Lit List: Friday September 30, 2016

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Riad Sattouf (Source: Agência Brasil, Creative Commons)

Riad Sattouf (Source: Agência Brasil, Creative Commons)

Good evening readers. Here's a round-up of today's must-read literary news, commentary and fiction.

  • Memories of a childhood split between France and the Middle East: Riad Sattouf's graphic novel The Arab of the Future recounts his childhood as the son of a hyperconservative Syrian. The New Yorker
  • Don’t Forget the Flâneur: Aimless urban walks from Charles Baudelaire to Nikki Giovanni. Poetry Foundation
  • Introduction to Reading Other Women: On an Edwardian-era Indian writer who cast a critical eye on her own culture and that of the British Empire. The Boston Review
  • Of Literature and Fossil Fuels: Literature has rarely turned to the topic of global warming. Amitav Ghosh asks whether it's even capable of doing so. The Los Angeles Review of Books
  • How Pyrotechnic Comic Novelist Colson Whitehead Found His Way to the Grim, Measured Underground Railroad: In his latest novel, Whitehead swerved away from his usual humorous and offbeat voice. New York Magazine
  • Veteran Editor Sells Debut for Rumored Seven Figures: The author of a psychological thriller wins at a game of inside baseball; the book is expected to rake in foreign sales. Publishers Weekly 
  • Bookforum talks with Alexandra Kleeman: The author of Intimations reveals the reason her stories are full of menace, dread, and absurd games over whose rules the characters have no control. Bookforum
  • What Are White Writers For?: One white writer skewers artists who insist their art is apolitical. The New Republic
  • Fully Surreal Luxury Communism: An excerpt from René Magritte's first writings to ever be published in English. The New Inquiry
  • In Defense of Suspension Points: Ellipses seen as the "banged-up nose of the sentence." Catapult
  • You're "You're Saying It Wrong" Wrong: A new book compiles common mispronunciations and it's frustrating and a little smug, but entertaining. The Awl
  • The Rumpus Interview with Monica Sok: For a Cambodian poet, history books hit too close to home. The Rumpus