Lit Hub Weekly: November 1 – 5, 2021

TODAY: In 1899, William Gillette’s play Sherlock Holmes opens in New York with Gillette in the title role. He’s pictured here with his Watson, played by Bruce McRae.    

• The Empress of Vice: How Polly Adler became the literati’s favorite madam in Jazz Age New York. | Lit Hub History

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• “People I met were breaking down silos, acting on the idea that it was through reliance on each other that we would most likely find some way out of this.” Sam Quinones on reporting the opioid crisis across America. | Lit Hub

• Paul Auster on one of the finest war stories in American literature, “a four-page 60-yard dash without a single misstep or stumble along the way.” | Lit Hub

• Tom McCarthy returns to Edouard Glissant’s unclassifiable 1990 masterpiece, The Poetics of Relation. | Lit Hub Criticism

• Gary Shteyngart’s Our Country Friends, Sarah Hall’s Burntcoat, Ai Weiwei’s 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, and Paul McCartney’s The Lyrics all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks

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• “It’s not hard to guess what backers of the ban find so dangerous about a book about civil rights.” Christopher Noxon, whose book was removed from some Virginia schools, speaks out. | Los Angeles Times

• On the enduring appeal of Dune. | The New Yorker

• “There is not one way of being a Black writer. You can do what you want.” Ron Stodghill catches up with Colson Whitehead. | WSJ. Magazine

• How two new biographies of Edgar Allan Poe give us a view of the writer as “not a uniquely troubled outcast but something far more representative of his age.” | Public Books

• Fear not: Jane Austen’s house is getting a new roof. | The Guardian

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• “In my opinion, people’s stories cannot be dissociated from their understanding of the past.” Ai Weiwei discusses his new memoir, the true cost of freedom, and the meaning of home. | Harper’s Bazaar

• David Kurnick rereads—and reconsiders—Bolaño. | The Paris Review

• “Translation had always struck me as unsexy. Or perhaps something more insidious than that.” Mariam Rahmani on being a (reluctant) translator. | Granta

• A look at how bookstores are handling supply-chain problems this holiday season. | The A.V. Club

• On the longevity and prominence of Stephen King. | Polygon

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• Did Covid change the way we dream? | The New York Times Magazine

• “If labels are included, is it an invitation for readers to test their validity? Is that a test one can truly pass? Is any of this actually the point of fiction?” Christopher Gonzalez on writing bisexual characters. | Poets & Writers

• Fonda Lee explores the toxicity of Twitter and the platform’s impact on the literary community. | Medium

• Sang Young Park considers the literary possibilities of K-pop lyrics (translated by Anton Hur). | Words Without Borders

• “This is the internet at its utopian best.” Frances Wilson recommends getting lost in the Public Domain Review. | The Times Literary Supplement

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Also on Lit Hub:

Cheryl Strayed talks to Debbie Millman about grit, healing, and the writing life • Elizabeth Strout on writing directly • Noam Baumbach and Greta Gerwig on making Frances Ha • “Please stop asking how I wound up in Fargo” • Read a letter from Gertrude Stein about her beloved dog, Basket • Where are all the plain female protagonists? • Marriage story, Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway edition • How David Foster Wallace predicted Netflix’s (insidiuous) algorithm • On Jay Gatsby, the most famous North Dakotan • Anne Elizabeth Moore on the cost of winning a “free house” • Ralph Ellison writes home about his life in Harlem • Muriel Barbery recommends letting form guide your story • “I cried all those years not because I ached for motherhood but because I feared regret” • How Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jane Addams helped launch the Progressive party • What does “change” mean in 2021? • Why it matters that Van Gogh was a lifelong reader • Corey Sobel makes a case for football as the most literary of American sports • Peter Ho Davies’s advice for embracing revision • Katharine Blake tries to pin down the nebulous concept of heartbreak • How two dictionaries helped Jan Beatty write her adoption memoir • Yrsa Daley-Ward contemplates how nature helps us heal • Meet the women who formed a (national football) league of their own • Jackie Morris on stealing time to make art • Jo Wimpenny on the consequences of Aesop’s animal depictions • Rax King on learning about sex from Samantha Jones • Lessons learned while cataloguing a library of 19th-century schoolbooks • Reading the letters of abstract expressionist Alice Trumbull Mason • When Catherine Dior and other survivors returned from Ravensbrück • On the explosive rise of literacy in Tudor England • Anjanette Delgado’s definition of “home” • What happens if you get sucked into a black hole? • Karen Lloyd considers the human need to swim • How did America become a country of tipping and subminimum pay? • How cheap postal rates for books contributed to American democracy 

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