I wonder how you can tell they didn't want to engage...because the exchange is awkward? I've lived in the Midwest, too, and you can talk to people, and sure there can be some awkwardness in any convo with a stranger but that's par for the course and often clears quickly

but isn't that a reason for talking to people and explaining? this is just a way of keeping walls up

thanks for the interest but I'm out of those copies...I'm planning on doing another print run sometime in the next month or so

Thanks so much to @fullstopmag.bsky.social and @kailanthropy.bsky.social for editing!

The deciding factor is often how much narrative attention a character receives, how present they are in the text, how much space they literally take up.

Anyway, it's a really great work out recently from
@spurleditions.bsky.social in a new translation by Dana Lupo

The narrative does not present this primarily as a problem for the hero but rather as a problem for other people, and that's precisely because this novel does not subscribe to the modern dogma of protagonist supremacy

Anyway, it's a really great work out recently from
@spurleditions.bsky.social in a new translation by Dana Lupo

The narrative does not present this primarily as a problem for the hero but rather as a problem for other people, and that's precisely because this novel does not subscribe to the modern dogma of protagonist supremacy

rather it results in a natural concern for the welfare of the people that come into the hero's life: "for it seems that I lived only by causing the death of those who were trying their hardest to save my life."

The early life of the hero of this novel is marked by the loss of his parents and several other people attempting to take care of him. But this does not, as it would in the modern novel, lead to self-centered reflexivity (I'm cursed, I'm a problem, etc.)...