LitHub Daily: July 6, 2015

• A spy’s daughter on her last summer in Saigon, before the Fall. | Literary Hub
• The dubious circumstances surrounding the discovery of Harper Lee’s second novel have gotten more dubious. | The New York Times
• On the domestic horror of Shirley Jackson, friendly neighborhood witch/raiser of demons. | The New Republic
• “Racism is a visceral experience… it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth.” A letter from Ta-Nehisi Coates to his son. | The Atlantic
• How southern gothic is like a “trusty bicycle” that everyone wants to ride. | The Guardian
• Ottessa Moshfegh, alien in a human body, shares her notebooks, tarot readings, and plans for dealing with life in 2015 with Sarah Gerard. | Hazlitt
• Reading Vivian Gornick’s “guidebook for how to exist,” both on and off of a cocktail of Vicodin and Valium. | The Los Angeles Review of Books
• Harrison Scott Key on his lack of relation to Francis and the process of evolving from Lil Bow Wow into Bow Wow proper. | Oxford American
• A swansong for Brazenhead Books, a book temple (alternatively, book-hovel), speakeasy for literary people, and “pocket of anomalous culture.” | The Millions

Also on Literary Hub: The story behind a family bookstore: Powell’s · The fine art of remembering your entire life · Jean Kwok’s Mambo in Chinatown, now in paperback