Lit Hub Weekly: December 2 - 6, 2019

• John F. Callahan looks at what decades of Ralph Ellison’s correspondence reveal about the literary giant. | Lit Hub Biography
• “Charles has said that poems aspire to the condition of prayer…” Mary Szybist on the poetics of Charles Wright. Read a poem from Wright’s collection Oblivion Banjo here. | Lit Hub Craft and Criticism
• Some of our favorite writers pick the books from the last decade they wish more people would read. | Lit Hub Best of the Decade
• Patricia Lockwood on Edna O’Brien, Kevin Young on Ralph Ellison, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
• From moral disruptor, to crazy b—-, to the anti-heroine of our century: Halley Sutton gives us an ode to femmes fatales through the ages. | CrimeReads
• How long does it take to create a dictionary that charts every way anyone has ever used every word in a language? In the case of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, 125 years and counting. | The New York Times
• Why are romance novels still dismissed by many as “guilty pleasures” when they consistently dominate the fiction market? | Glamour
• More and more libraries across the country are recognizing late fees as “a form of social inequity,” and eliminating them entirely. | NPR
• Richard Power recommends 26 books on trees. | PBS
• The best books of 2019, as chosen by some of 2019’s most decorated writers. | The Guardian
• “Why has this bizarre Miller-Austen mashup been ignored or disremembered?” On Arthur Miller’s little-known adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. | LARB
• “I just don’t think of writing as a career,” Lutz says. “If I had chosen that as a career, I would have failed at it, obviously. A trip across Pittsburgh with Gary Lutz. | 3:AM
• “His correspondence charts the turning away from socialism and social realism that would produce his novel’s potent surreality.” Kevin Young on Ralph Ellison’s selected letters. | The New Yorker
• How one translator (and writer and lawyer and programmer) made Chinese science fiction huge in America. | The New York Times Magazine
• A scholar who studies the way literary prizes influence taste and canons turns her eye on two major African prizes, the Caine and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. | Quartz
• “The famous suspension of disbelief that operates in the reading of a novel also functions in reading a translation.” Alejandro Zambra on translation. | The Believer
• A division of the American Library Association has named the Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum in Baltimore a national “Literary Landmark,” making it Maryland’s first. | Baltimore Sun
• Minimalist fonts are so this decade. The next hot trend in text? Didones. | The Outline
• “In a world awash in possible dystopias, why this particular one? And why now?
” Kristen Roupenian on The Testaments. | The New Republic
• In a way, every novel is a revenge novel, but Norway has taken it to another level. | The Guardian

Also on Lit Hub:

Here are the Lit Hub staff’s 50 favorite books of 2019 • What was the first book you fell in love with? The Center for Fiction’s 2019 First Novel Prize authors weigh in • On walking through the house where Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women • Wisdom and vision from Toni Morrison • David James Duncan remembers Brian Doyle, the late, great writer who tried to “stare God in the eye” • Nick Fraser on Werner Herzog’s uncomfortable relationship with the truth • On the eve of WWII: three days before the bombing of Paris • Lore Segal’s love letter to editors • Jonathan Miles remembers Larry Brown • True tales of a literary bartender • Naja Marie Aidt talks to John Freeman about creating meaning from the meaninglessness of grief • What makes a poem Jewish? • On (and in) the sewers that transformed Paris • The Impostor Poets of Iceland have issued their manifesto • On Elaine Stritch’s never-ending quest to get her due • J.M. Fenster examines the motivations of rule-breakers • On the subversive creatives who defied authoritarian rule in Zimbabwe • What your draft (and its problems) says about you • Sean Brock on the ingenuity, soul, and care that created “Southern cuisine” • Caroline Scott on her reading her mother’s unpublished novel, and writing her own • On Inès Cagnati, the French novelist who wrote powerfully about the immigrant experience • Angela Qian charts the progression of the lonely literary woman • What happened to rock and roll after Altamont?  • Mark Harris on the unapologetic—and still deeply resonant—politics of Howard Fast

Best of Book Marks:

The Art of the Hand-Sell: 13 indie booksellers rave about their favorite reads • 10 Sci-Fi and Fantasy Must-Reads From the 2010s: feat. N. K. Jemisin, Ted Chiang, Victor LaValle, Ursula K. Le Guin, and more • A year of literary listening: AudioFile‘s best nonfiction audiobooks of 2019 • Melissa Broder on Marguerite Duras, obsessive dreamers, and childless MILFs • Liesl Schillinger recommends 5 novels in translation about political transformations, from Roberto Bolaño’s By Night in Chile to Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We • In honor of Joan Didion’s 85th birthday, classic reviews of Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Play It As It Lays, and The White Album

New on CrimeReads:

Jon Land on Jessica Fletcher and the long afterlife of Murder, She Wrote • Paige Shelton recommends 10 movies that will make any kid into a lover of classic suspense • Radha Vatsal breaks down Willkie Collins’ complicated approach to marriage, on and off the page • All the crime books you need to read this December • Andrew Nette on the crime literature of the Vietnam War and its aftermath • Sarah Weinman on Dorothy B. Hughes’s oft-overlooked masterpiece of Hollywood noir • Nalini Singh on the crime stories of New Zealand • Camille LeBlanc has your guide to December’s essential crime TV • Alice Blanchard on how a childhood trip to Salem taught her to always root for the outsider • Lowlifes, junkies, ex-cons and desperados: Tanner Tafelski on the noir sensibility of Tom Waits