LitHub Daily: July 18, 2016

TODAY: In 1817, Jane Austen, drawn here in a portrait made by her sister Cassandra, dies. 

• Why do we write about orphans so much? | Literary Hub
• Why Calvin and Hobbes is great literature: on the ontology of a stuffed tiger and finding the whole world in a comic. | Literary Hub
• When an internet skeptic takes to Twitter: Sven Birkerts on contradiction and tweeting against the tide. | Literary Hub
• 60 recommendations of non-book things for people who liked A Brief History of Seven Killings, The Sympathizer, The Goldfinch, and other books. | NPR
• “I am a non-believer, begging to believe in heaven, if heaven means I can hear this voice again.” Max Porter on the death of his father. | BuzzFeed Books
• “There are so many layers to everyone that we often don’t know at all what we feel about even the people closest to us until something happens to really jar our psyche.” An interview with Mary Gaitskill. | The Guardian
• “If you want to change the world, why write poetry?” Wayne Koestenbaum on Adrienne Rich, who tried to do both. | The New York Times Sunday Book Review
• Asymptote’s summer issue, which features work from and interviews with Pierre Joris, Pedro Novoa, and others, has been published. | Asymptote Journal
• “Major presses are inadvertently helping foster an environment where American indie presses can thrive by doing the very thing they’re best at: being small and, by extension, focusing on creativity and originality over sales.” On the importance of indie presses. | The Atlantic
• Robert Moor on “woods shock” and walking endlessly on circular trails. | The New Yorker
• To work at the Strand, potential employees must complete a book quiz (which, unfortunately, does not tell you which Harry Potter house you belong in). | The New York Times

Also on Literary Hub: Ilan Stavans on the 1994 bombing of the AMIA · Ed Simon recommends ten classics of campaign literature · From Maggie’s Plan, a play by Rebecca Miller

---