Time well spent!

For the Almanac, I wrote about reading Ulysses over Christmas break in the Austrian Alps, arguing with people over whether I actually read it or not, and the strangeness of having that argument on the site of a mass shooting: www.paradise-almanac.net/p/ulysses-in...

In honor of Saint Lucia’s Day, here is my translation of “An Unexpected Reunion” by Johann Peter Hebel, which Ernst Bloch (and maybe Franz Kafka too) regarded as the most beautiful story ever written: www.paradise-almanac.net/p/an-unexpec...

We have copies of The Parson in Jubilee by Jean Paul, trans. @unpaginated.bsky.social (the person writing this post) up for sale at Paradise HQ. Grab a copy! paradiseeditions.net/products/the...

(Jewish lit theory guy seeing a Christmas tree for the first time) wow. Dickensian

Frowning at the great apparatus

Even if a reader knows that copyediting errors are the fault of the publisher, I still think a good share of the blame, unconsciously at least, gets transferred to the author. It's their name on the cover, after all.

"One climbs all stairs—even clandestine ones—faster than the snail staircase of merit." My translation of The Parson in Jubilee: An Appendix by Jean Paul is available now through Empyrean Editions: asterismbooks.com/product/the-...

From the EPA Documerica series

You've been visited by the STRAWBERRY OF PROSPERITY.

really awesome Herman Miller desk I found on FB Marketplace lol

For the Almanac, I wrote about calendars and my interactions with the kinds of animals that appear in calendars: paradisealmanc.substack.com/p/on-calenders

“I knew what they were feeling, because I felt it too—something swelling within, something that had to be art because art was the last chance they would ever get.” From Backwardness (Letters and Notebooks 1973-2023) by Garielle Lutz

Henry James is underrated as a comic writer

For the Almanac, I write about so-called Quaker marriages and a Pennsylvania town named after an athlete who never lived in or even visited it. (I'm married now.) paradisealmanc.substack.com/p/self-offic...

RIP to a dear friend and eminent scholar, David Bellos.

Another view of the Kleist cover:

goddamn but if @paradiseeditions.bsky.social hasn't knocked it out of the park again

Out Now: Some Essays by Heinrich von Kleist (trans. @unpaginated.bsky.social) Published in rapid succession during the last year of Kleist's life, these brief but challenging essays present the finest distillation of his philosophical thought: paradiseeditions.net/products/som...

Enjoying Spanish Wikipedia's formatting of unknown birth and death dates: ¿?-¿?

Underappreciated deeper cut of the day. In case you're ever curious what Lovecraft wrote about Hemingway, the ground they both stomped over, and when they almost could have met. deepcuts.blog/2025/04/30/h...

Layouts in progress for a new pamphlet of Kleist translations. I'm having a lot of fun with colored type, and it felt appropriate to have fancy OpenType script for "On the Marionette Theater":

Meowfeggio 528hz Healing Frequencies ✨️🌌

Late hibiscus and plastic litter in the canal:

For the Almanac, I write about autumn fruits, chronic disease, and unfortunately named bands: paradisealmanc.substack.com/p/paradise-d...

Good book, great introductory essay on the use of translations in classic WEIRD TALES.

lunch time has produced another hastily written and totally unedited musings about classic weird fic over on the blog! this time, i go on and on about Robert Barbour Johnson's "Far Below," from Weird Tales 1939! read it, why don't ya? geoliminal.com/2025/10/06/a...

Karl Kofoed's interior art for D. D. Storm's "Mud/Aurora" in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (November 1981) #scifi #sciencefiction #art #artist

You can read "On the Marionette Theater" a short philosophical dialog in which Kleist radically challenges our commonsense notions of human volition, over at Paradise Almanac: www.paradise-almanac.net/p/on-the-mar...

For spooky season, we're offering 25% off of Night Fears, our anthology of weird fiction in translation, edited by @geoliminal.bsky.social: paradiseeditions.net/products/nig...

死にゆくミノタウロス

now in Garden Scenery, a story about a memory, burning away

go read this immediately:

On this day in 1810, Heinrich von Kleist published the first issue of the Berliner Abendblätter, the first daily newspaper in the city. Though it only lasted until March the following year, many of Kleist's best known writings appeared in its pages:

A fascinating lecture on what is probably the first séance held in North America: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV7n...

“Each portion of matter may be conceived as a garden, and as pond full of fish.” Leibniz, quoted in Deleuze’s The Fold

For the Almanac, I wrote about Lafcadio Hearn and the value of publishing a “bad” translation: open.substack.com/pub/paradise...

Eines Morgens riechst du den Herbst. Es ist noch nicht kalt; es ist nicht windig: es hat sich eigentlich gar nichts geändert – und doch alles. Kurt Tucholsky

really want to encourage people to read about the care, thought, and hard work Matthew puts into making Paradise Edition books such lovely things

For the Almanac, I wrote about charming cicada folklore from Japan and the difficulties of typesetting haiku: www.paradise-almanac.net/p/how-can-yo...

For the Almanac, I wrote about charming cicada folklore from Japan and the difficulties of typesetting haiku: www.paradise-almanac.net/p/how-can-yo...

Proofs for The Parson in Jubilee have been approved, and the world will have another book by Jean Paul in English, my translation, in a few months:

"Freight Will Continue To Drag Itself Across The Patient Earth" is an #anagram of "Teleological Transporter: Weightiest Traffic, Handiest Hunt"

A sentence quoted in an otherwise bland book about personal finance: "Freight will continue to drag itself across the patient earth."

No entry for Paradise Almanac today. I'm working on a longer investigation into a paid "AI" translation service and will have that available for everyone to read next week. I think it'll be worth the wait.