Christopher Burlinson
@cmburlinson.bsky.social
A green thought in a green shade. Early modern English literature. I teach at Jesus College, Cambridge, but these words are mine, not theirs.
Reposted by Christopher Burlinson
“The elites are ecstatic about imagining a vast, uneducated, and unproductive population forced to pay companies like OpenAI to access the written word and to approximate thought.”
Must read piece by Noah McCormack with too many quotaboe lines to select one! thebaffler.com/salvos/we-us...
Must read piece by Noah McCormack with too many quotaboe lines to select one! thebaffler.com/salvos/we-us...
We Used to Read Things in This Country | Noah McCormack
Technology changes us—and it is currently changing us for the worse.
thebaffler.com
November 2, 2025 at 5:12 PM
“The elites are ecstatic about imagining a vast, uneducated, and unproductive population forced to pay companies like OpenAI to access the written word and to approximate thought.”
Must read piece by Noah McCormack with too many quotaboe lines to select one! thebaffler.com/salvos/we-us...
Must read piece by Noah McCormack with too many quotaboe lines to select one! thebaffler.com/salvos/we-us...
And now this, my first Enard - Compass, trans. Charlotte Mandell @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social
November 2, 2025 at 7:32 PM
And now this, my first Enard - Compass, trans. Charlotte Mandell @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social
Two crackers just finished. Oğuz Atay, Waiting for the Fear (trans. Ralph Hubbell), knotty stories of inertia, loss, absence, beautifully felt; Annie Ernaux, The Other Girl (trans. Alison L. Strayer), even by Ernaux’s standards this was stunning, a letter to the sister who died before she was born.
November 2, 2025 at 7:27 PM
Two crackers just finished. Oğuz Atay, Waiting for the Fear (trans. Ralph Hubbell), knotty stories of inertia, loss, absence, beautifully felt; Annie Ernaux, The Other Girl (trans. Alison L. Strayer), even by Ernaux’s standards this was stunning, a letter to the sister who died before she was born.
Reposted by Christopher Burlinson
New on the blog today, I've written about ten excellent novellas I highly recommend.
Featuring books by Anita Brookner, William Trevor. Muriel Spark and many more! #BookSky #Novellas #NovNov 💙📚
jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025/10/30/t...
Featuring books by Anita Brookner, William Trevor. Muriel Spark and many more! #BookSky #Novellas #NovNov 💙📚
jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025/10/30/t...
Ten excellent novellas I highly recommend
There’s something very satisfying about reading a whole book in one or two sittings on the same day, especially when time is tight. I’ve always been fond of novellas, which often offer the best of …
jacquiwine.wordpress.com
October 30, 2025 at 7:27 AM
New on the blog today, I've written about ten excellent novellas I highly recommend.
Featuring books by Anita Brookner, William Trevor. Muriel Spark and many more! #BookSky #Novellas #NovNov 💙📚
jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025/10/30/t...
Featuring books by Anita Brookner, William Trevor. Muriel Spark and many more! #BookSky #Novellas #NovNov 💙📚
jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025/10/30/t...
Reposted by Christopher Burlinson
Ebert’s review looms large for me, not the least of which because he pinpointed a moment I found mesmerizing;
October 29, 2025 at 9:28 PM
Ebert’s review looms large for me, not the least of which because he pinpointed a moment I found mesmerizing;
I loved it. So unforced, so easy, but no glib conclusions, and an ending that tilts it all off balance, leaves you speechless. A beautiful, sweet, sad film.
For one reason or another it has been weeks (months!) since we’ve sat down in the evening to watch a film, so this feels really uncommonly exciting. So much praise and love for this film on here!
October 29, 2025 at 9:06 PM
I loved it. So unforced, so easy, but no glib conclusions, and an ending that tilts it all off balance, leaves you speechless. A beautiful, sweet, sad film.
For one reason or another it has been weeks (months!) since we’ve sat down in the evening to watch a film, so this feels really uncommonly exciting. So much praise and love for this film on here!
October 29, 2025 at 7:04 PM
For one reason or another it has been weeks (months!) since we’ve sat down in the evening to watch a film, so this feels really uncommonly exciting. So much praise and love for this film on here!
Next up: Oğuz Atay, Waiting for the Fear, translated by Ralph Hubbell.
October 28, 2025 at 7:12 AM
Next up: Oğuz Atay, Waiting for the Fear, translated by Ralph Hubbell.
Reposted by Christopher Burlinson
‘For Jorie Graham, the teeming possibilities of lyric – tense and mood, syntax and sound crossed with layout and measure – harbour a fullness of time which is neither mere chronology nor novelistic plot.’
Fiona Green on ‘To 2040’ and other recent work: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Fiona Green on ‘To 2040’ and other recent work: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Fiona Green · Chi Chi Trillip Trillip: Jorie Graham looks ahead
For Jorie Graham, the teeming possibilities of lyric – tense and mood, syntax and sound crossed with layout and...
www.lrb.co.uk
October 15, 2025 at 2:30 PM
‘For Jorie Graham, the teeming possibilities of lyric – tense and mood, syntax and sound crossed with layout and measure – harbour a fullness of time which is neither mere chronology nor novelistic plot.’
Fiona Green on ‘To 2040’ and other recent work: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Fiona Green on ‘To 2040’ and other recent work: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Update: they didn't. I just love teaching with Gillian Rose, even though I have such a fragile grounding in the philosophy. LOVE'S WORK is a gift.
October 15, 2025 at 7:25 PM
Update: they didn't. I just love teaching with Gillian Rose, even though I have such a fragile grounding in the philosophy. LOVE'S WORK is a gift.
These books never fail.
October 13, 2025 at 9:59 AM
These books never fail.
It’s going to have to wait for a few weeks, but my copy of Schattenfroh arrived this afternoon.
October 9, 2025 at 7:54 PM
It’s going to have to wait for a few weeks, but my copy of Schattenfroh arrived this afternoon.
New teaching year; let’s go!
October 6, 2025 at 10:02 AM
New teaching year; let’s go!
One Battle After Another is incredible on the big screen, and there’s so much about it to love and admire (it’s funny, it’s thrilling, it moves with such a sinuous and hazy rhythm), but I left feeling underwhelmed by the final 15 minutes or so.
October 5, 2025 at 8:10 PM
One Battle After Another is incredible on the big screen, and there’s so much about it to love and admire (it’s funny, it’s thrilling, it moves with such a sinuous and hazy rhythm), but I left feeling underwhelmed by the final 15 minutes or so.
Wow. This didn’t quite click (for me) until a hundred pages from the end; it’s funny and tender and formally brilliant - and then something desperate and furious and awful bursts out and consumes it. I wasn’t prepared for how hard the ending would hit: I think I always feel that with Krasznahorkai.
October 1, 2025 at 8:28 PM
Wow. This didn’t quite click (for me) until a hundred pages from the end; it’s funny and tender and formally brilliant - and then something desperate and furious and awful bursts out and consumes it. I wasn’t prepared for how hard the ending would hit: I think I always feel that with Krasznahorkai.
Reposted by Christopher Burlinson
Today is publication day for PAPER AND THE MAKING OF EARLY MODERN LITERATURE! Available in paper or digital form www.pennpress.org/978151282744... @pennpress.bsky.social
September 30, 2025 at 8:28 AM
Today is publication day for PAPER AND THE MAKING OF EARLY MODERN LITERATURE! Available in paper or digital form www.pennpress.org/978151282744... @pennpress.bsky.social
Godt voet alle creaturen / God feeds all creatures.
Leiden botanical gardens
Leiden botanical gardens
September 27, 2025 at 4:46 PM
Godt voet alle creaturen / God feeds all creatures.
Leiden botanical gardens
Leiden botanical gardens
One last day of summer light!
September 19, 2025 at 3:45 PM
One last day of summer light!
Reposted by Christopher Burlinson
Best thing I've ever read about AI and the academy - every line a banger
“An extraordinary amount of money is spent by the artificial intelligence industry to ensure that acquiescence is the only plausible response. But marketing is not destiny.” Out from behind the paywall: the Editors on the literature of AI resignation.
www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the...
www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the...
Large Language Muddle | The Editors
The AI upheaval is unique in its ability to metabolize any number of dread-inducing transformations. The university is becoming more corporate, more politically oppressive, and all but hostile to the ...
www.nplusonemag.com
September 16, 2025 at 5:45 PM
Best thing I've ever read about AI and the academy - every line a banger
Back to Proust (trans. James Grieve). The Lydia Davis translation of the first volume was so good: really looking forward to this one too.
September 11, 2025 at 7:03 PM
Back to Proust (trans. James Grieve). The Lydia Davis translation of the first volume was so good: really looking forward to this one too.
Also found my way to the end of this brilliant, kaleidoscopic book. I get the frustration with Pynchon, but it’s dazzling, just as funny as I expected and a thousand times more moving.
September 9, 2025 at 11:12 AM
Also found my way to the end of this brilliant, kaleidoscopic book. I get the frustration with Pynchon, but it’s dazzling, just as funny as I expected and a thousand times more moving.
Hmm, I didn’t love it. Fernanda Torres is amazing, everything has real conviction and urgency, but I feel like the film doesn’t know what it wants to grab onto, jumps over the hard questions and settles as a warm tribute to great people (Rubens & Eunice Paiva) and great actors (Torres, Montenegro).
The end of three weeks in Brazil, and I’m finally getting round to seeing this.
September 7, 2025 at 1:33 PM
Hmm, I didn’t love it. Fernanda Torres is amazing, everything has real conviction and urgency, but I feel like the film doesn’t know what it wants to grab onto, jumps over the hard questions and settles as a warm tribute to great people (Rubens & Eunice Paiva) and great actors (Torres, Montenegro).
The end of three weeks in Brazil, and I’m finally getting round to seeing this.
September 6, 2025 at 10:35 PM
The end of three weeks in Brazil, and I’m finally getting round to seeing this.
Reposted by Christopher Burlinson
Always proud of the things Peterhouse Choir achieve, but never more so than on days like this, when the Choir's first ever album goes on general release with Naxos. Remarkable music from @peterhousecam.bsky.social Chapel from the 1630s
Listen here: naxos.lnk.to/8574700AC
Listen here: naxos.lnk.to/8574700AC
The Choir of Peterhouse, Cambridge, Simon Jackson - Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks
Listen to Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks by The Choir of Peterhouse, Cambridge, Simon Jackson.
naxos.lnk.to
August 22, 2025 at 8:46 AM
Always proud of the things Peterhouse Choir achieve, but never more so than on days like this, when the Choir's first ever album goes on general release with Naxos. Remarkable music from @peterhousecam.bsky.social Chapel from the 1630s
Listen here: naxos.lnk.to/8574700AC
Listen here: naxos.lnk.to/8574700AC