Lit Hub - Best of Week

Mary Roach on bizarre military task groups, footnotes, and her lack of tolerance for PowerPoints. | Hazlitt

Danielle McLaughlin on Wide Sargasso Sea’s “exquisite, deadly prose“ and its influence on her writing. | The Paris Review

Linguist John McWhorter on the literal meaning of literally, the drift of language, and the difference between Elizabethan and modern English. | NPR

“On any given day, digitally and in print, readers of the New York Times can expect more book coverage.” Pamela Paul on transitions in the New York Times’ book coverage. | Publishers Weekly

I am no poet; I cannot forget: Harold Bloom on Alvin Feinman, a “poet of astonishing individuation.” | The Critical Flame

“There is a feeling of inevitability in that line of station wagons, advancing like a column of tanks, and DeLillo’s words provide subversive ammunition against them.” On White Noise and college move-in day. | The New Yorker