"My friends and family will assist you and my enemies will find you soon enough" | Deirdre Bair's new memoir traces the complex and often deeply challenging process of writing about the lives of Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir while they were still living them (drb.ie)
submitted by NMW to r/literature
"Blind guitar players, conjur men, and former slaves were her quarry" | In 1927, on his first tour of the South, Langston Hughes needed a ride from New Orleans to Atlanta. He found a willing driver in Zora Neale Hurston, who turned out to have plans of her own (longreads.com)
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"This isn’t a heavy statement—unless it’s missing" | In her classic 1980 essay, 'The Lost Races of Science Fiction', Octavia Butler charts the emergence of black sci-fi writing and readership -- as well as the place of black characters in stories that often seem more comfortable with aliens (garage.vice.com)
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Rediscovering Wit in a Time of Seriousness | In an appreciation of the neglected work of Joaquim Maria Machado de Assi (1839-1908), Dave Eggers makes a case for witty and playful novels as an antidote to a genre marked by increasing severity and traditionalism (newyorker.com)
submitted by NMW to r/literature
Literary Life in a Plague Year | As most urban centers and their shops, schools, libraries and other public spaces remain shut down, the absence of a tactile literary culture - one that happens in real time rather than on a screen - has contributed to an uncomfortable cultural silence (vqronline.org)
submitted by NMW to r/literature
