LitHub Daily: September 16, 2016

TODAY: In 1987, Toni Morrison’s Beloved is published. 

• Finding the unsayable in translation: Michael Helm on Javier Marías, Roberto Bolaño, and a double dose of defamiliarization. | Literary Hub
• Four never before published stories by the great Robert Walser. | Literary Hub
• Dear Rick Moody, life coach: why do men spinster-bait? | Literary Hub
• Pat-downs, pissing, and passport stamps: three short essays from the anthology Airplane Reading. | Literary Hub
• A rejection like that from a man like that is enough to keep a young writer going: Ursula K. Le Guin on her first attempt at a novel. | The Paris Review
• Valeria Luiselli talks with Laia Jufresa, “the least professionalized writer in the world.” | BOMB Magazine
• “I know that you cannot judge a book by its cover as surely as I know that the cover gives some clue to the story within.” Rumaan Alam attends a fashion show and reflects on the role clothing plays in self-narrativizing. | Elle
• The third issue of Nepantla, which features Tommy Pico, Ocean Vuong. jayy dodd, and more, is now online. | Lambda Literary
• “What would it look like for this world to love us back? What would it look like to live in a world that saw us as people and not commodities, not vehicles for power or objects of pleasure?” Franny Choi on poetry and activism. | Ploughshares
• “For those of us whose identities—racial, sexual, and cultural—have branded us as others throughout our lives, her smirks went straight through like a bullet.” Suki Kim on Lionel Shriver’s controversial keynote address and its aftermath. | The New Republic
• “What do we have to forget? What are we encouraged to forget? What won’t we want to forget?” An interview with Lidudumalingani Mqombothi, the winner of this year’s Caine Prize. | Bookforum
• This extremely old technology could prove to be the most powerful and readily abundant weapon we’ve got: How reading enhances empathy. | Signature Reads

Also on Literary Hub: Titles for the times: Ten books on race, police, and Black Lives Matter  · The radical bookseller: saying yes (and no) to books I disagree with · One last party before the party: from Alexander Maksik’s Shelter in Place

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