Lit Hub Weekly: November 27-December 1, 2023

• “Literary style should be a way of knowing how the world is met in its unfolding.” In conversation with Booker Prize-winner Paul Lynch. | Lit Hub

• “A poetic work of the highest order.” The late Gabriel García Márquez sings the praises of Juan Rulfo’s classic Mexican novel Pedro Páramo. | Lit Hub Criticism

• Women think about the Roman Empire, too: Emma Southon calls for a women’s history of Ancient Rome. | Lit Hub History

• On Constantine Simonides, one of history’s great manuscript forgers. | Lit Hub

• Sigrid Nunez’s The Vulnerables, Barbra Streisand’s My Name is Barbra, and Claire Keegan’s So Late in the Day all feature among November’s best reviewed books. | Book Marks

• Martin Edwards considers a classic holiday murder mystery from the king of locked room crime novels, John Dickson Carr. | CrimeReads

• “What is there to say about a person who is gone too soon, who did so much good, who had much more good work and life in front of him, other than it is a loss?” John Warner on the passing of Gabe Hudson. | The Biblioracle Recommends

• “The spirit of the moment is cultural atonement and ethical consumption—and the bombshell is having a reckoning.” Ariella Garmaise considers the memoirs of Britney Spears, Pamela Anderson, and Paris Hilton. | The Walrus

• Matthew Lamb explores the complexity of balancing storytelling and truth when writing a biography. | The Conversation

• “Everyone finds the Melville they want.” Andrew Schenker on Herman Melville’s legacy. | The Baffler

• Financial anxiety, hybrid learning, the end of the academic bubble: Kate Dwyer considers the future of the realist campus novel. | Esquire

• Stacy Y. China looks at how Cave Canem has nurtured generations of Black poets. | The New York Times

• “Woolf’s particular magic created a powerful touchstone that captured dimensions of trans experience, even though she never lived these herself.” Julia Sirmons considers three adaptations of Orlando. | LARB

• “In Marienbad we were relieved from the feeling that we’d missed a heyday—we did, but it doesn’t matter.” Lauren Oyler visits a wellness destination. | Granta

• An argument for abolishing literary genres. | The Guardian

• “I had envisioned book bans as modern morality plays… But what happened in Memphis wasn’t so simple.” Robert Samuels on the reverberating effects of book bans. | The New Yorker

• Kaya Genç considers Kawa Nemir’s Kurdish translation of Ulysses. | The Dial

• “The Palestinian people, on television screens or more largely in the public sphere, exist in a false dichotomy: We are either victims or terrorists.” Mohammed El-Kurd on the suppression of the Palestinian point of view, past and present. | The Nation

• “I felt myself seesawing between gratitude for my life and preoccupation with the void.” Evan Grillon chronicles his experience of open-heart surgery. | Dirt

• Just another reason to protect librarians at all costs: They helped defeat the Nazis. | JSTOR Daily

• “The postcard is an object as much as a message, and sending one, for Bishop, was like giving a gift.” Langdon Hammer on Elizabeth Bishop’s postcards. | The Paris Review

Also on Lit Hub:

Lisa Gornick, Julia Alvarez, Elizabeth Strout, and others discuss crafting older female characters in fiction • How a lawyer, a businessman, and the mafia destroyed public transit in the Twin Cities • On the devastating Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire • Rebecca Roache on why swearing is fun • On the timeless charm of children’s books • On the rise and fall of Borders Books • When publishing F. Scott Fitzgerald is the family business • What really happened between Coppola and Sheen in that hotel room during the filming of Apocalypse Now • The lived poetry of the late James Tate • What prehistoric possessions tell us about ourselves • On the Great Poets’ Brawl of ’68 • An ode to Poor Things author Alasdair Gray’s lesser-known, equally deserving books • Why are we seeing so many bunnies on book covers? • On the visceral visual violence of Pablo Picasso’s oeuvre • Who doesn’t like music? Nabokov, for starters • Jessica Strawser on telling and re-telling traumatic stories • Sheila Squillante on writing to remember her father • Hot tip for handling the holidays: read horror • Turns out, Elvis set the stage for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour • Kate Christensen on what Albert Camus’s The Stranger says about our contemporary anxieties • Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore on the exploitation of Basquiat • The best audiobooks of 2023 • The literary film & TV you should stream in December