1. Submersible Edgar Allan Poe was a trickster, a hoaxster; were he peering over our shoulders as we stare at pages of his words and, with the omniscience of a ghost, reading our thoughts, I have no doubt he would repeatedly whisper, like a dusty and demented raven, or […]
1. In the early morning hours of October 19, 1998, the Two Elk Lodge and other structures at the Vail ski resort in Colorado burst into flame, the result of an arson attack soon claimed by members of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) movement. It was one of many arsons […]
Today is May 5, Karl Marx’s 208th birthday. Last night, celebrities got together for the annual display of wealth that is the Met Gala, this year with the billionaire Bezos family as honorary chairs. Could there be a more appropriate anticipation of Marx’s birthday? Protestors should have set up cake […]
We must theorize horror. (We must horrify theory.) * …instead of arriving at a clear grip on what kind of entity is horrifying, we are confronted with the feeling that there is this something that must harm us according to its very essence. Horror retains this character of indefinite something […]
I’ve been working on a secret project: a new book. From 2018 to 2024, I wrote a blog called Finite Eyes (the title comes from a poem by Emily Dickinson), where I explored ideas about education, teaching, learning, academic publishing, and open access resources. It was closely tied to my work […]
The following is of very niche interest. It began as an email, but then blossomed (metastasized!), because I was annoyed … and nothing propels me toward obsessive productivity quite as much as annoyance does. In summary: The selection of critical essays and, especially, the bibliography in the last two editions […]
Today, my latest book is released: Moon Songs: The Selected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, with a foreword by Kelly Link. The book collects 19 of Carol Emshwiller’s 150 stories, strange tales of aliens, animals, and humans, stories of war and apocalypse, of ordinary life made extraordinary, of beauty and ugliness interwoven […]
One book can change your life. Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway was officially published on 14 May 1925 in Britain and the United States, making it 100 years old today, although it had a long gestation — Woolf wrote about a character named Clarissa Dalloway in her first novel, The […]
Arthur Machen’s 20th century writings are simultaneously fascinating and frustrating. These days, if Machen is known by general readers, it is not for the relatively more recent works, but rather for his extraordinary writings of the 1890s (even if some of them were not published until later): “The Great God […]
Before we are aware of it, we all of us find we are talking about Shakespeare. —Lytton Strachey, “Words and Poetry” Yet Shakespeare is a very queer case. —Virginia Woolf, “Personalities” 1. Reading Marjorie Garber’s Shakespeare in Bloomsbury and Will Tosh’s Straight Acting: The Hidden Queer Lives of William Shakespeare, I […]
In September 2004, Harcourt released Gifts, a new novel by Ursula K. Le Guin aimed at the young adult market. The press release I have for it states, “Gifts is Ms. Le Guin’s first novel for teens in decades. Like so much of her writing, it is beautifully crafted and […]
Late in Joel Lane’s 2003 novel The Blue Mask, a character discusses his favorite books by Jean Genet: “I often think his scenarios are built up, not just from solitary fantasies, but from real sex. The books are a fundamental part of his love life. What he does on the […]