I defended my PhD 10 years ago today. That was the least remarkable thing that happened that day. Sharing something I wrote about it last year. Since then "the horrors persist but so do we." And with dignity.

Which lucky 2 @oaklandreviewofbooks.org friends are going to help me and @pauline2k.bsky.social and @marissaortegawelch.bsky.social win Litquake's literary trivia night on Monday? It's in Berkeley, another good reason for Oakland to show up and kick ass. www.eventbrite.com/e/litquake-a...

I wrote about what thirty years of sun damage did to my shelf at Oakland Review of Books.

another day on the artillery crew

“Arachnids have book lungs,” said a passing man in another top hat. “Fight! Fight!” shouted a bystander. www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/sad-for-new-...

You simply cannot believe how many words I have written about Aaron Cometbus' Electric Menorah, but really about the muralization of history, no, about Telegraph Avenue and capitalism (but actually about the sixties, my mom, and about mourning mourning): www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/war-is-over-...

as long as Timothée Chalamet has to play Krasznahorkai at some point this is fine

I hadn't believed anyone could turn bela tarr's masterpiece into prose, until I saw what a real master of the Very Long Sentence was capable of. A salute to you, Mr K!

I got to meet up again with my old collaborator Georg Büchner on assignment for ORB, and couldn’t have enjoyed it more.

No one asked for ORB, but then again, art is often unsolicited. www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/unsolicited-...

As the world burns, a few of us are making an Oakland Review of Books. We don’t have money, but why not? We’re moving slowly. We're trying not to break things. But we’re trying to imagine: what if Oakland were enough and we cared enough to look? www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org

A Brick Building at Ballhalla, West Bay, Week One: www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/a-brick-buil...

A good day to pick up something from our east bay friends at Transit. EBB has Lauren Markham's Immemorial on the shelves: www.ebbooksellers.com/item/EKOgAN1... And from the back catalog, our feeling is that Axiomatic is a stone cold classic: www.transitbooks.org/books/axioma...

to be clear, here at \O/ we are Alcatraz truthers: John and Clarence Anglin and Frank Morris escaped. This business about being eaten by sharks is nonsense. There are great whites in the actual ocean but they come into the bay about as often as your west bay friends come to Oakland.

Along with many other nonprofit arts organizations, we learned last night that our grant from the National Endowment for the Arts—$40,000 toward the publication of our books in 2025—has been terminated. While this news was not unexpected, its message was chilling.

There were a number of works, she said, executed when Bourgeois was the mother of small children, in which she portrays herself as a spider. atem.metameat.net/2025/01/19/2...

the existence of chatbots implies the existence of chienbots

what kind of trash i am atem.metameat.net/2025/01/17/1...