LitHub Daily: January 10, 2017

TODAY: In 1951, Sinclair Lewis dies.

• 12 contemporary writers on the art of revision. | Literary Hub
• Min Jin Lee on suffering through 11 years to finish a novel. | Literary Hub
• Ten rare book items from the Doubleday family collection, which goes to auction tomorrow. | Literary Hub
• How Alan Jacobs fell in love with books (and avoided a career in astronomy. | Literary Hub
• “Do you really think a musical about an alien, a dead Bob Dylan, and the work of Emma Lazarus is an idea someone is likely to steal?” Michael Cunningham on collaborating with David Bowie. | GQ
• Come for mom’s mental health memoir, stay for the careful and convincing polemic against the War on Drugs: Claire Vaye Watkins on microdosing and Ayelet Waldman’s A Really Good Day. | New Republic
• Attempting to write not just about, but for, the public: A profile of Mark Greif. | The Chronicle of Higher Education
• “Not everyone can be a good thief, but I think a writer is a good thief.” An interview with Abdellah Taïa. | Los Angeles Review of Books
• Alain de Botton, Olivia Laing, and other experts in their fields on the 5 books that most inspired them. | The Guardian
• Seeking impossible answers to made-up poetry questions seems like a poor way to go about it: Against the inclusion of poetry on standardized tests. | The Outline
• “For a poet who is notorious for writing opaque poems in which autobiography and transparency are dispensed with, a number of collages celebrate the youthful male body with an innocence that is touching, tender, and, frankly, poignant and sweet.” On the recent collages of John Ashbery. | Hyperallergic

 

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