Lit Hub Weekly: May 4 - 8, 2020

• An exercise in anti-mythologizing: on the writers who shaped Vincent van Gogh, from Dickens to Beecher Stowe. | Lit Hub
• Tori Amos opens up about her creative process (hint: it involves listening to The Muses). | Lit Hub Memoir
• “They had the same power—to stick in the throat of Desire.” Anne Carson on Marilyn Monroe and Helen of Troy. | Lit Hub
• Casey Cep on James Baldwin and the Atlanta child murders, John Banville on Richard Ford’s short stories, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
• Heather Gudenkauf recommends eight novels about fierce mothers-to-be. | CrimeReads
• Colson Whitehead, Jericho Brown, and Anne Boyer are among the winners of this year’s Pulitzer Prizes. | The Hub
• The New York Public Library released a playlist of library sounds—including audio glimpses of storytime, and a helpful librarian—to ease your social isolation. | Electric Lit
• “Black death has never before elicited so much attention”: When James Baldwin wrote about the Atlanta child murders. | The New Yorker
• “Gornick aimed to show that Communists were people, too—noble people with an outsize longing for justice, even if it led them into error.
” On the recent resurgence of Vivian Gornick.| The New Republic
• If you’re wondering what a post-coronavirus world will look like, read some plague literature. | The Guardian
• Alert: here is a previously unpublished short story by Katherine Dunn, discovered in her archive. | The New Yorker
• Taking cues from Joris-Karl Huysmans’s Against Nature on how to stay decadent while staying inside. | The Paris Review
• A pandemic was instrumental to shaping Madeleine L’Engle’s worldview. | Vanity Fair
• Daniel Radcliffe kicks off a collective reading of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Other celebrities associated with the “Potterverse” will participate in the coming weeks. | Wizarding World
• English translations of North Korean books are scarce, but offer a window into everyday life there. | The New York Times
• An important lesson of Shirley Jackson’s work: “Madness is born of too much time alone.” | Jezebel
• A look back at how FDR and the Works Progress Administration supported writers during the Great Depression. | Los Angeles Times
• Epilogue Books Chocolate Brews, a less than six-month-old indie bookstore in North Carolina that is fighting to survive the pandemic, has been a bright light for Chapel Hill’s Latino community. | NBC
• What are some of Slavic culture’s most prominent influences on contemporary literature? | Tor
• On the lasting importance of Octavia Butler, who “seems to have seen the real future coming in a way few other writers did.” | Detroit News
• How have the poems of Morgan Parker, Claudia Rankine, and Evie Shockley addressed black celebrity and exposure? | Public Books

Also on Lit Hub:

20 artists’ visions of Alice’s adventures in Wonderland • Kristen Millares Young on the long fight to decolonize book research • Samanta Schweblin on writer’s block, The Twilight Zone, and the “rebel commonplace” of writing any time or place • Sheila Heti, Noreen Khawaja, and Clare Carlisle discuss Kierkegaard, authenticity, and how to be a human • Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai on the idea of home in a time of pandemic • PSA: there exists a made-for-TV movie version of To the Lighthouse starring baby Kenneth Branagh • Manuel Muñoz introduces the late H.G. Carrillo’s novel Loosing My Espanish • Sarah Neilson on Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s American Harvest • A reading list of sociopaths in literature, from Tom Ripley to Fagin • Chester Johnson on his grandfather’s participation in the Elaine Race Massacre of 1919 • Joyce Hinnefeld considers the obstacles of digital obsolescence in fiction writing • Mary Hawthorne on the object lessons of Annie Ernaux’s The Years • What pop stars can teach writers about failure • Paulette Jiles recommends a little post-apocalyptic sci-fi escapism • Erika Wurth on the literature of Native sovereignty • David Searcy looks to the stars under lockdown • Bringing together kaleidoscopic plots: A reading list from Anna Solomon • A poem by John Freeman • Aimee Knight on raising a family of Sea-Monkeys during a global pandemic • Rebecca Solnit remembers Michael McClure, poet, teacher, friend • In honor of MOTHER’S DAY this Sunday, consider the magic and mundanity of motherhood: Melanie Abrams on the heartbreaking mysteries of encountering your child’s experience of the world · Mira Ptacin explains how Harry Houdini became the champion of Mother’s Day · Gabriela Weiner on first hearing the manic rhythm of her baby’s heart

Best of Book Marks:

Edgar Allan Poe’s stories, The Secret History, A Visit From the Good Squad, and more rapid-fire book recs from Angie Kim • Kept Animals author Kate Milliken recommends five novels born from the mother-child bond, from Cristina Henríquez’s The Book of Unknown Americans to Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays • Geek Love, The Velveteen Rabbit, The House on Mango Street, and more rapid-fire book recs from Kali Fajardo-Anstine • The Week in Books: Pulitzers, Lovecraft, and Guns N’ Roses vs. Bill Clinton • New titles by Emma Straub, Samanta Schweblin, Percival Everett, and Jennifer Weiner all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week

New on CrimeReads:

Even more personalized quarantine recommendations (crime fiction edition) • My first thriller: Michael Connelly talks The Black Echo, interviewed by Rick Pullen • Scott Kenemore on cosmic horror and life’s greatest mysteries • Kimberly McCreight searches for the elusive “good marriage” in crime fiction • Guy Fraser-Sampson celebrates the queens of Golden Age detective fiction • Lis Regan recommends 10 riveting reads filled with shocking secrets • Jordan Harper lays out the cornerstones of rural noir • Wendy Lesser goes on a pilgrimage to Kurt Wallander’s Ystad • Ramsay Campbell knows that having kids can change your life—and your horror fiction • Ray Leigh reads Camus’ The Plague in the midst of a London lockdown