“America for me was not the land of liberty, bright prospects, new beginnings. No: America was emptiness. . . . I would be pure existence there, an affectless point moving through time, nihilism’s silver bullet.” Banville’s Axel Vander, moving east to west (later reversing that movement) in SHROUD
November 23, 2025 at 7:40 PM
“America for me was not the land of liberty, bright prospects, new beginnings. No: America was emptiness. . . . I would be pure existence there, an affectless point moving through time, nihilism’s silver bullet.” Banville’s Axel Vander, moving east to west (later reversing that movement) in SHROUD
Reposted by Noctambulate
Late-stage capitalism.
Why Are Young Men Embracing the Quarter-Zip Lifestyle?
www.nytimes.com
November 23, 2025 at 6:27 PM
Late-stage capitalism.
In John Banville’s SHROUD, a riotous, Evelyn Waugh-like erotic interlude in wartime London: “What I am thinking of is the license, voluptuous and languid, with just a whiff of brimstone to it, that was granted to us by the permanent likelihood of imminent, indiscriminate, and violent death.”
November 23, 2025 at 6:12 PM
In John Banville’s SHROUD, a riotous, Evelyn Waugh-like erotic interlude in wartime London: “What I am thinking of is the license, voluptuous and languid, with just a whiff of brimstone to it, that was granted to us by the permanent likelihood of imminent, indiscriminate, and violent death.”
“Do we not on countless occasions every day step effortlessly into other selves without even noticing it?” John Banville, SHROUD
November 23, 2025 at 4:45 PM
“Do we not on countless occasions every day step effortlessly into other selves without even noticing it?” John Banville, SHROUD
Like MacDonald Harris’ equally remarkable 1964 novel MORTAL LEAP, Banville’s SHROUD sees the traumatic disruptions of war as providing the potential for transfiguration, an opportunity to unmoor the soul from social constraints.
November 22, 2025 at 2:24 PM
Like MacDonald Harris’ equally remarkable 1964 novel MORTAL LEAP, Banville’s SHROUD sees the traumatic disruptions of war as providing the potential for transfiguration, an opportunity to unmoor the soul from social constraints.
Like MacDonald Harris’ equally remarkable 1964 novel MORTAL LEAP, Banville’s SHROUD sees the traumatic disruptions of war as providing the potential for transfiguration, an opportunity to unmoor the soul from social constraints.
November 22, 2025 at 2:23 PM
Like MacDonald Harris’ equally remarkable 1964 novel MORTAL LEAP, Banville’s SHROUD sees the traumatic disruptions of war as providing the potential for transfiguration, an opportunity to unmoor the soul from social constraints.
“It felt entirely natural, like putting on a new suit of clothes that had been tailored expressly for me, or rather, for my identical twin, now dead. . . . Am I not, like everyone thrown together from a legion of selves?” Axel Vander’s transfiguration in Banville’s SHROUD
November 22, 2025 at 2:14 PM
“It felt entirely natural, like putting on a new suit of clothes that had been tailored expressly for me, or rather, for my identical twin, now dead. . . . Am I not, like everyone thrown together from a legion of selves?” Axel Vander’s transfiguration in Banville’s SHROUD
“This is the trouble with the dead, that they take their secrets with them to the grave.” John Banville, SHROUD
November 21, 2025 at 2:29 PM
“This is the trouble with the dead, that they take their secrets with them to the grave.” John Banville, SHROUD
Leading me once again to the conclusion that academic scholarship needs more studies of wealth.
🧵Thread:
🧵Thread:
1. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released three emails yesterday that were obtained from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein. These emails are damning. I’ll get to their content another time.
www.cnn.com/2025/11/12/p...
www.cnn.com/2025/11/12/p...
Epstein mentioned Trump multiple times in private emails, new release shows | CNN Politics
Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender whose death by suicide has spawned intense scrutiny of the high-profile people he knew, mentioned Donald Trump by name multiple times in private correspondenc...
www.cnn.com
November 14, 2025 at 2:57 PM
Leading me once again to the conclusion that academic scholarship needs more studies of wealth.
🧵Thread:
🧵Thread:
“All this I remembered, even though it had never happened.” In John Banville’s SHROUD, the artifice of vivid memories.
November 14, 2025 at 2:47 PM
“All this I remembered, even though it had never happened.” In John Banville’s SHROUD, the artifice of vivid memories.
“The old should have a special garment, something like a monk’s habit, simple and functional, and suitably presageful of the winding cloth.” John Banville, SHROUD
November 14, 2025 at 2:45 AM
“The old should have a special garment, something like a monk’s habit, simple and functional, and suitably presageful of the winding cloth.” John Banville, SHROUD
Reposted by Noctambulate
Condé Nast folded a beloved magazine that treated youth and feminism as political topics, not trends. Read Sarah Leonard.
www.cjr.org/feature/the-...
www.cjr.org/feature/the-...
What the closure of Teen Vogue means for journalism.
Condé Nast folded a beloved magazine that treated youth and feminism as political topics, not trends.
www.cjr.org
November 12, 2025 at 9:48 PM
Condé Nast folded a beloved magazine that treated youth and feminism as political topics, not trends. Read Sarah Leonard.
www.cjr.org/feature/the-...
www.cjr.org/feature/the-...
. . . my email self is my best self . . .
November 12, 2025 at 2:33 PM
. . . my email self is my best self . . .
The military logic of Stewart’s 1949 FIRE. Watching his beloved forest burn, the conservation minded “Fire Boss” Bart is unstrung. “It was like fighting a war, a General figured it would cost so many dog tags . . . That was part of Bart’s trouble, he didn’t want to admit that any trees had to burn.”
November 11, 2025 at 2:32 PM
The military logic of Stewart’s 1949 FIRE. Watching his beloved forest burn, the conservation minded “Fire Boss” Bart is unstrung. “It was like fighting a war, a General figured it would cost so many dog tags . . . That was part of Bart’s trouble, he didn’t want to admit that any trees had to burn.”
George Stewart’s 1949 FIRE plunges one back into mid-century gender norms. The plucky college girl in the fire tower waits, as thick smoke rises, for the young weatherman to rescue her; the untried forest supervisor has to show grit before he is called “Slim,” his preferred manly nickname.
November 11, 2025 at 2:00 PM
George Stewart’s 1949 FIRE plunges one back into mid-century gender norms. The plucky college girl in the fire tower waits, as thick smoke rises, for the young weatherman to rescue her; the untried forest supervisor has to show grit before he is called “Slim,” his preferred manly nickname.
Back from an eight day driving and hiking jaunt due south to the borderlands, all of it under clear skies and a spectacular super moon. Trip reading was George R. Stewart’s 1949 FIRE in which wilderness conservation vies with the economic logic of extraction.
November 11, 2025 at 1:36 PM
Back from an eight day driving and hiking jaunt due south to the borderlands, all of it under clear skies and a spectacular super moon. Trip reading was George R. Stewart’s 1949 FIRE in which wilderness conservation vies with the economic logic of extraction.
“He hated the younger man because his days of strength lay ahead, and because he thought of trees as lumber, and figured fire-fighting on sheets of paper.” As the Spitcat fire continues to devour the forest in George Stewart’s FIRE, an emotional generational divide emerges.
November 8, 2025 at 2:34 PM
“He hated the younger man because his days of strength lay ahead, and because he thought of trees as lumber, and figured fire-fighting on sheets of paper.” As the Spitcat fire continues to devour the forest in George Stewart’s FIRE, an emotional generational divide emerges.
“And now with a kind of slow majesty — when the end of the world comes, there is no need to hurry — the crown-fire moved down the ridge, leaping from tree top to tree top” — a cold weather front kicks-up the blaze in George Stewart’s FIRE
November 6, 2025 at 7:24 PM
“And now with a kind of slow majesty — when the end of the world comes, there is no need to hurry — the crown-fire moved down the ridge, leaping from tree top to tree top” — a cold weather front kicks-up the blaze in George Stewart’s FIRE
West Texas Ramble (11/6/2025). Hiking under the supermoon in the Davis Mountains; late evening at the Indian Lodge; browsing Donald Judd at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa
November 6, 2025 at 6:28 PM
West Texas Ramble (11/6/2025). Hiking under the supermoon in the Davis Mountains; late evening at the Indian Lodge; browsing Donald Judd at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa
“Like a man, a fire exists in time . . . where once it scarcely crept, now suddenly it walks and runs.” The wildfire as life form in George Stewart’s novel FIRE (1948). “The fire is a thing in itself. It begins, and is, and ends; it is born, and lives, and dies.”
November 6, 2025 at 5:47 PM
“Like a man, a fire exists in time . . . where once it scarcely crept, now suddenly it walks and runs.” The wildfire as life form in George Stewart’s novel FIRE (1948). “The fire is a thing in itself. It begins, and is, and ends; it is born, and lives, and dies.”
Wake-up view. Marathon TX
November 6, 2025 at 2:22 PM
Wake-up view. Marathon TX
“His motto seemed to be: ‘I suffer and I stay silent.’” Reading in typescript a new translation of HONORINE, one of Balzac’s long stories, in which a reclusive and otherwise stoic aristocrat lives a secret life of charity, entrapped in a fervor of selfless benevolence.
November 1, 2025 at 5:12 PM
“His motto seemed to be: ‘I suffer and I stay silent.’” Reading in typescript a new translation of HONORINE, one of Balzac’s long stories, in which a reclusive and otherwise stoic aristocrat lives a secret life of charity, entrapped in a fervor of selfless benevolence.
Reposted by Noctambulate
Usually, when your beliefs fail to evolve as you age, it’s a bad thing
However I’m feeling good about my crotchety, knee-jerk attachment to radical 20c concepts like anti-racism, don’t do crimes, avoid financial bubbles, feed all the kids, fight Nazis, etc etc
It’s a weird time to be obsolete!
However I’m feeling good about my crotchety, knee-jerk attachment to radical 20c concepts like anti-racism, don’t do crimes, avoid financial bubbles, feed all the kids, fight Nazis, etc etc
It’s a weird time to be obsolete!
October 31, 2025 at 12:26 AM
Usually, when your beliefs fail to evolve as you age, it’s a bad thing
However I’m feeling good about my crotchety, knee-jerk attachment to radical 20c concepts like anti-racism, don’t do crimes, avoid financial bubbles, feed all the kids, fight Nazis, etc etc
It’s a weird time to be obsolete!
However I’m feeling good about my crotchety, knee-jerk attachment to radical 20c concepts like anti-racism, don’t do crimes, avoid financial bubbles, feed all the kids, fight Nazis, etc etc
It’s a weird time to be obsolete!
Rising in the ranks of his profession, T. C. Worsley finds himself increasingly unsuited to administrative duties: “My sympathies were against all authority [and] I was always on the side of the lawbreaker. How then could I weild authority with any conviction?” FLANNELED FOOL
October 26, 2025 at 10:03 PM
Rising in the ranks of his profession, T. C. Worsley finds himself increasingly unsuited to administrative duties: “My sympathies were against all authority [and] I was always on the side of the lawbreaker. How then could I weild authority with any conviction?” FLANNELED FOOL
On my own this weekend, with H in Portland on business. Dropped into an old haunt, The Normandy Kitchen, for brunch after quite a few years away. Glad to say they’ve maintained their strict policy of *always* having Turner Classic movies (muted) on the television over the bar.
October 26, 2025 at 6:15 PM
On my own this weekend, with H in Portland on business. Dropped into an old haunt, The Normandy Kitchen, for brunch after quite a few years away. Glad to say they’ve maintained their strict policy of *always* having Turner Classic movies (muted) on the television over the bar.