LitHub Daily: October 17, 2016

TODAY: In 1903, Nathanael West, author of Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust, is born. 

• Postcards to a younger, much better novelist: Derek Palacio shares early correspondence with his wife, Claire Vaye Watkins. | Literary Hub
• Eileen Myles on Donald Trump: “Locker room banter” is just another name for patriarchy. | Literary Hub
• On queerness, empathy, and Afro-Modernity: Mark Gevisser and Pwaangulongi Dauod in conversation. | Literary Hub
• On the literature of crowds: the pleasures and anxieties of the collective, from Benjamin to DeLillo. | Literary Hub
• There’s still no word for ‘memoir’ in German publishing: the Buchpreis, the book blogger, and other hot topics heading to Frankfurt… | Literary Hub
• “I believe that fiction, with its untrammelled nature, speaks to no one, and by so doing, speaks to all.” Chigozie Obioma on intended audiences, politicized provincialism, and showing vs. telling. | The Guardian
• Margaret Atwood on fan fiction, retelling Shakespeare, and her own artistic legacy (“Not dead yet.”). | Hazlitt
• “I have no tolerance for people who are not thinking deeply about things… And I have no tolerance for people just not being a part of the world and being in it and not trying to change it.” An interview with Jacqueline Woodson. | NPR
• “Public libraries are among the very few remaining places where all Americans can meet to exchange ideas and listen to opposing viewpoints for free.” Francine Prose on the importance of libraries and a “recent, traumatic event in Kansas City.” | NYRB
• For the first time, we might all feel what we felt without destroying ourselves: Tim Murphy on his relationship with an older couple and overcoming addiction. | BuzzFeed Reader
• “Poetry offers me a way to rewire and channel the sense of cultural loss that I feel into a new kind of culture, without losing myself or having my identity subsumed into a monolithic ‘Indian’ identity.” An interview with Tommy Pico. | The Rumpus
• I wanted to be able to do with words what I had no trouble doing with a ball: An excerpt from Suite for Barbara Loden. | The Believer Logger
• “I never felt satisfied with fiction. There was too much moralizing in stories. I wanted, rather, to just learn things.” Talking (and baking) with poet and author Molly Brodak. | The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Also on Literary Hub: Interview with a Bookstore: Her Bookshop, a dream twenty years in the making · In praise of the illustrated book · I’d stay in the dark and smile: From Mark Slouka’s memoir, Nobody’s Son

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