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wdclarke.bsky.social
Dubyedee
@wdclarke.bsky.social
830 followers 220 following 790 posts
Writer.
—PhD English UWarwick 2009, pubbed on Thomas Pynchon
—Two novels with @coronasamizdat.bsky.social
For now, not here much...active at http://goodreads.com/wdclarke
https://wdclarke.org (reviews, crit, pol economy)
Ontario, Canada
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wdclarke.bsky.social
Dubyedee @wdclarke.bsky.social · 13d
Reposting/transmuting these monitory bits of critical biography as tripartite literary career-path/lifeplan 🧵:
(1) Deliberate self-exposure to the Vico virus
Vico's gift [of his own book] did not elicit a response in this case either. The author was bitterly disappointed with the public reaction to his book, or to be more exact, with the lack of reaction. 'In this city', he wrote from Naples, 11 reckon that I have sent it to the desert, and I avoid all the main centres so as not to meet the people to whom I have sent copies, and if I cannot avoid them, I greet them hastily; and when this happens none of them give any sign of having read it, and so confirm me in my opinion that I have sent it to the desert.' Since the ideas of Descartes remained so fashionable in Naples, Vico commented sadly in another of his letters, it was only to be expected that his own work would be condemned.
wdclarke.bsky.social
“...at World Liberty Financial, Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered”
www.wsj.com/finance/curr...

Viz. my review of @ebharrington.bsky.social 's book, Offshore: Stealth Wealth &the New Colonialism:
blog.wdclarke.org/offshore-ste...
(+ a propos of my An Offshore Finance Bestiary, link in reply)
Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism, by Brooke Harrington (Review)
Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism, by Brooke Harrington, is a heavily-endnoted “Norton Short” of about 100 pages—at about half the length of Oxford’s VSI series, th…
blog.wdclarke.org
February 8, 2026 at 12:43 PM
wdclarke.bsky.social
Just popping back in to share the lyrics to a song, begun in early 2024...
(not *at all* to ‘shame’ the very busy musician/writer friend I sent it to hahahahaha)
...that I finally finished at the end of 2025, after many a dead end...

blog.wdclarke.org/the-song-the...
The Song & The Singer
At the end of 2025 I finally finished a song (lyrics, barebones melody) that I had begun over a year earlier, a song I had expressly written with a specific duo in mind—a very busy musician-friend/…
blog.wdclarke.org
January 30, 2026 at 4:57 PM
wdclarke.bsky.social
Reposting/transmuting these monitory bits of critical biography as tripartite literary career-path/lifeplan 🧵:
(1) Deliberate self-exposure to the Vico virus
Vico's gift [of his own book] did not elicit a response in this case either. The author was bitterly disappointed with the public reaction to his book, or to be more exact, with the lack of reaction. 'In this city', he wrote from Naples, 11 reckon that I have sent it to the desert, and I avoid all the main centres so as not to meet the people to whom I have sent copies, and if I cannot avoid them, I greet them hastily; and when this happens none of them give any sign of having read it, and so confirm me in my opinion that I have sent it to the desert.' Since the ideas of Descartes remained so fashionable in Naples, Vico commented sadly in another of his letters, it was only to be expected that his own work would be condemned.
January 28, 2026 at 12:37 PM
wdclarke.bsky.social
The NYT Special: Confrontation occurred, rib broke

CNNification: Confronts Ice, breaks own rib

Rufology: (BLM + DEI)*CRT = ANTIFA 101 in the ICUs of MN
{FAFO in USA}
January 27, 2026 at 9:11 PM
Reposted by Dubyedee
yoonkim.bsky.social
“It is not through form [Gestalt] but rather through transformation that creatures can offer themselves inexhaustibly to poetry from this source.”

— Walter Benjamin

from an essay recently translated for the first time (shared by Winter Pallaksch):
www.e-flux.com/journal/157/...
The Dipped Magic Wand: On Max Kommerell’s “Jean Paul” - Journal #157
Appearing for the first time in English, Walter Benjamin’s 1934 review of Max Kommerell’s book on the German poet Jean Paul.
www.e-flux.com
January 27, 2026 at 8:50 PM
Reposted by Dubyedee
yoonkim.bsky.social
“Only in dreams, in poetry, in play […] do we sometimes arrive at what we were before we were this thing that, who knows, we are.”

— Julio Cortázar, Hopscotch
January 27, 2026 at 5:44 PM
wdclarke.bsky.social
Vico, sending free copies of his books out and about, into the social desert, where only media darlings deserve acknowledgement of receipt-of-book
January 27, 2026 at 2:57 PM
Reposted by Dubyedee
stereogum.com
"Amazon is owned by Jeff Bezos, a billionaire backer of the president," writes Neil Young. “The president's international policies and his support of ICE, make it impossible for me to ignore his actions.”

He also announced that anyone in Greenland can access his entire catalog for free at his site.
Neil Young Reasserts Amazon Boycott, Gifts Entire Catalog To Greenland
In October, Neil Young pulled his catalog from Amazon Music and called for a boycott. “BUY LOCAL. BUY DIRECT. BEZOS SUPPORTS THIS GOVERNMENT. IT DOES NOT SUPPORT YOU OR ME,” he wrote. Now, he’s reasse...
stereogum.com
January 27, 2026 at 12:38 AM
wdclarke.bsky.social
“I am not a character in a novel,” says Conrad’s Razumov...

(from House of Meetings by Martin Amis)
January 25, 2026 at 7:57 PM
wdclarke.bsky.social
Excellent interview/analysis of the, as we were wont to say, "current conjuncture"...
January 25, 2026 at 1:35 PM
wdclarke.bsky.social
That time Rahm Emanuel (and Tim Geitner) "prioritized" families out by killing any Obama admin notion of foreclosure prevention

(from We've Got People by @ryangrim.bsky.social )
Obama framed it in moral and political terms, saying at the meeting that the Summers-Romer idea would "strike a blow for prudence" and "begin to change the reckless behavior of Wall Street and show millions of unemployed Americans that ac- countability flows in both directions." While the debate went on, Obama got up and left. "Look," he said, "I'm going to get a haircut and have dinner with my family. You've heard me. When I come back I want this issue resolved." Emanuel waited until the boss left the room. "Everyone shut the fuck up. Let me be clear — taking down the banking system in a program that could cost $700 billion is a fantasy," he said. "Listen, it's not going to fuckin' happen. We have no fucking credibil- ity. So give it up. The job of everyone in this room is to move the president, when he gets back, toward a solution that works." Romer felt like she'd been "punched in the stomach," she later said.126 "Right there, Rahm killed it." When Obama returned, Summers told him about Emanuel's political concern and ac- knowledged it was real. But, he added, there was S200 billion left in the bailout account, and it could be used to break up and resolve Citigroup. When that went well, they'd be able to go to Congress to repeat it with other institutions. At the same time, Emanuel added, Geithner could continue with his stress tests and his "support" for the banks — in other words, the Fed and Treasury would pump them full of as much money as needed to keep them afloat. It was agreed. The president may have been judge and jury in the room, but he wasn't the executioner. He tasked Geithner with drawing up plans to resolve Citigroup. Back at the Treasury Department, Geithner met with his economic team. Much as Trump's advisers have done to him, Geithner simply ignored Obama's order. "I don't want even one molecule of energy spent on anything other than the stress tests! "Energy is measured in 'ergs," Alan Krueger said. OK, Geithner clarified, not 1 erg of energy.
January 23, 2026 at 5:32 PM
wdclarke.bsky.social
You, me, and everyone else here on BookSky

(Pride and Prejudice Vol I Ch11)
January 14, 2026 at 8:49 PM
wdclarke.bsky.social
Style is not adornment, but content (cont'd)

[Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder—Isaiah Berlin]

#c18th #18thC
January 14, 2026 at 3:06 PM
wdclarke.bsky.social
Amateurs.
RNC's seriously needs to get casting about for their "21stC Leni Riefenstahl: miracle worker with shadows & light, Instagrammatologist of blood & soil"
Poorly lit Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, decked out in fascist-inspired greatcoat
January 14, 2026 at 1:10 PM
wdclarke.bsky.social
TLDR:
bsky.app/profile/wdcl...
wdclarke.bsky.social Dubyedee @wdclarke.bsky.social · 29d
I wrote some about Becca Rothfeld's 2024 debut essay collection, All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess...here:
www.goodreads.com/book/show/12...
...hopefully more to come.
All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess
A glorious call to throw off restraint and balance in f…
www.goodreads.com
January 12, 2026 at 11:53 AM
wdclarke.bsky.social
I wrote some about Becca Rothfeld's 2024 debut essay collection, All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess...here:
www.goodreads.com/book/show/12...
...hopefully more to come.
All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess
A glorious call to throw off restraint and balance in f…
www.goodreads.com
January 11, 2026 at 7:28 PM
wdclarke.bsky.social
Richard II
A thousand flatterers sit within thycrown, 100 Whose compass is no bigger than thy head, And yet, encagéd in so snull a verge, The waste is no whit lesser than thy land
January 10, 2026 at 8:27 PM
wdclarke.bsky.social
Just two days ago.
All gone now.
January 10, 2026 at 1:20 PM
wdclarke.bsky.social
Oh, for the good ol' days when typographers were allowed creative latitude...
The genius of "ideasthanhewaspreparedto" as...adverb?!
Vico 's intellectual development Naples and the Investigators, the bishop Gilbert Burnet, noted that there were 'societies of men at Naples of freer thoughts than can be found in any other place of Italy', adding that they were 'ill looked on by the clergy and represented as a set of atheists'. There was a dramatic confirmation of the truth of Burnet's observation six years later, in 1691, when a trial took place at Naples of four men accused by the Inquisition of believing that the universe was composed of atoms; that there were men on earth before Adam (so that the Bible gave only a partial account of the origins of mankind) ; and that Christ was an impostor. Two of the accused were friends of Vico, who was twenty- three years old at the time of the trial. The dangers of unorthodoxy in early modern Italy must not be forgotten, and the possibility has to be borne in mind when reading Vico that he harboured more unorthodox ideas than he wasprepared to admit openly 'below,pp. 85-6'. However, it is also important to remember that the Inquisition was quite unable to stifle the Neapolitan debate between ancients and moderns. In the course of this debate Vico's ideas took form. They were in a numberofcasesa synthesis of opposing positions, or
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 PM
wdclarke.bsky.social
A riff on why Sam Lipsyte is (at least partially/so far, early days) filling that Martin Amis-shaped hole in my life...

goodreads.com/review/show/...
W.D. Clarke's review of The Ask
5/5: “We’ve got to stick together,” said Predrag, lifted his face to the sun. “Who exactly are we?” I asked. “The American Dreamers. There aren’t too many of us left.” * I sent Purdy an email, tha...
goodreads.com
January 4, 2026 at 4:47 PM
wdclarke.bsky.social
If capitalism is a tawdry prom date, who pins the corsage on whom?
(from Sam Lipsyte's 2019 novel, Hark)
Capitalism isn't going anpvhere. Capitalism's not natural, but at this point, neither is nature. You have to dance with the one you came with, Fraz has heard, even if it's hard to picture escorting a global economic system to a line-dancing barn or a strobe-stabby club. Maybe it's more like Fraz's high school prom, where you pick up capitalism at its house, pin a corsage to its gown, and later have drunk sex in a Lysol-tangy motel room down the shore. Or should Fraz, in fact, wear the corsage?
December 28, 2025 at 1:29 PM
wdclarke.bsky.social
My word but the forthcoming novel The Tavern at the End of History by @morriscollins.bsky.social never fails to surprise...
(and here I was thinking he was an all right kinda fella, for a Yank)
"Canadian podcasters with precious art. There are worse nei bors to have." "No," Baruch said. "Neighbors like these are the worst kind."
December 24, 2025 at 10:07 PM
Reposted by Dubyedee
lioneltrolling.bsky.social
I've posted the full video and an analysis of Bari Weiss's memo.—
www.unpopularfront.news/p/60-minutes...
60 Minutes's 'Inside CECOT'
The Full Video and Bari Weiss's 'Memo'
www.unpopularfront.news
December 23, 2025 at 2:46 PM
wdclarke.bsky.social
Finding Bsky-mutual @drbibliomane.bsky.social being cited in today's reading a pleasant surprise!
(Daniel Defoe and the Bank of England, Valerie Hamilton et al)
in the early eighteenth century. 18 Of course, the acceptance of this assumption carries a lot of epistemological baggage, which is summarized by Deirdre Lynch and William B. Warner: Introducing the eighteenth century "origins" of "the novel",we validate the assumption that what novels are now was already immanent in what they were then. We ratify geopolitical boundaries (between, for example, England and France). We legislate for a canon of exemplary, "truly" novelistic texts and legislate against popular practices of reading and writing. These are problems endemic to efforts to ascribe a distinct, essential nature to the novel. 19 The idea of a genre is a limiting device, in other words. It is a way of
December 22, 2025 at 1:40 AM
wdclarke.bsky.social
With the book on the right (review link in reply),
I finally got this OG MF outta my system (to the extent of available editions), thank Christ
December 21, 2025 at 8:48 PM