TODAY: In 1904, James Joyce begins his relationship with Nora Barnacle.
- Genre wars, Amazon, and how David Foster Wallace’s “Mister Squishy” can explain the market for heart. | Literary Hub
- “In some ways, it was inevitable that Carl, a few nights later, would take a picture of his balls and send it to the Mayflower e-mail list.” A short story by Ben Marcus. | The New Yorker
- All hail chicken tenders, perfection incarnate! | Guernica
- Live-tweeting pain as a secular ritual for grieving: on over-sharing, memoir, and imposing meaning onto meaninglessness. | Full Stop
- Viet Thanh Nguyen on the debt he owes to Ralph Ellison, who treats “marginalized experience as universal experience.” | Library of America’s Reader’s Almanac
- Marie Howe on imminence, being (perhaps) a religious poet, and finally walking through the right door. | AGNI
- The value of one human’s sweat against another’s: a review of, and excerpt from, Mia Alvar’s In the Country. | NPR
- Overcoming America’s Obligatory National Cheerfulness with its natural antidote, the road trip: an interview with Sean Wilsey. | The Rumpus
- Queen Victoria wrote a book when she was ten (and, it should be noted, three-quarters) years old; it is now being published. | GalleyCat
Also on Literary Hub: Kevin Birmingham on when James Joyce met Sylvia Beach · On Bloomsday, five great books that also take place over the course of a single day · Karolina Waclawiak’s The Invaders: phone sex and other chores
