Lit Hub Weekly: September 18 – 22, 2017

• “Her gaze is clearly still the sensitive instrument it has always been, sharply attuned to the local particulars and the broader implications.” Dana Spiotta visits Joan Didion at home. | Vogue
• “Until this novel, it had never crossed my mind to think about the collective memories of people alive at a certain time.” A profile of Jennifer Egan. | Publishers Weekly
• “We consent to the wrong life in small ways, less by what we say than what we don’t.” Kathleen Alcott on intimacy, breakups, and the significance of a shared meal. | The Guardian
• Sheila Heti on the short fictions of Fleur Jaeggy, which “attempt to be in concert with some mysterious void.” | The New Yorker
• “Maybe my cheap and vulgar praise can only face these blasphemous poems, paintings, images. . .” The final piece of writing by Liu Xiaobo. | New York Review of Books
• Pankaj Mishra on “the ideas and commitments of the new prophets of [the] decline” of Western civilization. | London Review of Books
• Roald Dahl’s widow said in an interview that before his agent advised against it, her husband had originally written Charlie Bucket as a “little black boy.” | The New York Times
• On the “important British tradition” of complaining about the Man Booker Prize and the implications of including American authors. | The New Republic
• “When I served chocolate cupcakes enriched with Guinness to my dirtbag friends, I was transformed momentarily into someone better and more confident”: Emily Gould on her obsession with domestic goddesses. | The Cut
• “It’s a form of media that is available to nearly everyone.” How feminists in Indonesia are using zines to communicate their cause. | Broadly
• Black bodies are piling up, in life and literature: On the importance of narratives of black vitality. | Electric Literature
• 22 tarot card-book pairings to consider, “whether you believe in the mystical power of tarot or if you’re just smitten with its aesthetics.” | Signature
• “You don’t have to tell anyone on social media what you are reading.” On embracing the freedom to read books that are Not for You. | Full Stop
• The internet has found yet another reason to love Margaret Atwood (and the purse she wore on stage at the Emmys). | InStyle
• The 2017 Kirkus Prize finalists have been announced, as have the winners of the Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize. | Kirkus, The Paris Review

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