Essay on Substack about this novel, which has been described as astonishing, important, and yet unreadable. But the reception depends on assumptions about what constitutes profound, innovative, or radical writing. open.substack.com/pub/jameselk...

On Nabokov's famous and seldom read 1,200 page commentary on Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin." Among (many) other things, it's a model and example of postmodern experimentation with footnotes. open.substack.com/pub/jameselk...

Pondering the strange reception of Gaddis's "Recognitions." At first it was poorly read; then, mysteriously, it became canonical. Most recently it was the subject of a fierce and largely persuasive review by Adam Mars-Jones. open.substack.com/pub/jameselk...

Anyone interested in a reading group on Beckett’s “Watt”? It would start in January, and it would include a close reading of his notebooks, secondary sources, scholarship, etc. — every bit as compulsive and slow as my groups on Perec and Schmidt. If you might be interested email [email protected]

Here's an essay on how contemporary novelists might use parallel columns. It includes a brief description of a new 6-volume novel in Croatian, which might just be one of the most intricately formatted novels ever--much more complex than Danielewski for example open.substack.com/pub/jameselk...

Advertising my book, using some fabulous reviews from social media. Thank you @unnamedpress.bsky.social ! www.instagram.com/p/DMx5fyLp2i...

The enormous A3 (16" x 12") edition of Dieter Stündel's German translation of Finnegans Wake. Also his modest A4 printing, the paperback, and the French for comparison. Stündel will be our guest later in August in the Schmidt reading group. Everyone is welcome, email for details [email protected]

A short essay for writers who feel the magnetic pull of Thomas Bernhard, including three possible escape routes. All comments welcome. jameselkins.substack.com/publish/post...

Thanks everyone who participated in the weekly literary contest for A Short Introduction to Anneliese! Books for the winners are on their way. In case anyone is as OCD (or completist) as I am, here are the answers to all the puzzles: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Arguing against the usual readings of Dick's Exegesis: it's not as simple as a religious experiene (R. Crumb), an archive for psychoanalysis, a trauma narrative, or a glimpse of philosophy (Critchley). It's logically at odds with itself about what counts as reality open.substack.com/pub/jameselk...

Rewritten in response to readers’ comments. Thanks everyone! Focused now on the difficult subject: the representation of incomplete minds, aside from trauma or neurodivergence: just the ordinary disturbing awareness of our incomplete awareness of ourselves. open.substack.com/pub/jameselk...

New installment on unusual formatting in contemporary experimental fiction. This is about marginal notes: how are they used in fiction? Can past uses provide strategies for current writing? Looking for examples of marginal notes in fiction jameselkins.substack.com/p/experiment...

If you're thinking of joining the group reading Georges Perec's Life: A User's Manual, I'm running a "catch up" Zoom tomorrow (good whether you've read the book already or not), email for details [email protected]

And now, join the world’s most OCD reading group! We’re reading Arno Schmidt’s Bottom’s Dream. Each page has dozens of allusions to literature, and full of typographic and orthographic experimentation. We’re halfway through the book after just 5 years. Everyone is welcome [email protected]

Join the world's 2nd-most-OCD reading group! We are reading Perec's Life: A User's Guide, using some brilliant graphics made by the artist Julie Boldt. Our group is very friendly, international, and diverse, including artists and writers. More info email me, [email protected].

Last in a series on the problem of writing fictional characters who will not permit free access to their minds. Camus’s “The Stranger” is a prototype, but as Genette pointed out, it’s inconsistent and implausible. The problem remains unsolved in contemporary fiction open.substack.com/pub/jameselk...

Literary contest! Closing on Friday. Spot the allusions, win a free copy. Test your knowledge of fiction, poetry, songs, and philosophy. Over 20 unsolved puzzles. PS, if you won one of these, but didn't send me your postal address, now's your chance. docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

(Almost) reviewing a novel that hasn’t been reviewed even once, even on Amazon, even on Goodreads. It has an interesting preface about radical writing in English from Chaucer to Finnegans Wake open.substack.com/pub/jameselk...

Why Jon Fosse is not a major writer. I don't think he pays the kind of attention to structure that is necessary to make a persuasive whole, even (or especially) when that whole represents a damaged or ruined world. open.substack.com/pub/jameselk...

An idea about literary fiction in the age of the internet: we are all isolated, esecially if we spend time trying to connect. That feeling needs to be in the work itself. open.substack.com/pub/jameselk...

What is complexity in a novel? In what sense are Agathe Christie or Ellery Queen complex? What literary fiction is the most complex? On Substack substack.com/@jameselkins...

Advertising my new novel. All sufficiently long books are insane. If books appear sane, that is because they end quickly. www.amazon.com/Short-Introd...

What is the most interesting way to write fictional characters who have no depth, or uncertain depth—characters whose inner lives seem to be largely missing, but not from trauma or neurodivergence, simply because their authors refuse to go there. open.substack.com/pub/jameselk...

Literary contest! Find the hidden allusions in the new novel, "A Short Introduction to Anneliese." Thirty contests still unsolved. Contest ends July 4. tinyurl.com/anneliesecon....

A Short Introduction to Anneliese! First copies out today! Two down, three (plus a guide) to go. Thank you @unnamedpress you people are amazing. Authors don't usually know exactly what they have made, but I'll bet this is the strangest novel of 2025. www.amazon.com/Short-Introd...

Two things about rants and monologues in fiction: (1) they do not represent thoughts or consciousness—they’re written forms; (2) the most interesting ones are very long and unpleasant. With reference to Lucy Ellmann, Beckett, Bernhard, Jonathan Buckley, and Emily Hall. substack.com/inbox/post/1...

Literary contest! A Short Introduction to Anneliese, is out in a few weeks! It’s about long, complex books, and it has hundreds of allusions to other books, plays, novels, songs, and films. The first person to identify this one gets a free copy. All info is here: tinyurl.com/anneliese13

Ideas about how to put mathematics into fiction. (As in Pynchon's rocket equation.) Not so much writing about mathematics, as ways to have equations work alongside prose. (Here, a graph about how to lose friends.) substack.com/home/post/p-...

Trauma narratives and memoirs are about events and decisions that changed people’s lives, and they focus on the recovery of health and memories. What if our lives divide naturally from themselves, without trauma or illness? How could that be shown in fiction? jameselkins.substack.com/p/is-a-life-...

Why does fiction keep music at arm’s length? Why are novelists from Proust to the present content with poetic evocations of music, instead of formal descriptions? Here’s an argument for including music in fiction, with Thomas Bernhard’s “Loser” as an example. jameselkins.substack.com/p/why-cant-n...

A polemical essay about the curious fact that even complex, postmodern novels don't include mathematics, science, or engineering. Given the last hundred years of experimental writing, why should fiction continue to paraphrase science and math? open.substack.com/pub/jameselk...?

An essay defending negative book reviews. I think there should be more of them: they can help other writers much more than positive reviews. jameselkins.substack.com/p/in-defense...

Literary contest! First two people to identify the hidden allusions get free copies of my long, complex book about the fascination of long, complex books, out in June. All information, and the passage with the hidden clues, is here tinyurl.com/anneliese14

On the idea that words fail art, that art ends in wordlessness. Thoughts on the Lord Chandos letter, updated with the Postscript to Coetzee's "Elizabeth Costello." open.substack.com/pub/jameselk...

Keeping track of complex novel projects using diagrams, drawings, family trees, maps, Google Street View... substack.com/home/post/p-...

Literary contest! First to identify the book, poem, play, film, or song hidden in the passage wins a free copy of the book. Contest at tinyurl.com/anneliese15 Past contests are all here (many still unsolved): tinyurl.com/anneliesecon...

I wonder if it makes sense to say some novels have prerequisities, books that need to be read before you buy the novel. Is every novel potentially for every reader? Can novels build on one another, the way science has prerequisites? Or is that just elitist? jameselkins.substack.com/p/do-some-no...

I'm wondering about novels that have references to many other novels, like Proust, like Vila-Matas. They exclude many readers, but also have expressive potential not available to most novels. A short essay on that subject: jameselkins.substack.com/p/novels-tha...

A lot of work is being done on improving literacy, from K-12 through high school. I wonder what count as the most difficult literacy skills—the ones we might expect of Woolf or Joyce? Any ideas about the hardest skills? jameselkins.substack.com/p/what-are-t...

Literary contest! This week I want to improve a rant: the best idea for making the rant more excessive and irrational wins a free book. (I ship worldwide.) The contest is here tinyurl.com/anneliese16

Cover reveal for the new novel, out in June! Thanks to the amazing people at @unnamedpress.bsky.social And special thanks for aging me slowly.This photo is only 10 years old :) Posts coming on the content, which I think has some genuine innovations. Preorders www.unnamedpress.com/all-books/p/...

@gorsejournal.bsky.social Hi, are you aware that you accepted a piece of mine called "A Hyena's Path"? You accepted it on 22 March 2020; I submitted it on 1 October, 2018. At this point it's been published -- it's part of my novel "Weak in Comparison to Dreams" -- but I'm still curious if you know.

I think this is the most perfect book review ever written: Nabokov's brief book review of Sartre's "Nausea." Other candidates? Perfect long reviews? substack.com/@jameselkins...

Literary contest. Special Finnegans Wake question this week. A copy of the book (due out in June) to the first correct answer. tinyurl.com/anneliese17

The conversation on whether there's an abyss beneath language, or if everything is already words, and there is no true silence. Francis Bacon + Hugo von Hofmannsthal + Pascal Quignard + Jean-Luc Nancy substack.com/@jameselkins...

An attempt to describe the odd relation between William Gibson's work and current literary fiction. His writing is literary, in the sense that it is attentive to language, and he shares concerns about culture with many writers—and yet the work seems different. open.substack.com/pub/jameselk...

This week's literary contest! Test your knowledge. Each week I am posting another passage from "A Short Intrduction to Anneliese." The passage has a hidden reference to jigsaw puzzles. Unsolved contests from the past year are here tinyurl.com/anneliese2024 tinyurl.com/anneliese18

This week's literary contest! Test your knowledge. Each week I am posting another passage from "A Short Intrduction to Anneliese." The passage has a hidden reference. This week's contest is here: tinyurl.com/anneliese18 Unsolved contests from 2024 are here tinyurl.com/anneliese2024

Noticed a strange thing on Substack: Ross Barkan defending the "elites" in universities by listing writers and artists who would be acceptable to right-wing reformers. substack.com/profile/1892...

Second of two brief pieces on Dag Solstad. This is on the even more difficult question of how to create a character whose motivations are only sometimes known to her, whose mind is only partly accessible to the narrator. Solstad's work as all about these problems open.substack.com/pub/jameselk...