Lmst

Ouch!

https://hyperborea.org/reviews/books/old-iron-dream/

#review #SF #ScienceFiction #books #LitCrit

📖 Reading Barthes: “Garbo’s Face”

Today in Mythologies: Roland Barthes breaks down beauty not as essence, but as structure. Greta Garbo = conceptual, a Platonic ideal. Audrey Hepburn = substantial, modern presence. Think Jolie in Beowulf vs. Deschanel in indie cinema.

Beauty isn’t just seen—it’s coded.

#Barthes #Mythologies #RolandBarthes #LitCrit #Philosophy #GretaGarbo #AudreyHepburn #BeautyAsMyth #NowReading #MediaTheory

"We know the characters by their swearing." Michael Adams on Mick Herron's Slough House novels. New on the Strong Language blog:
https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2025/07/09/espionage-novels-that-give-a-fuck-about-profanity/

#swearing #books #SpyFiction #espionage #profanity #LiteraryCriticism #LitCrit #StrongLanguage #fiction

What if books could resist sanitization? Friday. danwoodswriter.com #WritingCommunity #AmWriting #BookSky #LitCrit #AuthorLife

A promotional image for an upcoming essay by Daniel Woods titled "Ergodicity & Neo-Americana." The image combines promotional text with a collage of historical black and white photographs that seem to document various periods of American history, including what appear to be scenes from conflicts, social upheaval, and everyday life from different eras.

The essay explores the concept of "ergodic Neo-Americana" - a literary approach that Woods argues represents a central challenge for the genre. According to the quoted text, the author discusses how Neo-Americana as a genre faces the paradox that "the very system that the genre seeks to expose will inevitably attempt to absorb any success" and protect itself from criticism.

Woods defines ergodic Neo-Americana as integrating authentic historical documentation with fictional narrative, using what he calls "ergodic methods" to supplement literary exposés with real historical data, documents, photographs, and testimonies from the periods and people being portrayed.

The term "ergodic" typically refers to systems where statistical properties can be deduced from a single, sufficiently long sample - suggesting Woods may be advocating for a comprehensive, data-driven approach to historical fiction that draws from extensive primary sources.

The promotional material indicates this essay will be published on Friday and directs readers to danwoodswriter.com for more information.

Today's #WIP comes from an upcoming essay called: "Ergodicity and Neo-Americana: Why A Long-Term Look Always Shows the True Picture" Stay tuned! #writingcommunity #booksky #amwriting #litcrit

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:jecquekt6dif7ctvonpphsu6/post/3lsq5q5jzbz2x

This appears to be a commentary on American literature and cultural identity, accompanied by a collage of historical black and white photographs that seem to depict various aspects of American life from the early-to-mid 20th century. The images show families, children, social gatherings, and what appear to be scenes of everyday American life during periods like the Great Depression and mid-century America.

The text discusses how American identity has evolved and been reinterpreted over time, highlighting the contributions of major American authors:

- It mentions how contemporary interpretations have moved away from original historical contexts
- References Mark Twain and Woody Guthrie as "visionaries" who helped define American identity through wit, honesty, and exploration of what it meant to live in an expanding nation
- Discusses John Steinbeck's portrayal of America's struggle with industrial capitalism and corporate power
- Notes F. Scott Fitzgerald's critique of the Gilded Age and the contradictions within the American Progressive Era

The combination of historical imagery with this literary analysis creates a reflection on how American writers have captured and critiqued different eras of the nation's development, from expansion through industrialization to the social changes of the early 20th century. The visual elements reinforce the text's themes about authentic American experiences versus romanticized or distorted interpretations.

Anna Karenina

I just got to the part where Varenka is mushroom picking, and catches the eye of an older bachelor, Levin's brother.

Funniest scene so far. Tolstoy has it all. It's hard to believe he is just a few decades after Dickens.

Koznyshev and Varenka are walking farther and farther from the crowd, and more and more by themselves, and are rehearsing how to propose for marriage... and Koznyshev suddenly asks a question about mushrooms. It shatters the mood and they return to the group. I say funny but it's intensely cringey, that kind of funny.

The scene is forshadowed by a blade of dry grass that, as a developing mushroom tried to grow forward, split the mushroom, from one to two. Whooaaaaa.. Ha ha ha. Great chapter. #tolstoy #lit #LitCrit #russianLosses

https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/anna-karenina/varenka.html

Ah, shit. RIP Fredric Jameson.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/23/books/fredric-jameson-dead.html

I did not usually agree with him—as a postgrad, one of my professors jokingly called me a “postmodern hardliner”—but still surprisingly often. He was eloquent and insightful and often brilliant. It was always a pleasure to read him, and think really hard about what he had to say. He will be missed.

#literature #litcrit

Latest from Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, incl. free-access articles on #Chile an storyteller Francisco Coloane, #border #soundscapes, and on #gaming and #race in #Brazil! #litcrit #culture #criticaltheory #Latinamerica #LatinBlue https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjla20/33/1?nav=tocList

📰 Textual Criticism and Interpretation Through Inverted Parallelism (A free, 17-page article from 2015)

Tags: #LitCrit #Buddha
https://buddhistuniversity.net/content/articles/chiastic-structure-of-vessantara-j-taka_huifeng-shi

📰 The Buddha in Pārileyyaka Forest (A free, 36-page article from 2013)

Tags: #Hermeneutics #Imagery #PaliCommentaries #Animals #LitCrit
https://buddhistuniversity.net/content/articles/elephant-good-to-think_ohnuma-reiko

#JohnsHopkinsUniversityPress's #July4th sale ends Monday. If you want some great #books about #health and #wellness, #litcrit, et al., check out the website. H4JUL24 is the discount code that will give you 40% off all #books with free shipping on order over $75. Please consider purchasing the #memoir I wrote with #neurologist Dr. Bruce Miller. It's about my father's early-onset #Alzheimer's, a rare form of #dementia. It's also about #grief, #love, & #neurology.

#EndAlz

https://weinsteinandmiller.com

#JohnsHopkinsUniversityPress's #July4th sale ends Monday so if you're looking for great #books about #health & #wellness, #litcrit, et al., check out the website. H4JUL24 is the discount code that provides 40% off all #books w/free shipping on orders over $75. Please consider purchasing the #memoir I wrote with #neurologist Dr. Bruce Miller. It's about my father's early-onset #Alzheimer's, a rare form of #dementia. It's also about #grief, #love, and #neurology.

#EndAlz

https://weinsteinandmiller.com

Nice! Good to see it back in print. Spotted it in my neighborhood bookstore.

#LitCrit #LeGuin #LeGuinUrsulaK
#ScienceFiction #SciFi

Picture of a book on a book table, Ursula K. Le Guin's The Language Of The Night.

Hopefully, if the world is good, there is a #Litcrit PhD candidate out there somewhere working on “Voice in the age of LLM”

#thinking #litcrit #prehistory

get this: Darren Allen's review of The Dawn of Everything.
"... With their own meaningless, postmodern definitions in place G&W can then declare that we’ve kind of always had ‘property’, ‘bureaucracy’, ‘cities’, ‘agriculture’ and ‘hierarchies’. This is like saying that we’ve always had cars because when you think about it boats are cars, or hunter gatherers had access to the internet because mushrooms exchange information too..."

https://expressiveegg.substack.com/p/the-dawn-of-everything?publication_id=1199056&post_id=135708137&isFreemail=true&r=1jmhji

I've spent the last two days reading and rereading Ishion Hutchinson's brand new book, a conversation with David Jones and British history. A book about the West Indian soldiers in WW1, intertwined with a tale of West Indian boyhood in the 1990s, this is the third volume of poetry by one of the best and most important poets of our time.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C0REaitok9M/

#literature #IshionHutchinson #PostcolonialStudies #litcrit

Addendum:

Sometimes the curtains are just fucking blue.

#LitCrit

#otd in 1849, Sarah Orne Jewett was born. If you liked Ursula K. LeGuin's "Always Coming Home" (which is seemingly currently being reprinted everywhere) you should have a look at Jewett's "Country of Pointed Firs" which LeGuin admired.

#ursulakleguin #literature #litcrit

#LitCrit

Client Info