Lit Hub Daily: May 16, 2019
TODAY: In 1763, James Boswell is introduced to Samuel Johnson at Thomas Davies’s bookshop in Covent Garden, London.
On discovering an iconic literary character was inspired by your grandfather . ( Catch-22 ‘s Yossarian really did live.) | Lit Hub
“In the whole wide world, there are subjects beyond power and other people besides the right men.” Caroline Fraser on Robert Caro , great men, and the problem of powerful women in biography. | Lit Hub
The winners of the 100th annual O. Henry Prize! | Lit Hub
“What do you call a villain when she finally gets to tell her own story ?” On a new generation of villainous women, from witches to wicked stepmothers. | Lit Hub
Sakia Vogel talks to Philip Teir about grief, Mary Gaitskill, and the City of Angels. | Lit Hub
Pibulsak Lakonpol’s dispatch from a refugee’s no man’s land at the Thai-Burmese border . | Lit Hub
David McCullough’s The Pioneers : vibrant and compelling OR told with a narrow perspective ? | Book Marks
Karen Russell’s uncanny worlds, Walter Isaacson on George Packer on Richard Holbrooke, and more of the Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week . | Book Marks
Summer is here! Which means it’s time to read some crime fiction. Here are over 100 picks from the summer’s best and hottest titles . | CrimeReads
“I feel like I’m the great American crime writer. You can make that case .” Read a profile of James Ellroy, “the Demon Dog of American fiction.” | 1843
On the “pernicious, scapegoating effect” of J.D. Vance’s vision of Appalachia —and the many other voices that should be championed instead. | The Baffler
“ Belinda Blinked is writing so bad that it transcends mere constructs of quality and becomes its own absurdist feat of virtuosity.” On My Dad Wrote a Porno and the joy of reading really, really bad sex scenes in literature. | The Atlantic
William Boyd on John Buchan, the late Victorian-era Scot whose book The Thirty-Nine Steps improbably inspired a Hitchcock film and the modern spy novel. | New Statesman
“On August 27, Hemingway mailed La Cossitt the most remarkable document he ever sent to Collier’s : his expense account.” The story of Hemingway’s $187,000 magazine expenses claim . | CJR
Maybe the most important takeaway from the mediocre final season of Game of Thrones is how good of an imagination George R.R. Martin has . | The Ringer
“We’ve all had to respond to America as it existed at a given time.”: An interview with Maurice Carlos Ruffin on race, political activism and the American South. | LARB
Also on Lit Hub: Juliet Grames on restoring the legacies of our difficult grandmothers on The Maris Review • Dani Shapiro on unraveling her family’s history • The time Samuel Johnson met James Boswell (in a bookstore, naturally) • Read from Julia Phillips’ debut novel Disappearing Earth.
