TODAY: In 1718, Voltaire‘s first play, Oedipus, premières at the Comédie-Française in Paris. This is his first use of the pseudonym.
- “No babies, no future. No human race. Men find ways to engulf women and to manipulate the female body. We keep thinking about it, because we are always close to the edge.” Margaret Atwood interviews Louise Erdrich. | Elle
- “Second Life started to seem less like an obsolete relic and more like a distorted mirror reflecting the world many of us live in.” Leslie Jamison on the dwindling number of users who’ve remained loyal to the online virtual world launched in 2003. | The Atlantic
- “I really wish people would see fat people as humans. Our bodies are vulnerable, our bodies are strong; they matter just like other bodies.” A profile of Roxane Gay. | Harper’s Bazaar
- For the New York Times “My Thanksgiving” feature, nine writers share their holiday traditions, including Masha Gessen, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Emma Cline. | The New York Times
- “We still have tender feelings for such outmoded notions as truth, respect for others, personal honor, justice, equitable sharing. We still hope for a happy ending.” Read Annie Proulx’s National Book Awards speech. | Vulture
- The New Yorker’s tech issue features Junot Díaz on Spider-Man, Sally Rooney on a wellness app, and more. | The New Yorker
- “A lot of my fiction comes out of an inability to marry two halves of my understanding.” An interview with Lauren Groff (and preview of the cover of her new short story collection, Florida). | EW
- Kaitlyn Greenidge on Henriette Duterte, the first black woman undertaker who used coffins to smuggle escaped slaves along the Underground Railroad. | Damn Joan
- Vivian Gornick on Laura Ingalls Wilder, who “would almost certainly have voted for Donald Trump, many of whose followers yet believe that he will restore to them the dubious glory of the frontier America that Wilder so passionately celebrated in her books.” | New Republic
- What do The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Diamond Sutra, and The Communist Manifesto have in common? They are among 10 books that changed the world. | Granta
- “She’s still so powerful in the way that she lays out the connection between happiness and making your own choices.” Joanna Scutts discusses Marjorie Hilis, the author who in 1936 taught thousands of women how to Live Alone and Like It. | Jezebel
- The original Gone Girl: On Agatha Christie’s 11-day “disappearance” in 1926, which she may or may not have orchestrated to get back at her philandering husband. | Broadly
- Manuel Gonzales, Diane Cook, Rachel Khong, and Maggie Shipstead have written short stories to illuminate these dark days. | BuzzFeed
- “I refuse to let the Jewish figure be defined by anti-Semites.” An interview with Diaspora Boy cartoonist and writer Eli Valley. | Los Angeles Review of Books
- “In her poetry, Boisseau created internationally recognized poignancy destined to last well beyond her own mortality.” Remembering Michelle Boisseau, who died this Wednesday. | KCUR
The winners of the 2017 National Book Awards (and a report from the festivities) · Rebecca Solnit: Let this flood of women’s stories never cease · Susan Sontag on being a writer: “You have to be obsessed” · Beyond The Handmaid’s Tale: 30 dystopian novels by and about women · You can never go back: On loving children’s books as an adult · Orhan Pamuk on taking photographs in Istanbul · The high drama of small towns: A glimpse at the violent truth behind rural noir · What we can learn from multiple translations of the same poem · Latin America’s answer to Karl Ove Knausgaard: On Ricardo Piglia and his alter ego, Emilio Renzi · I was already leaving Florida when I arrived: Lidia Yuknavitch on abuse and love · What George Orwell wrote about the dangers of nationalism
This week on Book Marks:
What critics said about every fiction and nonfiction finalist for the National Book Awards · On Gabriel García Márquez’s The Autumn of the Patriarch, a portrait of the pathological fascist tyrant · Book critic Ilana Masad on the shrinking of the industry and the pros and cons of literary social media · The sober, searing, and cynical nature of J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace · Jonathan Lethem calls Kevin Young’s Bunk “a panorama, a rumination and a polemic at once” · The confidence of a conscious genius: An 1861 review of Dickens’ Great Expectations · Space operas, fake news, and more: the best-reviewed books of the week
