It's Thursday, which means a new MTC essay! Today, MTC contributing writer, Omid Bagherli reviews Ben Lerner TRANSCRIPTION, a novel about what goes (un)recorded between men. "In Lerner’s works, this sense of an extraordinary but intangible connection is what wonder and paranoia have in common."

Under the Influence: A Review of Ben Lerner’s ‘Transcription’

In Lerner’s works, this sense of an extraordinary but intangible connection is what wonder and paranoia have in common. It’s no secret that Ben Lerner admires John Ashbery. Not only is the title of…

mid-theory.com

I wrote this short review of Downtime for ASAP/Review! asapjournal.com/review/slow-...

Mark Goble@goblemark.bsky.social · last yr.

I don't think Omid Bagherli is on bluesky (then again, why am I on bluesky?) but I'm grateful for this review and particularly happy to see it in ASAP/Review since a lot of this book happened because of friends and colleagues at @asapartsnow.bsky.social asapjournal.com/review/slow-...

If you want to read deeply researched accounts of what happened to novels in the last fifty or so years, may I recommend Novel Competition: American Fiction and the Cultural Economy, 1965–1999 by Evan Brier uipress.uiowa.edu/books/novel-...

Novel Competition

uipress.uiowa.edu

John Warner@biblioracle.bsky.social · last yr.

Half-baked, uninformed nonsense that repeats mistaken information from another half-baked take.

check out the entire issue here: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...

Volume 77 Issue 2 | Comparative Literature | Duke University Press

read.dukeupress.edu

Omid and I have been thinking a lot about weird professional trajectories, auteurism, late/early style, the studio system, and genre. So we're proposing a special issue! Send @omidb.bsky.social and me your abstracts: call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/03/...

Also me! Big Fiction is a truly wonderful (and somewhat intimidatingly comprehensive) book of the contemp. US novel. Well worth reading.

Dan Sinykin@dan-sinnamon.bsky.social · 3y ago

"Big Fiction’s ambitious project and keen analysis will make it a classic in criticism of contemporary US fiction." 😍😍😍😍 Love this review of my book alongside @alexandermanshel.bsky.social's great Writing Backwards asapjournal.com/reading-lite...

This is me. I did this. (Well done to both authors-- really terrific and careful work on the contemporary US novel)

Alexander Manshel@manshel.bsky.social · 3y ago

"While Sinykin and Manshel place accent on different components, these excellent, systematic studies complement each other well in defining the contours of the contemporary US novel...they are crowning achievements." Thanks, Omid Bagherli and ASAP Journal, for this fabulous review!

New from me in the Drift: on the "fog of war" and the ideological work it performs www.thedriftmag.com/propaganda-d...

Propaganda, Disinformation, Ideology

The image of the “fog of war,” former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara explains in Errol Morris’s 2003 documentary of the same name, suggests that “war is so complex it’s beyond the abil...

thedriftmag.com

Some promotion!: The Tufts Graduate Humanities Conference is happening 2 weeks today. It features 4 panels of presentations and a keynote from Hil Malatino. Free to all, on Tufts' Medford Campus.

New Ordinary Unhappiness episode! we talk to the brilliant Grace Lavery (@gracelavery.bsky.social) about her new book, "Pleasure and Efficacy," pragmatic political uses of Freud, desire and shame, identity and activism, and the stakes of debates over what it means to be "real”

22: Realism and Other Romances feat. Grace Lavery - Ordinary Unhappiness

Abby and Patrick welcome writer and academic Grace Lavery to discuss her new book Pleasure and Efficacy: Of Pen Names, Cover Versions, and Other Trans Techniques. They discuss Grace’s relationship t...

ordinaryunhappiness.buzzsprout.com

The whole gang (3) is about to see Jeanne Dielman for the first time.