Lit Hub Weekly: March 30 - April 3, 2020

• THESE TIMES: Paul Auster on the wolves of Stanislav, an improbably true parable for the pandemic age • You know your quarantine activity roster needs some 19th-century parlor games • “What if this is the moment for us to practice and develop, in this time of social distancing and quarantine, our moral imagination?” Philip Metres writes a letter to his students • Michael Wiegers’s comfort food in uncomfortable times • Bookstores serve ideas and people: in that way they are essential • In a pandemic, how do you make the case for an art emergency? · Nick Ripatrazone on trying to teach high school during a global pandemic • In Brazil, they take to their balconies each night in protest • Darin Strauss on how to survive being stuck at home with twin 12-year-olds (hint: TV) • What does your go-to quarantine read say about you? • Days without name: Heidi Pitlor on time in the time of coronavirus • The tale of Zimmy, a very good quarantine dog •  More personalized book recommendations for your quarantine reading • We might be here a while: organize your home office. | Life in a Pandemic
• Dwight Garner on Woody Allen’s mouth-breathing memoir, Francine Prose on Kevin Barry’s Beckettian crime tale, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
• David Stout on the forgotten kidnapping epidemic that swept across Depression-era America. | CrimeReads
• “Right, yes. Today. In this doomed world. Something beautiful, for her.” Leslie Jamison on parenting (and being sick) during a pandemic. | New York Review of Books
• A lot of celebrities are reading children’s books on social media, but none cooler than astronaut Christina Koch, who recently completed one of the longest recorded spaceflights. | KTXS 12
• Rachel Vorona Cote on the “cultural anxiety about exuberant or overly demonstrative feminine behavior” in Lewis Carroll’s stories. | Longreads
• “I met a dead corpse of the plague, in the narrow alley just bringing down a little pair of stairs. But I thank God I was not much disturbed at it.” Read from Samuel Pepys’ 1665 plague blog. | Lapham’s Quarterly
• “As screwed up as this country is, we can still produce a Don DeLillo who can understand and explain us.” Gerald Howard makes a case for why Don DeLillo deserves the Nobel Prize. | Bookforum
• “By Friday, I was exhausted by my new job and convinced that public school teachers should be paid a billion dollars a year.” Emily Raboteau on homeschooling during a pandemic. | New York Review of Books
• The Authors Guild and others are criticizing the National Emergency Library project, saying that it violates copyright law. | Publishers Weekly
• “We are here because our leaders have made mistakes which have had ghastly consequences—cripplings and death and corruption.” In Kurt Vonnegut’s earliest recorded speech, he implored the government to “let the killing stop.” | The Nation
• “When I try to ponder the future I get this kind of vertigo.” Tom Perotta on The Leftovers (in which 2% of the population mysteriously disappears), and what comes after a crisis. | Boston Globe
• May Alcott Nieriker, who inspired the character of Amy March, was a “feminist force, fostering transatlantic networks for independent women travelers.” | Los Angeles Review of Books
• “He was talking about resistance, and about how people can come together in a situation to resist.” On teaching Camus’ The Plague (and other literary classics) during a pandemic. | NPR
• “Was Allen’s manuscript edited, and copyedited, and read by corporate lawyers?” An investigation into Woody Allen’s (secrecy-shrouded) memoir. | The New Republic
• Eric Eyre, the reporter who exposed the opioid crisis has a new book out, but no job. | The New Yorker
• “The way Pip himself responds to Ahab is a model for how we should think of one another in a crisis like this one.” Vijay Seshadri on Whitman and Melville in the time of coronavirus. | MacDowell Colony
• “In these novels, the prose brokers no compromise.” Rivka Galchen reads Clarice Lispector. | London Review of Books

Also on Lit Hub:

Samantha Irby: “OH MY GOD, I hope Michelle Obama never reads my stupid books” • Rebecca Dinerstein Knight on her mentor Mark Strand, lover of voicemails, roaster of chickens, writer of poems • Janice Hadlow on learning from the smartest women in the room • An ode to the lemon tree, the most important tree in the garden • Fanny Singer on growing up in her mother’s legendary restaurant • A brief history of the acceptable high school T-shirts of the late 1980s • Can we actually teach artificial intelligence empathy? • The songwriting couple behind country music’s biggest hits • Breyten Breytenbach on exile as a home in itself • The operatic rise and fall of Tiger Woods • How to write a collaborative essay • Yoko Tawada in conversation with Madeleine Thien • Nick Flynn on making collages from found ephemera • Phil Christman examines the irresistible dream of a prepper’s life • Jessica Anthony on the writing conference that ended in a Russian police station • Women in war: On great correspondents past and present • Foxed, fuddled, swallowed a hare, and other words for “drunk” • On surveillance capitalism and the internet of things • On the Italian artists who fought for freedom • When the NRA stood up to the gun industry • What the beaver can teach us about conservation • These excellent April books are here to keep you company

Best of Book Marks:

New on CrimeReads:

Bruce Riordan with a guide to the novels of Don Winslow, from surf noir to borderland epics • Hilary Davidson and Susan Elia MacNeal discuss PTSD in fiction • Lyndsay Faye on why we turn to genre fiction in times of crisis • Rick Pullen speaks with Lee Child about the creation of Jack Reacher •  Molly Odintz offers readers personalized crime fiction recommendations for the quarantine • CrimeReads staff picks the best crime novels of the month • Amy Engel on the complication fiction of mothers and daughters • Laura Hilgers on turning to mystery novels after a husband’s betrayal