LitHub Daily: August 4, 2015

TODAY: In 1875, Hans Christian Andersen, fairy tale master dies; 131 years later, a theme park based on his tales and life opens in Shanghai. 

• Dale Peck on the dark genius of Shirley Jackson and her unheralded novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle. | Literary Hub
• Join us in sobbing at our desks while reading this heartbreaking story by Lidia Yuknavitch. | Guernica
• On the purposeful formal experimentation and complicated publication history of America’s favorite typer, Jack Kerouac. | Library of America’s Reader’s Almanac
• “Louisiana is my literary grandsire, the source of the content and dialect of my early stories.” Walter Mosley on his Louisianan literary legacy. | The New York Times Sunday Book Review
• A Little Life, unlikely lovechild of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Tao Lin. | Full Stop
• “Am I convinced by this sentence? Is this an English sentence? Do I believe this is a book?” Jen Calleja on translating Gregor Hens’s Nicotine. | The Quietus
• Truth is like a naked human body: an interview with Paula Fox and excerpt from her re-re-released novel, Desperate Characters. | Longreads
• Mining August’s “abundance of literary riches” for the most anticipated books of this month. | Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Shelfari
• The short story collection as album release? Track one: McConaughey. | Audible

Also on Literary Hub: What we talk about when we talk about backlists · Against the not-entirely inaccurate stereotypes of LA, the lit scene in movie country · Shirley Jackson’s children are full-fledged demons

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