Doctor says to man, you are depressed. You need to get out of yourself and enjoy life. It happens I have several cool sweet plums in my fridge, which I will happily share with you right now. But, Doctor, says William Carlos Williams
Austin Gilkeson
@osutein.bsky.social
Author of MAGGIE THE DREAD (Little Bee '26). Out now: http://bit.ly/4otNj07. Writer and teacher. Essays in NYRB, McSweeney's, Foreign Policy, Catapult, Vulture, &c.
Food, man. Food is so much better than it was in 1986. All of it. Poor-people food, restaurant food, fresh food, frozen food. Food is just a hell of a lot better.
Read it here if you haven't yet. Today is the very best day of all days to read it for the first time. short-stories.co/@raybradbury...
There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury
The voice-clock sang, breakfast was ejected, but no doors slammed. The garage chimed and lifted its door to reveal the waiting car. The house sat alone in a city of rubble and…
short-stories.co
Adam Rawnsley@arawnsley.bsky.social · yesterdayToday, August 4, 2026, is the setting of Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” about a fully automated house continuing on after the family who lived there and the world around it died in a nuclear blast.
@osutein.bsky.social Maggie made it to my library! I'm reading it now and i just lost it over sea cucumbers being Presbyterian
Paranoid reading is necessary because all authors are in fact lying to you (about everyone in their books not being horses)
This is maybe my biggest criticism; I think I would liked it better if it was even less of an adaptation, because the parts where it felt like it was just checking off scenes because they were in the story were the least interesting, and the parts where it got weird and personal were the best.
Stephen Nuñez@socio-steve.bsky.social · 4d agoThere is just a lot of stuff like "Odysseus asks to tie himself to the mast." Ok what did that have to do with the story Nolan wants to tell? How is this consistent with the Odysseus character he is presenting? Like he checks off all the boxes of incidents in the poem but in the poem they present...
imagine if the bennet sisters had experienced garlic bread
Hollywood is gonna learn the wrong lesson from the success of THE ODYSSEY and SPIDER-MAN and demand every single movie from here on out star Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Jon Bernthal.
Love this review of MAGGIE THE DREAD on GoodReads (the first!) because “delightfully unhinged” is truly the vibe I aim for in every facet of my life.
Emily Wilson giving the Honda Odyssey a scathing review in Car & Driver
I need Christopher Nolan to keep adapting towering works of literature as a sort of Keynesian stimulus for literary culture.
Aaron Bady@zunguzungu.bsky.social · 7d agoOkay now it's getting real
Finally had time to pick up my pre-ordered copy (among a pile of other books) in Berlin, Germany today. Looking forward to reading!
A thread on special editions, luxury books, and publishing history: In 1903, J. M. Dent created Everyman’s Library, intended as a cheap line of hardbacks to make a classical education accessible as mass literacy rates were on the rise.
NEW BLOG POST! Some thoughts on Christopher Nolan's adaptation of The Odyssey, the historical context of the Bronze Age Collapse, the Sea Peoples, and the legends of the Trojan War, and whether Nolan's movie is "historically accurate" or not, and what that even means.
Did Odysseus Cause the Bronze Age Collapse?
We were all set for The Odyssey to be our summer discourse. Battle lines had been drawn, takes had been prepared. Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s 8th century BCE epic poem was…
nathangoldwag.wordpress.com
Seeing discourse over the best version of The Odyssey and to experience in theaters, and it reminds me that one reason I love literature so much is that it’s endlessly and perfectly replicable. There’s no “best” reading experience the way there is for film/music/food/art/etc.
say what you will about AI, always-on voice recording and auto dictation has been a game changer for my workflows. Save post and close app. Yeah Footlong meatball sub on white. No veggies. Don't toast it. Ranch and barbecue sauce. Yeah, ranch and bargecue sauce. More. More. Little more please
Thinking about Bernie Wrightson’s Edgar Allen Poe drawings and feeling serene
I go back and forth on which was the best ever tweet. Currently I think it's this.
Writers are people who have imposter syndrome and main character syndrome at the same time
“They will just eat what I prepare for dinner and so will eat healthy food.” LMAO LOL Greek tragedy levels of hubris there.
Zach Weinersmith@zachweinersmith.bsky.social · last wk.Hey parents of bsky: What are some theories of parenting you were very confident in right up until you had your own kids?
the ideal academic life is being an eccentric Victorian lord. Invent a stamp licking machine at 22. Get elected to the Royal Academy for counting the beetles on your estate. Die in an arsenic explosion. The perfect life.
I admit I’m not super well read when it comes to national epics, but Homer’s, THE ILIAD especially, always strike me as interesting in how far they go to present their heroes as the bad guys.