LitHub Daily: April 8, 2015

TODAY: In 1950, The New Yorker published J.D. Salinger’s short story story, For Esme–With Love & Squalor.

• Lydia Davis taught herself Norwegian by reading one, very long book. | Literary Hub
• The 2014 VIDA Count is out and many magazines fared better than previous years; it also includes the “larger literary landscape” and, for the first time, (pretty depressing) statistics on the representation of women of color. | VIDA
• Reactions to the VIDA Count: women statistically read more, so their under-representation is especially egregious; more “entrenched” publications can afford to ignore the findings; male writers continue to dominate content production. | Slate, Flavorwire, The Guardian
• Umberto Eco’s How to Write a Thesis, as much a writing guide as an “instruction manual for finding one’s center in a dizzying era of information overload,” is available in English for the first time. | The New Yorker
• Emily Gould and Angela Ledgerwood launch Lit Up, a podcast about books, writers and all things literary. | The Lit Up
• Apparently, all of us are slouching towards a corruption of Yeats. | The Paris Review
• Is Rachel Kushner writing with a film adaptation in mind, proving the lone critic of The Flamethrowers correct? | W Magazine
• Kurt Vonnegut’s speech on his second most fortunate experience–“second only, perhaps, to my having been in Dresden when it was firebombed.” | Electric Literature
• In a crippling blow to France’s ego, New Jersey has acquired Derrida’s full library. | LA Times
• Behold the assistant economy: “the main artery into creative or elite work—highly pressurized, poorly recompensed, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes menial secretarial assistance.” (Or if you’re Susan Sontag’s assistant: share gossip, date son, move in.) | Dissent Magazine

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