Helen Oyeyemi on the rebel vocabulary of Ágota Kristóf: “If the likes of Kristóf and her kin have anything to do with it, we shall never feel that we’ve finished learning to read.” | Lit Hub Criticism
Herb Harris muses on the history of racial passing in America, and his own grandparents’ brief outings across the color line. | Lit Hub Memoir
James Crawford considers how literature has “explored, confronted, challenged, mocked, and unpicked” borders both real and imagined. | Lit Hub Criticism
Sarah diGregorio considers how the mythic origin story of Florence Nightingale perpetuates white supremacy in nursing. | Lit Hub History
Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All-Stars, and Alexandra Auder’s Don’t Call Me Home all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
First they came for library books, now they’re coming for the libraries. | NPR
How A.I. learns to write by reading Jane Austen, Shakespeare, or Moby-Dick (among others). | The New York Times
“Mr Madi and Ms Lawton refused to show prospective buyers around or have the extravagant rooms and grounds photographed for the auction brochure.” The squatting of Evelyn Waugh’s house continues apace. | The Daily Mail
How Jorie Graham wrote one of her most powerful works while exiled, in grief, and battling cancer. | Vulture
The Streisand effect, but for banned books. | The Guardian
This year’s honorees of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 program share how museums fuel their creative work. | Brooklyn Museum
“Her voice, so unlike any other, told the story of a France that did not usually presume to express itself.” Read Rachel Cusk on Annie Ernaux. | The New York Times Magazine
“Does the job of novelist require some special quality, an invitation from God, or is it like most work, a set of skills that can be learned?” Rumaan Alam on the working life of Haruki Murakami. | The Nation
On Miguel Ángel Asturias, the forgotten inventor of magical realism. | NYRB
“Was writing this an act of bravery, or self-delusion?” Leah Finnegan critiques Ben Smith’s look at the Internet of the 2010s. | The Baffler
On the bizarre—yet believable—history of PTO in Soviet Russia. | JSTOR Daily
“Ghosts flit by.” n+1’s editors consider the digital squares and walled gardens that have succeeded Twitter and the old media. | n+1
Andrea Bajani on Kafka and the death of a failed book. | The Believer
“It’s not a masterpiece, but it might be something better.” Andrew Martin on Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window. | NYRB
Ellen Notbohm on the killing of a ladybug, from the new issue of Dorothy Parker’s Ashes. | DPA
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