Lit Hub Daily: November 16, 2020
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET
TODAY: In 1962, the Russian-language literary magazine Novy Mir publishes part of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich with the support of Soviet Communist Party Chairman Khrushchev, giving hope to authors that government censorship of literature in the U.S.S.R. would be eased.
- “The temptation to hide the word because the reality of rape is so horrific only made it more critical that it stood front and center in my book.” Memoirist Michelle Bowdler on saying the unsayable. | Lit Hub Memoir
- “Like poetry, flash often relies on the tiny detail, the single image, or some peculiarity of word choice or phrasing.” Dinty Moore on the rise of flash nonfiction. | Lit Hub
- Peter Frampton talks fame, David Bowie, and The Simpsons, with Dan Sheehan. | Lit Hub Music
- “Dickey himself, cherishing as he did circular figures and patterns, almost seemed to anticipate a digital revival in posterity.” On the lost digital poems (and erotica) of William H. Dickey. | Lit Hub
- “Art is made in the space between the artist and their early, chosen readers, a space that is filled with love.” Sheila Heti on the importance of finding your trusted readers. | Lit Hub Craft
- How Woody Guthrie’s mother shaped his music of the downtrodden: on Nora Belle Guthrie’s struggle with Huntington’s. | Lit Hub Music
- The Sellout, Station Eleven, Crime and Punishment and more rapid-fire book recs from Charles Yu. | Book Marks
- Historians have found around 200 first edition copies of Isaac Newton’s masterpiece, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, a book once believed to be much rarer. | Live Science
- Thousands of university employees in the UK have called for an investigation into excessively priced academic e-books. Librarians, researchers, and others accused publishers of exploiting copyright laws. | BBC
- “There’s a righteous joy in their sex writing—even in dark or traumatic scenes—and a sense of conviction that seems the hard-won fruit of personal and political struggle.” On sex in contemporary fiction, from Garth Greenwell to Lidia Yuknavitch to Miranda Popkey to Raven Leilani. | The Point
- From Avni Doshi to Douglas Stuart, this year’s Booker Prize shortlisters tell the stories behind their novels. | The Guardian
- Alex Shepard wants to know: Are book publishers prepared for the likely fallout—“staff revolt, departures (if not resignations), boycotts, authors fleeing for other publishers” etc.—from a Donald Trump memoir? | The New Republic
- Two new books take readers through the highs and lows of a journey on Mount Everest. | Outside Magazine
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