Lit Hub Weekly: October 7 - 11, 2019

• Anyone but the people: from voter suppression to foreign intervention, Rebecca Solnit on the Republican party’s attacks on democracy. | Lit Hub Politics
• When Stephen King is your father, the world is full of monsters: Joe Hill on standing in the shadow (and light) of his famous dad. | Lit Hub Memoir
• “The email inbox is an illusion, a metaphor, a construct.” On the scattered, ad-ridden archive of our lives. | Lit Hub Technology
• Olga Tokarczuk and Peter Handke have won the 2018 and 2019 Nobel Prizes in Literature. John Freeman was in conversation with Tokarczuk earlier this year; PEN America expressed “deep regrets” over Handke’s prize. | The Hub
• The triumphant return of Olive Kitteridge, Liz Phair’s whip-smart memoir, Rebecca Makkai on Zadie Smith, and more of the Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
• Andy Martin spent a year with Lee Child as he wrote the new Jack Reacher novel. Things got pretty strange—and insightful. | CrimeReads
• Daniel Drake, a self-described “professional nitpicker,” proofreads the President. | New York Review of Books
• “One hippo, alone once more, misses the other forty-four.” Read a profile of board book maven Sandra Boynton. | The Atlantic
• Reading Gaol, the English prison where Oscar Wilde infamously served time for “gross indecency,” has been put up for sale. | BBC
• Eve Babitz is as brash and unafraid as ever as she addresses the 1997 incident that left her with extensive burns. | The Paris Review
• Erica Wagner writes on four recent books about ghosts and haunted sites, including a collection of Edith Wharton’s ghost stories and Laird Hunt’s novel of witchcraft in colonial New England. | Financial Times
• “His children grown or in their teens, his job and his reputation secure—Heaney decided to write about happiness.” On the optimism of Seamus Heaney. | The New Yorker
• How to take a literary selfie. | Granta
• Does your government have a “Council to Protect Minors from Harmful Publications”? Turkey’s does, and thanks to President Erdoğan, more than 300,000 books have been confiscated or destroyed since 2016. | Haaretz
• Teachers are grappling with whether to teach the books of men “toppled by #MeToo.” | The New York Times
• The next logical step in autofiction: an interview with Ben Lerner’s mother. | The Cut
• It’s been three years since the Islamic State was driven out of Mosul. The third Nineveh Cultural Festival has since then aimed to reassert the city’s place as one of Iraq’s most vibrant literary and cultural centers. | RFI
• “The subject is a solitary man whose writings tended to track the minutiae of his solitary life, and who died alone in the snow”: on translating the work of Robert Walser into dance. | The New Yorker
• “Oh my God, the president read a thing I wrote about J.J. Redick’s penis.” Here’s what happens when the president recommends your book. | The Washington Post
• The “deep and lasting resonance” of Goodnight Moon, 75 years after it was first published. | Los Angeles Review of Books
• Here are the finalists for the 2019 National Book Awards. | The Hub

Also on Lit Hub:

Continuing our Best of the Decade list: here are our choices for the best short story collections of the 2010s • On the far right past of Ingvar Kamprad, founder of Ikea • Gabrielle Bellot considers the darkness at the heart of Jamaica Kincaid’s children’s mystery, Party • Crystal Hana Kim and Laura van den Berg discuss what it means to “learn to write” • On the endless parade of literary dead girls • Minda Honey on finding the freedom to rage her father • On the universal urgency of immigrant literature • In Nazism, Joseph Roth saw the end of Europe’s cosmopolitan dream • America in Mosul: an account of the occupation of an Iraqi city • Saeed Jones on finding a sense of self in New York City • Josephine Rowe talks to Brandon Taylor about craft, climate grief, and the politics of fiction • Philip Pullman on children’s literature (and the critics who disdain it) • On the midcentury battle for urban renewal • Alix Kates Shulman on how her book found a new voice, 50 years on, within a new feminist movement • Eve Babitz on the time she played chess nude with Marcel Duchamp • Billy Kahora on the life and writing of Ngugi wa Thiong’o, a giant of world literature • Posthumous concerns addressed by mortician Caitlin Doughty • Daniel Mendelsohn wishes someone would ask him about gardening • On the bougie, classist history of Eggs Benedict • Letters to Shakespeare’s star-crossed lover/contemporary advice columnist • Why office workers can’t sleep (and why that’s bad) • On the road with California’s climate migrants • In praise of Rumi, priestly poet and master of the one-liner • How does one actually prove a human is smarter than a housefly? • On the maybe future, decidedly English art of mole-catching • PSA: the best time to practice Stoicism is when your flight is cancelled • When drinking really good tea, expect the unexpected, and more tips from the Rare Tea Lady herself, Henrietta Lovell • Tim Robinson searches for the lost history of the Conmaicne • On the activism of a pre-fame Marlon Brando • We live in an age of political thugs, from Putin to Trump to Yanukovych • Maggie Neil on The Yellow House and the many names of loss • Michael Jamie-Becerra considers his coming-of-age in a discount supermarket

Best of Book Marks:

Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, Madeleine Miller’s Circe, and more rapid-fire book recs from Nicole Chung • Ecstasy and Terror author Daniel Mendelsohn recommends five great books about criticism, from Oscar Wilde’s The Critic as Artist to Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation • Michigan-based children’s librarian Randi Foor-Dalton on marginalized communities, Indigenous histories, and Bat Girl the librarian • Ian McEwan’s The Cockroach: filled with comic panache or toothless and wan? • New releases from Zadie Smith, Philip Pullman, Saeed Jones, and Liz Phair all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week

New on CrimeReads:

Celebrating the best writing advice from Elmore Leonard, born this week, 1925 • A cultural history of Nancy Drew, from Olivia Rutigliano • Jake Brennan sets the scene for one of the weirdest meltdowns in rock’n’roll history • Zach Vasquez traces the cinematic lineage of the white male loner from Taxi Driver to Joker • Neil Nyren pays homage to Dorothy L. Sayers • Nick Kolakowski explores the linked histories of cyberpunk and noir • Daniel Kraus takes a fond look back at some of the most gruesome horror comics in history • “Increasingly, women are owning their fury—both on and off the page.” • Paul French gives us a brief history of Myanmar’s turbulent century via crime fiction • Kate Racculia highlights 10 books that will ease you into a lifelong love affair with gothic fiction