LitHub Daily: June 21, 2016

TODAY: In 1914, Bertha von Suttner, the first woman to receive Nobel Peace Prize, dies. 

• Lionel Shriver on the Catch-22 of returning to books like Catch-22. | Literary Hub
• America is a classless society—and other foundational myths that just won’t die. | Literary Hub
• Martin Walker on finding inspiration for his Inspector Bruno Series in an ancient French valley. | Literary Hub
• Dead dogs are more than metaphors: on the burden of killing an animal and the stories that take it for granted. | Literary Hub
• Helen Oyeyemi on the reality of fairy tales, the multiplicity of meaning, and duty books vs. books that are like games. | Bookforum
• “My sadness was so great that I only could have loved Either/Or more if it had literally been covered with dirt.” Emma Straub reflects on her college devotion to Elliott Smith. | The Paris Review
• “I pillage theory—it interests me only when it gives me access to my own experience.” An interview with Robert Glück. | The Seattle Review of Books
• Body snatchers and Byronic heroes: On the literary tradition of objectifying women’s corpses. | Hazlitt
• “For mothers writing specifically from the situation of having young children around — maybe it’s not a surprise that these books have similarly fragmented structures.” Speaking with Rivka Galchen. | The Times of Israel
• The personal is the polis: On the deeply political nature of Athenian drama. | NYRB
• Why is this all happening now, and what does it mean? What this season’s political books can tell us about the election. | The New York Times
• “While many book lovers may be tempted to gloat, the death of Barnes & Noble would be catastrophic—not just for publishing houses and the writers they publish, but for American culture as a whole.” Why we still need Barnes & Noble. | The New Republic

Also on Literary Hub: On the literature of eating disorders  · Books making news this week: lost fortunes, white trash, and wild hogs · Not brain damage: From Ariel Leve’s memoir, An Abbreviated Life

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