TODAY: In 1968, novelist, journalist, and political activist Upton Sinclair dies.
- Ursula K. Le Guin on accidental bullying, being in a “peculiar but exclusive club” with Philip Roth, and doing nameless things. | Los Angeles Review of Books
- “This typewriter became a fetish object for me soon after I decided—at age sixteen—that I would become a writer.” Margaret Atwood on learning to type. | The Walrus
- “The land outside the town always looks empty and it is.” New work from Joy Williams, Annie Proulx, Danzy Senna, and others in response to photographs by Stephen Shore. | The New York Times Magazine
- “Natural disasters have a way of clarifying things. They sweep away once-sturdy delusions, to reveal old treasures and scars.” Molly Crabapple on Puerto Rico’s self-driven disaster relief. | NYRB
- Claire Dederer attempts to answer an age-old question, newly pressing: what do we do with the art of monstrous men? | The Paris Review
- “At the heart of grand narratives about who we are and where we are heading she saw self-deception in the face of meaningless disorder.” On Joan Didion’s resistance to master narratives. | The Point
- “Spiritualism had done what it had meant to do—it gave women power.” Mira Ptacin on Camp Etna, a “141-year old community for clairvoyants, mediums, psychics, and Spiritualists.” | The Cut
- Beauty, capitalism, and the pursuit of an authentic life: how Instagram was prefigured by the picturesque. | Boston Review
- From The Autobiography of Gucci Mane to They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us: the best music books of the year. | Pitchfork
- “How do we know what we know and what is knowledge itself? These are questions that have affected all of literature.” In the Distance author Hernan Diaz on research, Westerns, and violence. | The Nation
- “For one day the strife of parties will be hushed, the cares of business will be put aside, and all hearts will join in common emotions of gratitude and good-will.” Or: how the editor-in-chief of a 19th century women’s magazine invented Thanksgiving as we know it. | The Takeout
- Following Lena Dunham’s recent statements, novelist Zinzi Clemmons has released her own explaining why she will no longer write for Dunham’s publication. | Vulture
- A look at the proposal for Anthony Scaramucci’s book I Did it My Way, which, like his career as White House Communications Director, is over before it really began. | Business Insider
- “Are we supposed to look serious? Are we smiling? How do we look like serious people without looking mean?” The (gendered) politics of choosing an author photo. | Racked
- From Fight Club to Big Little Lies, screen adaptations that surpass their source material. | AV Club
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In our most recent longform piece, Anna Badkhen attends a forgiveness ceremony with the descendants of Geronimo · From Pepys to Perec, how 11 authors organized their personal libraries · Why we still need the morality lessons of Philip Pullman · On the film adaptation of Call Me By Your Name, which is an object lesson in adapting interiority · Why we can’t stop reading (and writing) about gendered violence: On rape culture in crime fiction · Why George Eliot’s heroine Maggie Tulliver deserves just as much praise as Dorothea Brooke · Hanging out with great poets Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, and Joseph Brodsky in 1980s Boston · Joanna Scutts on forgotten trailblazer Marjorie Hillis, who helped women live alone · Making sense of the end of the world: On nuclear technology, climate change, and apocalyptic narratives · A report from this year’s Wordstock, Portland’s wonderful lit fest
This week on Book Marks:
Parul Sehgal on the beautiful music of Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones · With her new dystopian novel, Louise Erdrich joins the ranks of Atwood, Orwell, and Huxley · A 1995 review of then-civil rights lawyer Barack Obama’s memoir · Book critic David Biespiel on Leaves of Grass, American mythology, and log-rolling in poetry reviews · A 2006 review of Thanksgiving Night, Richard Bausch’s old-fashioned feast of a novel · Joe Biden the bartender and the politics of the personal in Promise Me, Dad · Paradise Found: On André Aciman’s recently-adapted tale of adolescent sexual awakening on the Italian riviera, Call Me by Your Name
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