LitHub Daily: October 18, 2016

• James Lasdun on how Patricia Highsmith’s Talented Mr. Ripley transcends genre and rises to the status of American mythology. | Literary Hub
• Indies recommend: 10 small press books you should read, from Green Apple Bookstore. | Literary Hub
• Writing a novel is just like searching for ecstasy in Cambodia. Well, it’s close. | Literary Hub
• In conversation with Joanna Kavenna, champion of the contemporary philosophical novel. | Literary Hub
• How fiction treats the elderly, aging, and ancient. | Literary Hub
• T Magazine pays tribute to the Greats: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Gloria Steinem, and others write thank-you notes to Michelle Obama, and Jeffrey Eugenides profiles Zadie Smith. | T Magazine
• Svetlana Alexievich, Margo Jefferson, Hisham Matar, and Philippe Sands have made the shortlist for the Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction. | The Guardian
• He was glad, he told the girl, to have a new neighbor: A short story by Ottessa Moshfegh. | The New Yorker
• Would you like to do a good deed? Garnette Cadogan on walking in, and moving to, New York City. | BuzzFeed
• On the origins (a bathroom in Fredrikstad, Norway in 1969, on LSD) and implications (things are bad, but they can always get worse) of Hariton Pushwagner’s art. | The Paris Review
• Anita Raja on what translation means to her: “Establishing an intense relationship which unfolds entirely within the written word.” | Asymptote Journal
• “Fixed, tidy perceptions — especially unconscious ones — are arch enemies of human dignity, transformative exchanges, and justice.” An interview with Sonya Chung. | Electric Literature
• I cannot easily shake off the village: On two new books on the commodification of attention and potential offered by new technologies. | The New Republic

Also on Literary Hub: Otto Penzler’s five crime and mystery picks for October · Books making news this week: politics, philosophy, and opium · How to become a human trafficker: From More by Hakan Günday, translated by Zeynep Beler