LitHub Daily: October 7, 2015

• Don Quixote is sloppy, confusing, inconsistent, and otherwise wonderful. Ilan Stavans on the 400th anniversary of a classic. | Literary Hub
• In episode three of our new(ish) podcast, A Phone Call From Paul, Paul Holdengräber suggests that maybe Claudia Rankine “is a bit of a stranger stalker” actually. | Literary Hub
• The Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced tomorrow; here are some favorites and here are some methods for monetization. | Publishers Weekly, Vulture
• On our current cultural fascination with the malleability of identity, which is reflected in many of this year’s biggest books and reissues. | The New York Times
• A profile of Garth Risk Hallberg, creator of “an object machine-tooled for maximum market impact” (City on Fire). | Vulture
• “So how much more describing is necessary to assess if we’re done expecting something even more fortunate to turn up?” A story from Diane Williams’s forthcoming collection. | Queen Mob’s Tea House
• Slogging through and immersing oneself in the linguistic landscape of The Wake. | Music & Literature
• “You are like a magician: you see something others don’t see.” On the undervalued importance of literary translators. | Financial Times
• Recutting and remixing fairy tales: A trajectory of modern fables, from Borges to Carter to deWitt. | Hazlitt
• Beyond “potholed roads and potbellied racists:” Uncovering the literature of the South. | The Los Angeles Review of Books

Also on Literary Hub: Why Salman Rushdie should win the Noble Prize · When literary pseudonyms take on a life of their own · A poem by Shane Book · From the new edition of Utopia Parkway, on the life and work of artist Joseph Cornell