zachgibson5
@zachgibson5.bsky.social
The original one-stop-shop furniture mover/literary critic.
Theory of the novel/20th C. Am Lit./Utopian Studies
Do not pack your books in a big box.
Theory of the novel/20th C. Am Lit./Utopian Studies
Do not pack your books in a big box.
Pinned
zachgibson5
@zachgibson5.bsky.social
· Nov 15
A Cloth Woven of Stories Told: John Barth and the Literature of Rectification | Los Angeles Review of Books
Zach Gibson reflects on the late-career achievement of the late novelist John Barth.
lareviewofbooks.org
Not really sure how to get rolling on here -- here's a piece I wrote for @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social over the summer on #JohnBarth 's woefully misread later career?
lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-cl...
lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-cl...
Reposted by zachgibson5
New Sincerity: American Fiction in the Neoliberal Age by Adam Kelly was reviewed in @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social
“Kelly is successful in drawing a 'generational portrait' of how American fiction developed between the end of the Reagan presidency and the 2008 financial crisis.”
#ReadUP
“Kelly is successful in drawing a 'generational portrait' of how American fiction developed between the end of the Reagan presidency and the 2008 financial crisis.”
#ReadUP
Toward an Aesthetic of Post-Boomer Fiction | Los Angeles Review of Books
Zach Gibson reviews Adam Kelly’s “New Sincerity: American Fiction in the Neoliberal Age.”
lareviewofbooks.org
April 7, 2025 at 6:54 PM
New Sincerity: American Fiction in the Neoliberal Age by Adam Kelly was reviewed in @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social
“Kelly is successful in drawing a 'generational portrait' of how American fiction developed between the end of the Reagan presidency and the 2008 financial crisis.”
#ReadUP
“Kelly is successful in drawing a 'generational portrait' of how American fiction developed between the end of the Reagan presidency and the 2008 financial crisis.”
#ReadUP
lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-...
Article on Utopianism/review of last year’s @dalkeyarchive.bsky.social re-release of Angel in the Forest by #margueriteyoung up at @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social 🪽
Article on Utopianism/review of last year’s @dalkeyarchive.bsky.social re-release of Angel in the Forest by #margueriteyoung up at @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social 🪽
The Lost Utopia | Los Angeles Review of Books
Zach Gibson revisits cult novelist Marguerite Young’s 1945 study “Angel in the Forest: A Fairy Tale of Two Utopias.”
lareviewofbooks.org
January 13, 2025 at 12:39 AM
lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-...
Article on Utopianism/review of last year’s @dalkeyarchive.bsky.social re-release of Angel in the Forest by #margueriteyoung up at @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social 🪽
Article on Utopianism/review of last year’s @dalkeyarchive.bsky.social re-release of Angel in the Forest by #margueriteyoung up at @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social 🪽
November 24, 2024 at 6:55 PM
Gearing up for a winter side project
(ty @contramundumpress.bsky.social for help running these down 😊)
(ty @contramundumpress.bsky.social for help running these down 😊)
November 24, 2024 at 5:40 PM
Gearing up for a winter side project
(ty @contramundumpress.bsky.social for help running these down 😊)
(ty @contramundumpress.bsky.social for help running these down 😊)
“We don’t want to be the quaint one who thinks we know everything; we want to actually know everything. To be cute is to be crushed, to fail at the game of intellectual prowess.”
really proud of this long form piece on Salinger, MeToo, and Sianne Ngai at @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social
lareviewofbooks.org/article/hagi...
lareviewofbooks.org/article/hagi...
Hagiography of a Narcissist: On J. D. Salinger’s “Hapworth 16, 1924” | Los Angeles Review of Books
Grace Byron explores J. D. Salinger’s literary and personal legacies through the lens of “Hapworth 16, 1924.”
lareviewofbooks.org
November 24, 2024 at 4:01 PM
“We don’t want to be the quaint one who thinks we know everything; we want to actually know everything. To be cute is to be crushed, to fail at the game of intellectual prowess.”
A(nt)I-Christ
"We are not intending to imitate a confession.”
Deus in machina: Swiss church installs AI-powered Jesus
Peter’s chapel in Lucerne swaps out its priest to set up a computer and cables in confessional booth
www.theguardian.com
November 22, 2024 at 1:10 PM
A(nt)I-Christ
Reposted by zachgibson5
nearly getting mown down at a crosswalk for the fifth time this week
November 21, 2024 at 3:44 PM
nearly getting mown down at a crosswalk for the fifth time this week
Do not cross the picket line!!!
November 21, 2024 at 9:11 PM
Do not cross the picket line!!!
Seahorse. Trout. Halibut.
Poet. Philosopher. Critic.
Poet. Philosopher. Critic.
November 21, 2024 at 6:47 PM
Seahorse. Trout. Halibut.
Poet. Philosopher. Critic.
Poet. Philosopher. Critic.
Fiction +Theory/Phil. Chopping blocks. Return to old faves + jumping into new fixations on both ends
November 21, 2024 at 6:23 PM
Fiction +Theory/Phil. Chopping blocks. Return to old faves + jumping into new fixations on both ends
Love seeing these trickling out of the archive 🥰
an amazing pic of Jameson & Lefebvre @jessacharoff.bsky.social found in the UC Santa Cruz archives !!
November 21, 2024 at 6:05 PM
Love seeing these trickling out of the archive 🥰
from @annakornbluh.bsky.social 's Immediacy -- thinking about the shift from meta- to autofiction as a renewal of northrop frye's cyclical literary seasons -- drift away from maximum fragmentation/irony + toward unity/myth as a swing from Frye's winter/satire + toward comedy/spring pairings
November 21, 2024 at 3:20 PM
from @annakornbluh.bsky.social 's Immediacy -- thinking about the shift from meta- to autofiction as a renewal of northrop frye's cyclical literary seasons -- drift away from maximum fragmentation/irony + toward unity/myth as a swing from Frye's winter/satire + toward comedy/spring pairings
"it has never been easier to mistake the narrator for the author [...] and to imagine that the conceptual gap or space of difference that separates the work of fiction from the world of reality is being closed or challenged by recent shifts toward an “autofictional” mode."
in "Muriel Spark's Conceits," Timothy Bewes argues that Spark's novels "discover the means or the possibility of a thought that is subjectively uninhabitable," a thought "that only the novel form is capable of" — read it here: differencesjournal.org/writing/muri... /2
Muriel Spark’s Conceits — differences: a journal of feminist cultural studies
This essay is about the role of the “conceit” in Muriel Spark’s novels, and
its relation to “voice.” These two elements in her work, I will claim, are
antithetical.
differencesjournal.org
November 21, 2024 at 2:14 PM
"it has never been easier to mistake the narrator for the author [...] and to imagine that the conceptual gap or space of difference that separates the work of fiction from the world of reality is being closed or challenged by recent shifts toward an “autofictional” mode."
These sound really, really promising @willbeaman.bsky.social
Will Beaman inaugurates the first of a lecture series on the work and ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin.
Mikhail Bakhtin Pt. 1 – Carnival Laughter & Grotesque Realism
Will Beaman (@agoingaccount) inaugurates the first of a lecture series on the work and ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin. Drawing parallels with right wing attacks on contemporary drag performance and ballr…
moneyontheleft.org
November 21, 2024 at 2:03 PM
These sound really, really promising @willbeaman.bsky.social
@ everyone waiting in the wings of the Huntington Library is officially on notice
I hope we never learn anything about Pynchon or his life. Ideally, there won’t even be an announcement that he died, we’ll just look up one day and realize that he should be 112 years old and it must have happened at some point
November 21, 2024 at 1:45 PM
@ everyone waiting in the wings of the Huntington Library is officially on notice
Reposted by zachgibson5
Tut (1931). Charcoal sketch of Lewis's dog. Writing of "our hirsute gremlin", Lewis recalled "this small creature...stood for all that was benevolent in the universe...this fragment of primitive life confided his destiny to [my wife] and went through all the black days beside us"
November 19, 2024 at 2:52 PM
Tut (1931). Charcoal sketch of Lewis's dog. Writing of "our hirsute gremlin", Lewis recalled "this small creature...stood for all that was benevolent in the universe...this fragment of primitive life confided his destiny to [my wife] and went through all the black days beside us"
Front to back heavy hitters in winter ALH. Can't wait to read.
In the off-chance you’re interested in affect theory as a materialist theology and/or my book project on feminist an-aesthetics, you’ll find that and much smarter essays (by @sarahlwasserman.bsky.social, @katemarshall.bsky.social, & Thomas Constaninesco) in the pages of American Literary History.
The Affective Bind
Abstract. This essay considers the raucous ontology of the feeling body in relation to the expanding field of affect studies. It first shows how psychophys
academic.oup.com
November 21, 2024 at 1:06 PM
Front to back heavy hitters in winter ALH. Can't wait to read.
Reposted by zachgibson5
In the off-chance you’re interested in affect theory as a materialist theology and/or my book project on feminist an-aesthetics, you’ll find that and much smarter essays (by @sarahlwasserman.bsky.social, @katemarshall.bsky.social, & Thomas Constaninesco) in the pages of American Literary History.
The Affective Bind
Abstract. This essay considers the raucous ontology of the feeling body in relation to the expanding field of affect studies. It first shows how psychophys
academic.oup.com
November 18, 2024 at 1:50 PM
In the off-chance you’re interested in affect theory as a materialist theology and/or my book project on feminist an-aesthetics, you’ll find that and much smarter essays (by @sarahlwasserman.bsky.social, @katemarshall.bsky.social, & Thomas Constaninesco) in the pages of American Literary History.
Four forms of postmodern cynicism:
November 21, 2024 at 1:00 PM
Four forms of postmodern cynicism:
Reposted by zachgibson5
I don’t think it will all fit in there.
November 20, 2024 at 2:10 PM
I don’t think it will all fit in there.
Reposted by zachgibson5
this was the first weird medieval guy to ever go viral 🥰🥰
November 21, 2024 at 7:48 AM
this was the first weird medieval guy to ever go viral 🥰🥰
"[...]these writers themselves often simply recapitulate strategies devised by writers in the previous generation of postmodernists, or, indeed, essentially reiterate an existing form created by an earlier writer." @greenlitcrit.bsky.social
www.unbeatenpaths.net/p/repetition...
www.unbeatenpaths.net/p/repetition...
Repetition Compulsion
(This post is also available at The Reading Experience.)
www.unbeatenpaths.net
November 21, 2024 at 1:20 AM
"[...]these writers themselves often simply recapitulate strategies devised by writers in the previous generation of postmodernists, or, indeed, essentially reiterate an existing form created by an earlier writer." @greenlitcrit.bsky.social
www.unbeatenpaths.net/p/repetition...
www.unbeatenpaths.net/p/repetition...