I wish I could tell you that I have consumed any other culture/thought about anything else in six months but I haven’t, and here’s a little bit about why. Thanks to @publicbooks.bsky.social and anyone who has allowed me to talk at them about HR and MD: www.publicbooks.org/heated-rival...

“Heated Rivalry” Is the “Moby-Dick” of Canadian Gay Hockey Shows - Public Books

The literary genre of contemporary MM romance realizes an imagined world that Melville was trying to write into being.

publicbooks.org

okay but what if a 10-year-old thinks moby dick is better than middlemarch, what then. where are they supposed to go

News Eye@newseye.bsky.social · 2mo ago

BREAKING: The UK Government confirms that Bluesky will be INCLUDED in the ban on social media for under 16s. The government said it will be BANNED because it is a “user-to-user platform who purpose is to enable social interaction.”

Somehow I missed the charming detail that Lyndsey Fifield falsely claimed to have insider info that the Tufts student who was abducted and imprisoned solely for writing an op-ed in the student newspaper (as revealed in state dept’s own memos!) was a terrorist.

Look, Middlemarch is a great novel. It complexly mediates class conflict, the commodification of all life, emerging ideological structures in Victorian capitalism. I just personally think it’s more impressive when a novel does that through a story about a guy who hates a weird fish.

Dr ShinyGoth@ghostingdani.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Rank partisans, the lot of them. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I do believe this guardian debacle is about me. I think they personally want to upset a bunch of Moby-Dick micro-influencers. They have no idea what’s coming do they @natewolff.bsky.social !!!

Dr ShinyGoth@ghostingdani.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Rank partisans, the lot of them. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I'm sorry, no. "Transparency" is simply not an indefiniteness that shadows forth the heartless voids & immensities of the universe, stabbing us from behind with the thought of annihilation; a dumb blankness, full of meaning, from which we shrink.

We are so back 🐳🐳🐳

Nate Wolff@natewolff.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Canvas is down, ye say? Aye lad hearken to me and I'll tell thee of a time when a man might say canvas was down! When the leviathan booms his bulk upon ye an' thy splintered masts surrender their sails to the foaming, merciless drink!! then, lad, ye say might say with some authority that can (1/135)

Canvas is down, ye say? Aye lad hearken to me and I'll tell thee of a time when a man might say canvas was down! When the leviathan booms his bulk upon ye an' thy splintered masts surrender their sails to the foaming, merciless drink!! then, lad, ye say might say with some authority that can (1/135)

if Poe wrote "Murders in the Rue Morgue" for kids

Joseph Galbo@josephgalbo.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I think about this comic all the time.

You can’t let @natewolff.bsky.social play Legos with your kids for TEN MINUTES without him making a bunch of angry fish!!!

Coming soon! I wrote the Foreword to the new edition of Lauren Berlant’s first book, The Anatomy of National Fantasy. Dig the killer new cover design, where Liberty is in a scaffold that looks a lot like a cage.

this joke doesn’t totally make sense but my first thought was “cabinet of dr. calamari”

Amanda Watson@amndw2.bsky.social · 3mo ago

German Expressionist Moby-Dick (with songs? and a Puckish clown?) at BAM: not entirely sold on the whole concept but it did capture a certain level of Melvillean weirdness!

I have to respect this excuse for missing a day in my video game theory class.

Jesus’s 3 days in the tomb and his resurrection was typologically prefigured by Jonah’s 3 days in and escape from the belly of a whale, so Easter is a great day to meditate on the inscrutable malice of a specific fish.

FYI today's a great day to start reading this novel. It begins on April 1st — and it's widely considered Melville's most accessible and fun work after Clarel!

Oh wow, verrrryyy interesting that no one told me best ever tooth novel McTeague was facing Mediocremarch in this Defector bracket. Vote suppression from the Big Eliot lobby. Sad!

Defector@defector.com · 4mo ago

This week, Defector's new culture newsletter The Span has an update on Middlemarch Madness: defector.beehiiv.com/p/it-s-elite...

Women are becoming estranged from their partners who respond selfishly to an avalanche. What's behind 'alpine divorce'?

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 5mo ago

Women are being abandoned by their partners on hiking trails. What’s behind ‘alpine divorce’?

Hey! Is the dream of the 90s (sustained ambitious attention to the fin de siècle American novel) alive? Yes! In this AzQ special issue @rafaelwalker.bsky.social and I co-edited with intro by us & afterword by Jennifer Fleissner 😎 Open access! @hopkinspress.bsky.social muse.jhu.edu/issue/56582

Our special issue of Arizona Quarterly on the American novel at the turn of the 20th century is now out! In addition to an intro by @natewolff.bsky.social and me, it includes 6 original essays and a bracing afterword by Jennifer Fleissner (which, among other things, urges us back to Lears).

“Can we have class outside” no absolutely not. we are discussing The Yellow Wallpaper under sickly fluorescent lights and please do not open or look out the window.

Markwayne's real name is Samueltclemyns

literary+cultural studies friends working in grad programs! does your program offer a required introductory seminar for new students? teaching ours again, eager for suggestions of themes, readings +assignments for theory foundations+cohort-cohering. (some past versions in thread below in return)

everything reminds me of him (McTeague from MCTEAGUE [1899])

It's here! I hosted a symposium on close reading at Emory in November. Matt Seybold recorded it for his podcast, American Vandal, and the first of three episodes is out today. Catch me, @johannawinant.bsky.social, @becimay.bsky.social, @bakaari.bsky.social + more podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c...

Close Reading For The 21st Century Symposium (Vandal Live at Emory)

Podcast Episode · The American Vandal · S12 E4 · 1 sec

podcasts.apple.com

that’s right sports fans it’s time to fire up my famous “game day” sous vide ribs! They will be ready in ~36h

Very moved by this nuanced and thoughtful review of WRITING AGAINST REFORM by @natewolff.bsky.social (free to read in English at: journals.openedition.org/transatlanti... ) "this critique (of sentimentalism) needed an extra dash of dialectics." 💙💙💙How can you not love this scholar?💙💙💙

Arielle Zibrak, Writing Against Reform: Aesthetic Realism in the Pr...

In “Self-Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson denounced those who dress uncharitable motives in the flattering garb of compassion: “I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. ...

journals.openedition.org

My review of @zibrak.bsky.social 's WRITING AGAINST REFORM is up at Transatlantica (revue le plus chic! 🇫🇷)! An honor to think with a book this smart, which taught me a lot and pushed me to articulate some—I hope!—productive tensions or disagreements: journals.openedition.org/transatlanti...

Arielle Zibrak, Writing Against Reform: Aesthetic Realism in the Pr...

In “Self-Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson denounced those who dress uncharitable motives in the flattering garb of compassion: “I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. ...

journals.openedition.org

it is always a damp, drizzly Month of Dick in my soul

Jacob Harris@jacobharr.is · 8mo ago

THE MONTH OF DICK 2026 IS COMING IN JANUARY Get ready! 1. Follow the feed: bsky.app/profile/jaco... and ask me to add you 2. Download the planned reading sequence (source doc here bit.ly/4p4oYwA) 3. Get yourself an edition (book, free e-book, whatever) 4. Notify your bosom friends 5. Whale tattoo?

My 2026 resolution is to take things more personally. I learned this by reading Moby-Dick.

I'm 30 pages from the end of MCTEAGUE and I've never been so stressed in my fucking life