Hillbilly elegy? You mean Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (1751)?

Ohhh my god are you telling the story out of chronological order? Should we tell everyone? Should we throw a party? Should we invite Homer

Getting ready to ask a question related to my own research interests

A classics professor is clearly not qualified to evaluate a movie. To correctly appreciate the medium of film, you need a degree in English literature

I am proud of being an autodidact but unfortunately my instructor was incompetent

This note gets it just right. You apologise for eating the plums, express sympathy for their owner and explain your motivation for eating them. Just one note: consider offering to replace the plums. This small gesture could do a lot to smooth things over

Humanities academics tend to propose monocausal explanations for complex phenomena. This tendency is responsible for the crisis of the humanities

IMAX is the only format that renders the dialogue as dactylic hexameters. In ordinary theatres it's plain old blank verse

My main problem with Nolan's Odyssey is that it is only a copy of a copy, reality itself being merely a copy of the original Forms. Ultimately all such simulacra are a civic ill

Every nonfiction book is called like Republic of Cheese: How Gouda Saved Democracy and Created the Modern World

When people ask me for fiction recommendations, I simply hand them this. Why read a single text when you could understand mimesis itself?

Some personal news. I have accepted a job at Anthropic—the AI company—overseeing em-dash usage

I don't read classic literature because it is not relevant to contemporary life. Only the fiction published in the most recent issue of the New Yorker can really reflect modern realities

"I reached my reading goal" oh really? You determined how the work's form registers the contradictions of its historical circumstances? I didn't think so

A common mistake with breakout groups is to hover nearby, which makes students self-conscious. Instead, I have developed a technique where I actually leave the room and then surreptitiously re-enter disguised as a student myself

People say that academics spend an inordinate amount of time exploring niche research questions, but this is unfair. We also make exaggerated claims about the significance of these questions

Someone described my paper as "generative"

The culture is in decline. For gen x, a hidden recess in your workplace led to the inside of John Malkovitch's head. For gen z, it's just a series of empty spaces and some furniture

"Happy Bloomsday" Uhhh this is incredibly insensitive towards people who lack interiority. Maybe consider who your celebration of stream of consciousness narration is excluding

These research questions are situated at the intersection of this fellowship application and my desire to be awarded a fellowship

Academic writing should be addressed neither to the public nor to other academics. It should be addressed to a single interlocutor with whom you have a petty rivalry and whose work you are trying to discredit

Classic novels simply aren't relatable. Even contemporary literature is often about things I have never personally experienced. My preferred genre is autobiographical fiction that I have written myself

Everyone who reads fictional narratives that are shorter than the ones I read and calls them novels is cheating. Everyone who reads longer fictional narratives is showing off. Only I know exactly how long a novel should be

It is ridiculous to accuse English departments of destroying literature. We are much too busy indoctrinating our students with the ideas of Michel Foucault to worry about that

Have writers considered thematising the vexed relationship between representation and reality. Perhaps in a self-reflexive vein

@johnattridge.bsky.social discuses character and culture in 'Howards End' in Volume 59 of NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction - read.dukeupress.edu/novel/articl...

The novel is a tool for cultivating empathy. Fictional narratives provide a vicarious outlet for emotion, which allows you to be more coldhearted and ruthless in your day to day life