne of Green Gables • Steph Catudal recalls the beginning of her husband’s mysterious illness • Zara Raheem on finding Muslim women in fiction • Lucy Scholes makes the case for Shirley Hazzard The Bay of Noon • Charlotte Gill on adjusting to American life