Joel Pinckney
LightNews LightNews
jpinckney.bsky.social
Joel Pinckney
@jpinckney.bsky.social
590 followers 390 following 320 posts
Book worker at University of Texas Press | Formerly a bookseller, at Paris Review | Occasionally writing about books at LARB, Full Stop, The Millions, elsewhere | joelpinckney@gmail.com
Posts Replies Media Videos
jpinckney.bsky.social
A passage that means more to me than just about any other:
Screenshot of text of a passage from Marilynne Robinson’s HOUSEKEEPING: “There is so little to remember of anyone—an anecdote, a conversation at table. But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair with dreaming, habitual fondness, not having meant to keep us waiting long.”
November 11, 2025 at 3:31 AM
jpinckney.bsky.social
Please excuse the laundry and focus on the fact that my child put her bike helmet on, pulled a Vonnegut book off the shelf, and climbed onto the couch to “read.”
A picture of my two-year-old daughter sitting on a gray couch amid piles of laundry, attempting to read a book, with a bookshelf in the background.
October 27, 2025 at 10:59 PM
jpinckney.bsky.social
Free lede for an essay on what our ubiquitous, therapeutic use of the language of “connection” is doing to us (or revealing about us), brought to you by my Extra peppermint gum.
Picture of the inside of a pack of Extra brand gum with the text “15 sticks of gum, 15 opportunities to connect.”
October 22, 2025 at 10:02 PM
jpinckney.bsky.social
The soundtrack in my head to this novel was the Drive-By Truckers’ “Putting People on the Moon”, which I consider to be very high praise. This is a playful, viscerally descriptive, morally serious novel from the great folks at @graywolfpress.bsky.social that is well worth your time and attention.
A picture of a hand holding a copy of THE HIGH HEAVEN, a book by Joshua Wheeler.
October 12, 2025 at 6:29 PM
jpinckney.bsky.social
I look down at my phone for five seconds, I swear, and when I look up my two-year-old’s got a damn apple balanced on her head.
A picture of my two-year-old daughter with an apple balanced on her head.
October 7, 2025 at 10:50 PM
jpinckney.bsky.social
Ever since reading this @albertburneko.bsky.social paragraph a while back, I find myself thinking about it, encountering unwelcome exemplars of it, far more often than I wish.
Text of a screenshot from a piece at Defector by Albert Burneko, titled "Toward A Theory Of Kevin Roose": "My suspicion, my awful awful newfound theory, is that there are people with a sincere and even kind of innocent belief that we are all just picking winners, in everything: that ideology, advocacy, analysis, criticism, affinity, even taste and style and association are essentially predictions. That what a person tries to do, the essential task of a person, is to identify who and what is going to come out on top, and align with it. The rest—what you say, what you do—is just enacting your pick and working in service to it."
October 3, 2025 at 7:00 PM
jpinckney.bsky.social
“This man wanted to fix strangeness but she was primarily in the business of conveying strangeness.“

From Joshua Wheeler’s really terrific forthcoming novel, THE HIGH HEAVEN.
Text of a screenshot from a PDF that reads: “The cats jumped from the counter to the floor, made their way to the window where they took up posts as lookouts. The bookseller’s job was to sell books but really her job was to carefully read books and then quickly read people and then improvise a high form of mental alchemy that resulted in a definitive alteration of a customer’s worldview through exposure to ideas or emotions or beauty or savagery or any experience previously unknown or even fathomed by the customer before the pur- chase of any book she recommended. This man wanted to fix strange- ness but she was primarily in the business of purveying strangeness. Any hardware store clerk can sell you the hinge you need and any me- — 57 — chanic can sell you the gasket or bushing you’re after. But nobody walks into a bookstore knowing exactly what they need, even if they’ve got a book in mind. She pulled her glasses down and looked at Oliver through them and then above them, trying to figure out just exactly which kind of strangeness they were dancing around. Then she put the glasses back on her head and motioned for Oliver to follow as she walked the labyrinth of shelves, a finger wagging augeringly up and down and all around the spines calling out to her.”
September 2, 2025 at 12:44 AM
jpinckney.bsky.social
I don't have any words for what reading "deeply human" in this bit made me feel.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/t...
A screenshot of text that reads: "What devastates Maria Raine was that there was no alert system in place to tell her that her son’s life was in danger. Adam told the chatbot, “You’re the only one who knows of my attempts to commit.” ChatGPT responded: “That means more than you probably think. Thank you for trusting me with that. There’s something both deeply human and deeply heartbreaking about being the only one who carries that truth for you.”"
August 26, 2025 at 6:11 PM
jpinckney.bsky.social
“It is one of the inconveniences of convent life that though you may suspect your fellow nun of being a murderess you are obliged to live cheek by jowl with her for the rest of your days, and make the best of it as you may.”
A book, Sylvia Townsend Warner’s THE CORNER THAT HELD THEM, sitting on a wood table.
August 6, 2025 at 12:04 PM
jpinckney.bsky.social
This is a hell of a book review.
A screenshot of text from Brandy Jensen's review of Sam Tanenhaus's BUCKLEY: "There is one fantasy about Buckley that goes like this: America was better off when men like him were famous, and that we are lacking proper right-wing intellectuals. Of course, the right wing itself doesn’t believe this; they think they have plenty. It is liberals, and sometimes even leftists, who dream of a modern Firing Line. I sympathize with this fantasy but do not particularly share it. My wish, which is maybe equally childish, is that men like Buckley would be burdened by the fact of themselves. I would love to believe that people like him are conflicted, tortured, haunted in some way when, as they survey their lives, they confront what they have wrought. Tanenhaus offers no comfort in this regard. A priest, looking to reassure the devout Buckley, once suggested to him that “everyone at some point has doubts.” Buckley responds, “I never did.” The book gives me the sense that this is true of matters both spiritual and profane. Buckley never doubted, never wavered, merely laid down his head after a long, untroubled life. He lied as well as he did, and so prolifically and for so long, because it really came that easily to him."
July 18, 2025 at 8:57 PM
jpinckney.bsky.social
In case you were wondering, my child continues to go extremely hard during "beach week" at daycare.
My child, wearing sunglasses, sitting in her classroom at daycare in an inflatable tube with her legs up.
July 16, 2025 at 5:53 PM
jpinckney.bsky.social
I couldn't tell you what exactly is going on with the vibe at my child's daycare today but the pics we're getting suggest she is going quite hard.
A picture of my two-year-old child holding a beach ball with sunglasses on her face and a towel on her head. A picture of my two-year-old child standing in the dark, holding a beach ball with sunglasses on her face and a towel on her head.
July 14, 2025 at 4:58 PM
jpinckney.bsky.social
Oh it's terrific, one of my favorites of his. Picked it up again after the bill passed last week, specifically going back to this passage in thinking about the ICE expansion that's coming:
July 9, 2025 at 4:50 PM
jpinckney.bsky.social
The books I’ve been spending some time with lately. (I would like more of you to do this.)
A stack of six books, with a bookshelf in the background. The six books are: Power of Gentleness, by Anne Dufourmantelle No Name in the Street, by James Baldwin Axiomatic, by Maria Tumarkin Dwelling, by Emily Hunt Kivel The Last Picture Show, by Larry McMurtry Blood Orchid, by Charles Bowden
July 9, 2025 at 1:51 PM
jpinckney.bsky.social
Less than a year ago. We’ve all lived a few lives since this, huh?
Cover of the July 29-August 11, 2024 issue of New York Magazine with the headline “Welcome to Kamalot” and the text “In a matter of days, the Democratic Party discovered its future was actually in the White House all along.” The cover features an image of Kamala Harris sitting atop a coconut with her arms raised in triumph, and major figures in the Democratic Party likewise holding up their arms in celebration.
July 7, 2025 at 9:41 PM
jpinckney.bsky.social
A screenshot of text that reads: “Force does not work the way its advocates seem to think it does. It does not, for example, reveal to the victim the strength of his adversary. On the contrary, it reveals the weakness, even the panic of his adversary, and this revelation invests the victim with patience. Furthermore, it is ultimately fatal to create too many victims. The victor can do nothing with these victims, for they do not belong to him, but—to the victims. They belong to the people he is fighting. The people know this, and as inexorably as the roll call—the honor roll—of victims expands, so does their will become inexorable: they resolve that these dead, their brethren, shall not have died in vain.” … “Power, then, which can have no morality in itself, is yet dependent on human energy, on the wills and desires of human beings. When power translates itself into tyranny, it means that the principles on which that power depended, and which were its justification, are bankrupt. When this happens, and it is happening now, power can only be defended by thugs and mediocrities—and seas of blood. The representatives of the status quo are sickened and divided, and dread looking into the eyes of their young; while the excluded begin to realize, having endured everything, that they can endure everything. They do not know the precise shape of the future, but they know that the future belongs to them. They realize this—paradoxically—by the failure of the moral energy of their oppressors and begin, almost instinctively, to forge a new morality, to create the principles on which a new world will be built.” James Baldwin, NO NAME IN THE STREET"
July 3, 2025 at 9:11 PM
jpinckney.bsky.social
Real good book.
A copy of Larry McMurtry’s book THE LAST PICTURE SHOW sitting on a black table.
June 26, 2025 at 12:27 AM
jpinckney.bsky.social
Reading this book right now is a balm.
A picture of a book titled POWER OF GENTLENESS: MEDITATIONS ON THE RISK OF LIVING.
June 12, 2025 at 2:31 PM
jpinckney.bsky.social
Good morning everybody. May your metaphorical swings be open for you today. (Isla’s very real ones, unfortunately, were not.)
A picture of my daughter standing in a blue dress with pink sandals looking longingly at fully occupied swings (not pictured).
June 8, 2025 at 1:54 PM
jpinckney.bsky.social
“What was it about this place, this huge place, that could produce such a uniformity of political thought and behavior?”

Spending some time today with THE CONSERVATIVE FRONTIER, written toward an answer to that question (publishing with us in October). A real fascinating work of narrative history.
A hand holding an early copy of Jeff Roche’s forthcoming book, THE CONSERVATIVE FRONTIER: TEXAS AND THE ORIGINS OF THE NEW RIGHT, publishing on October 7.
May 22, 2025 at 5:29 PM
jpinckney.bsky.social
Isla saw this fellow, went up and took his hand, and said “sad.”
A picture of my daughter holding the hand and looking up at the face of a wooden sculpture of a man.
May 18, 2025 at 2:33 PM
jpinckney.bsky.social
A Pope who actually lived as if these beautiful words had real, grave meaning on what it means to be in the world.
A screenshot of a passage from the Bible, from Matthew 5:3-9: [3] “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. [4] “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. [5] “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. [6] “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. [7] “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. [8] “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. [9] “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."
April 21, 2025 at 5:11 PM
jpinckney.bsky.social
Pretty remarkable how quickly Alienated Majesty has become one of the most interesting bookstores in the country. (They have great koozies.)
Picture of Alienated Majesty’s koozie with the text “Home of the Leastsellers.”
March 22, 2025 at 7:09 PM
jpinckney.bsky.social
Any time, any place.
A picture of my one-year-old child sitting on a paved road reading a book.
March 7, 2025 at 1:24 AM
jpinckney.bsky.social
Find me a better book dedication.

(from Pat Blashill's SOMEDAY ALL THE ADULTS WILL DIE!, on the birth of Texas punk, publishing with us in September.)
Screenshot of the dedication in an early PDF of Pat Blashill's forthcoming book, SOMEDAY ALL THE ADULTS WILL DIE!: "This is dedicated to the musicians, artists, writers, designers, producers, loiterers, posers, style queens and kings, gadflies, runaways, and crazy motherfuckers who are making a scene RIGHT NOW somewhere in the world, closer thank you think . . . "
February 19, 2025 at 9:06 PM