Anyone for Tennyson? The next stop in our tour of narrative poetry is the surprisingly onion-light, 'The Lady of Shalott' (1832/42). Out on Wednesday!
Daniel Jenkin-Smith
@dcjenkin-smith.bsky.social
Postdoctoral researcher - author of 'The Rise of Office Literature' (Bloomsbury, 2025) - co-host of @smfmspodcast.bsky.social Il faut, comme disait Balzac, offrir une surface commerciale.
A lovely review of 'The Rise of Office Literature' in the @bavs-uk.bsky.social summer newsletter by Angelica Belloli. Love the term 'productively unstable' - something we all aspire to be. Thanks a lot! What's more, the book's coming out in paperback next month! bavs.ac.uk/wp-content/u...
bavs.ac.uk
The next instalment in our August poetical miniseries deals with a lil thing called *Romanticism*, as we cover Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner' (1798). If you like your weddings bassoon-laden, and your Constantinopolitans Platonic, then join us TOMORRAH!
TOMORROW: our episode on Wilkie Collins's 'The Woman in White' (1860). This is a novel with a message: if you're going to be falsely imprisoned in a Victorian hospital, you simply *must* go private.
We had one correct guess: our big summer episode (which could easily double as a Valentine's Day or Halloween episode) is the Australian cosmic horror, 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' (1967). Brace yourselves for the laughs, lusts, and primal screams of a buncha old-fashioned teens. Episode drops 17 June.
Out tamorrah! Our coverage of the Canadian children's classic, co-written by Lucy Ward Montgomery and Georges Perec. Join us for 'Ann of Grn Gabls' (1908) - it's a tearjerker.
What a nice surprise: my review of @dcjenkin-smith.bsky.social's "The Rise of Office Literature" made it into the print version of Critical Inquiry -- and it's in great company! @bloomsburyacademic.bsky.social Have a look at the Spring 2026 issue:
Spring issue has arrived! Read new work by Loren Glass, Mercedes Bunz, Alexandre Gefen, Lawrence Venuti, Maxwell Gontarek, Emily McAvan, James I. Porter, and Boris Maslov. criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/past_issues/...
Happy belated International Women's Day! Enjoy Aristophanes's sex strike farce (and possibly the randiest text we've covered), 'Lysistrata' (411 BCE). We notice a dildo discrepancy, get a surprise visit from wee Donalbain, and get a LOT of translation help. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...
Some of you guessed correctly: For our International Women's Day episode, we'll be joining the ladies of ancient Greece on a sex strike with Aristophanes's incredibly horny comedy, 'Lysistrata' (411BC). Episode drops 11 March. Milesian dildoes at the ready!
I had a nightmare in which I attended a lecture delivered by Donald Trump on the virtues of AI. Diagnosis: too much lurking on Bluesky.
Issue #6 of Bureaucritics is out now! Catch up with the latest in art, fiction, and scholarship about bureaucracy. bureaucritics.substack.com/p/cultural-b... #newsletter #bureaucracy #administration #officeliterature #bureaucraticfiction #parliaments
bureaucritics.substack.com
Welcome to Season 7! Let's kick off a year of fan favourites and camp classics with our trashiest novel yet: Gaston Leroux's 1910 'Phantom of the Opera'. Abby has the time of her life, Daniel is checked out, and our new imaginary producer, Diane, keeps us on task. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...
TOMORROW: If you thought 2026 already couldn't get any worse, our new series starts with Gaston Leroux's thoroughly stupid 'The Phantom of the Opera' (1910) - a rare example of a novel that's *more* incoherent and histrionic than its musical adaptation.
In our final banned book episode, we celebrate (?) Christmas with the inappropriately summery (but sufficiently maudlin) 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' (1852). Turns out, everything we knew about this book we learned from 'The King and I' and was therefore wildly incorrect! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...
We come out all guns blazing for our Christmas episode, and the final instalment of our banned books series, with Harriet Beecher Stowe's Civil War-causing/-winning 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' (1852) - what's more, it's crammed with sizzling Quakers... Out on Wednesday!
Happy (early) Thanksgiving, Shelfers! Don't pull a spear on or chuck a boulder at a relative. Not unless they *really* deserve it. More importantly, Happy International Men's Day: no girls allowed in our episode on William Golding's 'Lord of the Flies' (1954). podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...
'Rank-and-file Francophile' - can somebody do something with that, s'il vous plait?
It's human nature to be a snotty private schoolboy - or so William Golding's 'Lord of the Flies' (1954) tells us - and we got into the spirit of this message with plenty of quibbling over pronunciation. Episode out on Wednesday! 'One fly to rule them all, one fly to find them' etc.
'Deliver me from calamity; from muddy boots and whirlpools; deliver me lunch.' Another album from my dear old dad - a retelling/reimagining/detournement of 'Dark Side of the Moon'. Feat. yours truly on heavily distorted concertina in the final track: hrsmokeandrewsmith.bandcamp.com/album/mortal...
Mortal Questions, by HR Smoke/Andrew Smith
14 track album
hrsmokeandrewsmith.bandcamp.com
Looking to compile the definitive collection of portrayals of tyrants in bikinis. So far I've just got Caligula in 'I, Claudius' (1976) and Louis XIII in 'The Devils' (1971). Please get in touch if you have any others. Thanks.
Some of you guessed our clue correctly: For International Men's Day (19 November), we will be release the most laddish book we've ever read on the show: William Golding's 1954 anti-colonialist schoolboy castaway narrative, 'Lord of the Flies'. No girls allowed, and 'Sucks to your Auntie!'
I had a great time at the 'Files, Forms, Fictions' symposium in Bonn last week. Excellent blend of bureaucracy chat, Adenauer anecdotes, and Bönnsch beer. Thanks again to @alexandrairim.bsky.social and her colleagues for an excellent conference!
Bureaucritics #5 is now online! It brings along a busy stretch of new publications, from the just-printed to the just-planned, plus fresh calls for papers and events.
Back in Office
We’re back!
bureaucritics.substack.com
Thanks again for having me on!
We all love bureaucracy, right? Here it is for your enjoyment... bureaucratic utopias and dystopias with Daniel Jenkin Smith. Please rate, subscribe, recommend, and all that other bureaucratic nonsense! open.spotify.com/episode/3mD0...
Hey, ya phonies! Enjoying back-to-school? Well, our (anti)hero sure isn't! Join us for JD Salinger's 1951 ode to teen angst, 'Catcher in the Rye'. Let's all have Buckfast at Tiffany's, put on weird hats, and argue about who has it worse in winter: ducks or fish. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...
Episode 15 drops this afternoon, 1pm BST. It should be fun. An episode about bureaucratic utopias/dystopias featuring an interview with Daniel Jenkin Smith, author of The Rise of Office Literature and co-host of @smfmspodcast.bsky.social.
a man in a suit and tie stands in front of a sign that says the work is mysterious
ALT: a man in a suit and tie stands in front of a sign that says the work is mysterious
media.tenor.com
Looking forward to this - love the swish poster!
The international #symposium Files, Forms, Fictions is turning into a real thing! Browse through the full program and learn more about the event at filesformsfictions.com. Thank you, @humboldt-foundation.de & @unibonn.bsky.social, for all your support! #bureaucraticfiction #comparativeliterature
A week today we'll be putting out our next episode and you can listen to me chatting about bureaucratic dystopias (and utopias) with @dcjenkin-smith.bsky.social of @smfmspodcast.bsky.social 'fame'!... I use fame in scare quotes because I know he'd want me to!
If Dorothy didn't squash the Wicked Witch of the East, the legalistic Munchkins, still loyal to the Witch, would've subjected her and Toto to a Kafkaesque cycle of trials and appeals - all sung-through: 'The Bishop is in hock to the Lollipop Guild, but they're a front for the Lullaby League (etc.)'