LitHub Daily: November 5, 2015

TODAY: In 1885, William Durant, co-author with his wife Ariel of The Story of Civilization, is born. 

• Lorrie Moore on why we read (and write) short stories. | Literary Hub
• “RIP, irony, long live a more subtle irony.” A visit to Amazon’s “wildly banal,” newly opened bookstore. | The New Republic
• The meaninglessness of imposed meaning: On the rise of depressive realism and the barren philosophy of Michel Houellebecq. | The Point
• “I can’t think of any poem that is downright bad, but there are quite a lot that are average.” A book of George Orwell’s mediocre poems has been cleared for sale. | The Independent
• Why can’t book publishing be the way it is in books? Meghan Daum’s 1996 essay yearning for the publishing of yore ruminates on the experience of an editorial assistant, reveals how little has changed. | BuzzFeed Books
• “Room is the Crash of feminism. I am sure the film is going to win multiple Oscars.” On Room’s depiction of motherhood and trauma. | Los Angles Review of Books
• On The Roar of Morning, a strange entrant to the tropical apocalypse field. | Full Stop
• The notebook as a journal, junkshop, and jumping off point: Sarah Gerard speaks to a friend about writing in prison. | Hazlitt
• James Franco’s film adaptation of The Sound and the Fury (featuring Seth Rogen and Danny McBride) looks… interesting….. | Vulture

Also on Literary Hub: Pauls Toutonghi inside one of the world’s great writers’ retreats · Noy Holland on her time with Captain Fiction, the one-and-only Gordon Lish · A poem-a-day countdown to the Irish Arts Center Poetry Fest: the final day, Gjertrud Schnackenberg · A traumatic birth from Barbara Comyns’s Our Spoons Came from Woolworths

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