Michael Snyder
mikeysnyde.bsky.social
Michael Snyder
@mikeysnyde.bsky.social
Writer, reader, educator, thinker, individual, shoegazer, classic jazzer, biographer of John Joseph Mathews and James Purdy.
Reposted by Michael Snyder
Just in time for its 100th birthday, The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein is now back in print from @dalkeyarchive.bsky.social

dalkeyarchive.store/products/the...
The Making of Americans
By Gertrude Stein ISBN: 9781628974669 Publication Date: 12/16/2025 In The Making of Americans, Gertrude Stein sets out to tell "a history of a family's progress," radically reworking the traditional f...
dalkeyarchive.store
December 17, 2025 at 5:15 PM
Reposted by Michael Snyder
Like many others I was probably formed by Rob Reiner’s movies more than I realized. I met him once and was struck by the practical efforts he made to translate his powerful understanding of people and how they relate to one another into a more durable and kinder form of democratic politics. (1/2)
December 17, 2025 at 4:59 PM
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20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you one book per day for 20 days in no particular order no explanations no reviews just covers.
January 17, 2025 at 3:28 PM
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What’s everyone reading? I’m revisiting one of my favorites by a most influential authors: IN A SHALLOW GRAVE by James Purdy. His prose becomes poetry. Case in point: “… we both exchanged what was like one single, same terrible look, a look like two shots which met and exploded together in the air.”
October 4, 2025 at 4:02 PM
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Can someone start reissuing all the old James Purdy novels? The world needs to know.
January 23, 2025 at 4:03 PM
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Justin Spring's biography of Steward is a good overview, but I am also repeatedly surprised when reading biographies of other people (such as Michael Snyder's bio of James Purdy) to see Steward pop up as an important background figure.
November 25, 2025 at 5:36 PM
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Our $2.99 Kindle deal is James Purdy's IN A SHALLOW GRAVE (1975), a novel by turns Gothic, mystical, and grotesque, and, like all of Purdy's works, a compelling read. Grab it cheap while this deal lasts: www.amazon.com/Shallow-Grav...
November 12, 2025 at 9:59 PM
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James Purdy, Narrow Rooms, 1978 / Champaigne, Le Christ mort couché sur son linceul, 1654 (détail)
May 5, 2025 at 8:34 PM
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1. I feel bad for people who don't read. I can't imagine not experiencing Toni Morison, Dan Chaon, James Purdy, Ishiguro, Joy Williams, Kyle Winkler, Zora Hurston! Like ...
October 14, 2025 at 12:39 PM
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The paperback edition of #OnFreedom is out today. It preserves a positive argument about how to build a better country and has been updated to account for what has happened in 2025.
timothysnyder.org/on-freedom
October 28, 2025 at 1:06 PM
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A year ago, I launched my book #OnFreedom in a war zone – in Kharkiv, Ukraine, 35 seconds from Russian artillery. Today, I'm launching the paperback in Portland, Oregon. Which is NOT a war zone. There is a difference in the real world between what's a war and what is not, and between truth and lies.
October 28, 2025 at 9:46 PM
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I have seen the closets of men who have known happiness; and I must say they are quite a historical mess. So I worry when I see men well dressed in a pure fashion that they will be bad tempered.

- Harold Brodkey, quietly extolling stylistic "foppishnness"
October 23, 2025 at 8:49 PM
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"Any vacuum of facts and values will be filled with spectacle and war."

— Timothy Snyder, "On Freedom."
October 6, 2025 at 12:49 PM
Bob Dylan was the Old Testament and Elvis Costello the New.
September 26, 2025 at 1:52 AM
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“Anything [James] Purdy writes is a literary event of importance. He is indisputably one of the half-dozen or so living writers worth taking seriously.” —Susan Sontag, October 1964
March 29, 2025 at 8:12 PM
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WHAT. THE ACTUAL. FUCK.
Chicago Sun Times seems to have used AI to write its summer reading list of BOOKS THAT DO NOT EXIST. I did not write a book called Boiling Point. @rumaan.bsky.social and Min Jin Lee and Percival Everett etc. etc. did not write these books.
WTAF
May 20, 2025 at 3:06 PM
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Two years, two editions of Brother & Sister Enter the Forest. Thanks to everyone who supported this book over the past two years.
March 14, 2025 at 1:28 PM
Bookstack. Didion, McCarthy, Purdy, D. Barthelme, James Whitcomb Riley, Waugh, Franzen, Homestead on Cather, Joan Blondell bio, The Fall collection, etc
April 17, 2025 at 4:35 AM
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Today, April 1st, in NYC: I am honored to be delivering the annual Robert B. Silvers lecture at the NYPL. The topic will be: "The New Paganism: A Framework for Understanding Our Politics."
Livestream registration is available:
www.showclix.com/event/timoth...
Timothy Snyder: The New Paganism—A Framework for Understanding Our Politics
Tickets for Timothy Snyder: The New Paganism—A Framework for Understanding Our Politics in New York from NYPL. In this age of strife and turmoil, how do we think deeply and differently about the chang...
www.showclix.com
April 1, 2025 at 12:25 PM
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"5. Remember professional ethics.
March 30, 2025 at 4:42 PM
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Here is my best guidance for action, rendered beautifully by the great John Lithgow. I first published these lessons more than eight years ago, in late 2016. They open the twenty chapters of "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century."
snyder.substack.com/p/twenty-les...
Twenty Lessons, read by John Lithgow
Key selections from On Tyranny, for viewing and sharing
snyder.substack.com
March 30, 2025 at 2:39 PM
“Anything [James] Purdy writes is a literary event of importance. He is indisputably one of the half-dozen or so living writers worth taking seriously.” —Susan Sontag, October 1964
March 29, 2025 at 8:12 PM
Reposted by Michael Snyder
Marci Shore being clarifying on Russia and the US – the Silicon Curtain.
@marcishore.bsky.social
youtu.be/GHJIwBGcbR8?...
Marci Shore - America has Fallen under Russian Influence and Manipulation to the Detriment of the US
YouTube video by Silicon Curtain
youtu.be
March 9, 2025 at 7:09 PM
Anyone who asks a question and writes, “I’m trying to see something” gets instantly muted.
March 3, 2025 at 11:15 PM
Reposted by Michael Snyder
March 2, 2025 at 10:51 PM