Lit Hub Daily: September 1, 2020

• Hari Kunzru is never, ever going to read To Kill a Mockingbird: the author of Red Pill on writer’s block, his favorite Bowie album, and more. | Lit Hub
• “The jobless, the homeless, and the despairing remained where they were…” Arundhati Roy on life under the world’s most repressive lockdown. | Lit Hub Politics
• “He died a terrible death, his chest working overtime like he often did in the mill.” Kerri Arsenault on life and death in a Maine mill town. | Lit Hub Memoir
• Why can’t we take our eyes off cinematic monsters? Erika Swyler on the fears we invent to stay sane. | Lit Hub Film
• In which Eliot Weinberger offers a brief history of famous Hyacinths, from Hyacinth of Fora to Hyacinth of the Angels. | Lit Hub History
• Writing in crisis: a conversation between Lina Mounzer and Mirene Arsanios, from Beirut to New York. | Lit Hub Politics
• Can poets show the way forward for an uncertain Europe? Krisztina Tóth writes a letter from Hungary. | Lit Hub Politics
• Are these the 100 best children’s books? | NPR
• “What does it say about capitalism that we have money and want to spend it but can’t find anything worth buying?” Eula Biss on buying (and furnishing) a home under capitalism. | The New Yorker
• Jo Livingstone considers the feminist power of Beowulf in the context of a new translation by Maria Dahvana Headley. | Poetry Foundation
• “I was determined to write a contemporary novel, but I kept stumbling on nuggets of history too interesting to ignore.” Christina Baker Kline on the responsibilities of writing historical fiction. | Chicago Review of Books
• Have you noticed books about right-wing politics looking a little… Sith Lord-like lately? That’s no accident. | Slate
• “The tradition of African American poetry is so vital and rich that it can barely be contained.” Kevin Young on curating an anthology of African American poetry from 1770 to the present. | Chicago Tribune
• The numbers are in: no matter their political orientation, readers just can’t get enough of Trump-related books. | The New York Times

Also on Lit Hub: Polly Crosby on the legacy of the Heath Robinson brothers, illustrators extraordinaire · Read from Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum’s Likes · Salar Abdoh on the consequences of a Trump presidency.