Lit Hub Weekly: October 21 – 25, 2024
TODAY: In 1922, Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf is published.
“I looked for my novel on the screen. I found the skeleton of it intact. Its revolutionary content was missing.” Sol Yurick, author of The Warriors, remembers searching for a trace of his book on the big screen. | Lit Hub Film
Nguyễn Bình on why Edgar Allan Poe was, for a time, “the single most admired American author in Vietnam.” | Lit Hub Criticism
Tom Clavin considers how hideouts on the Outlaw Trail, one of the last vestiges of the American “wild west,” came to be. | Lit Hub History
“The literary mind cannot be isolationist.” Read Elif Shafak’s speech from the Opening Ceremony of the Frankfurt Book Fair. | Lit Hub Craft
“Though Steinbeck met Babb on at least one occasion when he was traveling with his friend Collins doing research for his book, he never acknowledged her input into his work.” On the forgotten work of Sanora Babb. | Salon
What do essays have in common with architecture? Elisa Gabbert considers. | The Georgia Review
Jeff VanderMeer on what he ate while fleeing from Hurricane Helene. | Grub Street
Tad Friend profiles book dealer Glenn Horowitz, who for grifters is “a scholar, and for scholars, he’s a grifter.” | The New Yorker
“The novels are cramped dioramas of drunk or overworked egoists suffering spiritual crises in classic sixes.” Grayson Scott on Wilfrid Sheed’s Office Politics. | The Baffler
Elias Altman on trauma and healing: “…it sought to answer a question that picked up where the earlier book left off: What does justice look like for survivors of sexual violence?” | n+1
When election ballots doubled as (artistic) political propaganda. | Smithsonian Magazine
Don Kaye on the iconic Harlan Ellision-penned episode of The Outer Limits. | Reactor
On Ryan White, HIV/AIDS, and the value of innocence: “As soon as White entered the national consciousness in mid-1985, his seeming proximity to death shaped his life story.” | Public Books
“There is no protective equipment for journalists, and there are no institutions to protect us from this bombing and continuous targeting.” Three Palestinian journalists on what it’s like to publish from within a genocide. | The Nation
Sophie Vershbow looks behind the curtain at the political book publishing machine. | Esquire
“There is a personal benefit in sitting with a tragic story for a prolonged time. It allows us to think about how humans navigate loss.” Carleigh Baker considers the tragic novel in a time of continually broadcasted human suffering. | Hazlitt
“Don’t worry—it’s poetry you’re craving.” Jordanian writer Lana al-Majali makes the case for poetry’s urgency. | Words Without Borders
Gabriel Winslow-Yost looks back at the early career of comics artist CF. | The New York Review of Books
Why playwright James Graham thinks we’re in a “crisis of storytelling.” | The New Yorker
Also on Lit Hub:
Early travelers from across the globe (who should probably be more famous) • What cooking can teach writers and translators • Rob Goyanes talks to Christopher Forgues about his creative process • James Ivory looks back on a 1940s queer coming-of-age • Dylan C. Penningroth recommends essential texts on Black legal history • Trying the paella at a 12th-century monastery • Somaia Abu Nada remembers her sister, Palestinian poet and novelist Heba Abu Nada • André Aciman on struggling to find his place in Rome • Liz Jackson on the hypocrisy of corporate disability literature • Jane Ciabattari talks to Joshua Mohr • Charles Baxter takes the Lit Hub questionnaire • On Maggie Smith’s most literary role • How politicians deceive Americans • Naomi Cohn on braille, loss, and blindness’ many forms • Eugenia Bone explains the less magical side of psilocybin • A royal British recipe for baked eggs • The power of poetry to sustain our spirits • Tyler Wetherall on channeling her childhood diaries • Big political lies need even bigger fact checking • Yousef Aljamal and Rawan Yaghi pay tribute to Refaat Alareer • The timelessness of Aesop’s fables • 5 book reviews you need to read this week • The impact of the 1959 explosion of Yellowstone • Nina Edwards explores a brief history of women’s underwear • Sarah Moss on the prides and pressures of girlhood • The 10 best books for understanding gun violence • Julie Sedivy considers the pleasure of language • Why Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis is a new generation’s Showgirls • Why we need to record and respect grief • The best reviewed books of the week • Eiren Caffall recommends books about maritime disasters • How Piet Mondrian’s abstract artworks evolved from paintings of puppies
