Lit Hub Weekly October 12 - 15, 2021
TODAY: In 1854, Oscar Wilde is born.
How will humans measure time if biotechnology helps us live forever? Jeanette Winterson looks at the bigger picture of AI. | Lit Hub Tech
“I know now that these things cast a very long shadow over my life.” Carole Angier considers how history shaped W.G. Sebald’s work. | Lit Hub Biography
“It was like looking for WebMD symptoms, but instead of a fatal illness, I was watching for complete and universal devastation.” Bethany Ball on getting over her preoccupation with apocalypse. | Lit Hub
“Continue squeezing until all the tomatoes are gone or until you feel like Macbeth at the end of his play.” Stanley Tucci shares his grandmother’s famous tomato sauce recipe. | Lit Hub Food
John le Carré's final novel, a Hillary Clinton thriller, and Susan Orlean's animal chronicle all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
Elizabeth Breck, author and licensed private investigator, on the five most realistic PIs in fiction. | CrimeReads
“This is, in my opinion, the best use of the Nobel Prize: as a way of highlighting neglected but worthy writers.” Alex Shepherd considers Abdulrazak Gurnah’s unexpected Nobel Prize win. | The New Republic 
Was the first great internet novel… Mrs. Dalloway? | The Atlantic
On attempting to cook the dishes featured in the works of Amparo Dávila. | The Paris Review
An argument in favor of taking children’s books seriously. | The Guardian
On teaching the MFA at Bennington. | Los Angeles Review of Books
Exploring the film adaptation of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which is ultimately a story “about the possibility of redemption.” | Bright Wall/Dark Room
“I feel like a fool to have rooted for Dave Chappelle for so long.” Saeed Jones on watching The Closer as a gay Black man. | GQ
Read a new short story by Chen Qiufan, translated by Emily Jin. | Noema 
Jay Caspian Kang explores how the term “Asian American” became “mostly meaningless.” | The Nation
Juan Gabriel Vásquez considers the power of fiction “to liberate us from our frustratingly limited perspectives on life.” | Words Without Borders
Rebecca Solnit talks about reading George Orwell in an era of climate crisis. | Los Angeles Review of Books
“Death threats to King’s legacy are now sold as love songs to his legacy.” Ibram X. Kendi on Martin Luther King Jr. and the rise in protest against critical race theory. | The Atlantic
On the toxic accessibility of Goodreads. | Bustle
“Editors, publishers, and other writers will snub you. So what? Get back to the page again, and again, and again.” Jenny Shank on Lucia Berlin, her mentor and fellow outsider. | Poets & Writers
Jane Goodall breaks down the books that inspired her love for animals and nature as a child. | The New York Times
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ALSO THIS WEEK ON LITERARY HUB
Susan Orlean talks about the Rainbow Bridge and reporting • Tom Vitale on confronting the complexities of storytelling with Anthony Bourdain • Hanif Abdurraqib on working at a chain bookstore in his twenties • Victoria Chang on writing into the silence • On the legal issues at the heart of Dorland v. Lawson • A taxonomy of famous writers’ houses • Why was Truman Capote so fascinated with wealthy women? • Catherine Lacey on Life Sciences and its heroine’s doomed female lineage • Joshua Bennett on fatherhood and Coltrane • 5 Authors, 7 Questions, No Wrong Answers with Venita Blackburn, Eugene Lim, Bradley Sides, Tamara Shopsin, and Vanessa Veselka • Who gets to survive climate disasters? • Mondiant Dogon on childhood in a refugee camp • Why a Scotsman loves to drink fruity little cocktails in America • When NOW tried to exclude the Third Woman’s Alliance from feminist history • How might mystery writers respond to the upheavals of 2020? • Meet the women who first succeeded in the “man’s world” of mountaineering • Christine Sahadi Whelan shares the recipe for curried couscous salad • Searching for inner peace in the wake of a father’s conservative ideology • How opera invented the modern fan • A compendium of literary ravens • Finding refuge from modern capitalism in Nomadland • Robby Krieger on the infamous concert that ended in Jim Morrison’s on-stage arrest • On the life of a 19th-century model-turned-artist • America needs a new language to describe its shortcomings • Marguerite Duras on finding stories everywhere
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