Nicholas Dames
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njdames.bsky.social
Nicholas Dames
@njdames.bsky.social
Professor @ Columbia • co-EIC Public Books • writer/critic elsewhere, on the novel then and now • most recent book THE CHAPTER (Princeton UP)
Sometimes the mail brings treats
December 18, 2024 at 2:00 PM
I’m in the new issue of @nplusonemag.com with a piece on a recent kind of theory-text— the ingredients of which are exhaustion, abstraction, and a stoic kind of mordancy, and whose voice is that of the reading mother:
Tired as a Mother | Nicholas Dames
What is the tone of this literary-theoretical tone? Take away anything from reading these books together and it’s their similar vibe: something quietly persistent, invested in its own disinvestments, ...
www.nplusonemag.com
December 16, 2024 at 7:56 PM
I got a chance to talk to @sophieratcliffe.bsky.social about her recent hybrid of memoir and literary theory, and we discussed genres of academic writing, following in the paths of fictional characters, parenting, aging, and more
“Parallel Tracks”: Sophie Ratcliffe on Academia, Memoirs, and Motherhood
“I used to want to experience everything. I don’t anymore.”
www.publicbooks.org
December 13, 2024 at 4:35 PM
Is there a possible combination of Bookmatch quiz answers that would give you *both* of these recommendations? Donate and find out
Today is a great day to take n+1's Bookmatch quiz. When starved for conversation you can mention that @shteyngart.bsky.social recommended that you read Dovlatov, or that @njdames.bsky.social is all in on Elizabeth Bowen. Far superior to other discussion topics! secure.givelively.org/donate/n1-fo...
secure.givelively.org
November 28, 2024 at 6:18 PM
Up now at @publicbooks.bsky.social: a conversation between Merve Emre and Devika Rege about the latter’s excellent debut novel, out now in the US
The Poetics of Democracy
“This novel is about a collective, but that collective is not the nation. It can only allude to the nation without becoming it.”
www.publicbooks.org
November 20, 2024 at 4:30 PM
Reposted by Nicholas Dames
Ok, I started a starter pack for novel scholars and the people who love them. Long live long forms! Happy to add anyone I missed.
go.bsky.app/FcvMAmd
November 9, 2024 at 6:10 PM
Of interest to some here I’m sure:
Public Thinker: Jonathan Kramnick on the Craft of Criticism amid Institutional Decline
“Arguments stand or fall to the degree to which the practice is done well.”
www.publicbooks.org
August 8, 2024 at 3:29 PM
Reposted by Nicholas Dames
Imagine your first experience reading a book divided into chapters. What confronted you was a story that unexpectedly stuttered. Discover the fascinating history of the chapter from @njdames.bsky.social.

press.princeton.edu/ideas/the-lo...

#Literature
November 15, 2023 at 5:23 AM
NYC-area friends: there’s a book launch event for THE CHAPTER at the n+1 office in Greenpoint on Wednesday night, where I’ll be talking with critic/journalist/novelist Christine Smallwood about all things segmented, interrupted, paused, etc. Beer and wine (and book copies) for sale!
Nicholas Dames and Christine Smallwood in conversation
On Wednesday, November 15, join critics and n+1 contributors Nicholas Dames and Christine Smallwood for a conversation about Dames’s new book, The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the ...
www.nplusonemag.com
November 13, 2023 at 4:50 PM
Today is my book’s official pub date, and while I’m not at home— or even in the US— to celebrate it, I *was* able to visit it at the storied Heffers in Cambridge. Now for the longest of deep breaths.
November 7, 2023 at 2:45 PM
I had the pleasure of talking about my book *The Chapter* with @xavierbonilla.bsky.social -- a fantastic interlocutor-- for his podcast "Converging Dialogues". We touched on therapy-metaphors, why novel chapters get longer, and why we can't not segment time. www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyaC...
#276 - A Segmented History of The Chapter: A Dialogue with Nicholas Dames
In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Nicholas Dames about the history of the chapter. They discuss how chapters have boundaries, define what i...
www.youtube.com
November 6, 2023 at 3:07 PM
Vilém Flusser, Does Writing Have a Future? (2002)
October 21, 2023 at 2:30 PM
Public Books has moved in, is unpacking boxes, getting used to the new place
Hi, everyone! Here we are, on Bluesky!

If you haven't heard of PUBLIC BOOKS, we're an online magazine of ideas, arts, and scholarship.

Check us out :
www.publicbooks.org

Pitch us:
www.publicbooks.org/submissions/
October 19, 2023 at 2:22 AM
Incisive and depressing piece on what’s been happening gradually and now suddenly to humanities research funding
Does humanities research matter anymore? (opinion)
The rapid collapse in available research funding is one crisis in the humanities we aren’t talking enough about, Asheesh Kapur Siddique writes.
www.insidehighered.com
August 15, 2023 at 11:07 PM
The New Criticism hits the US: Harvard course catalogue, 1930-1
August 2, 2023 at 4:38 PM