In the morning, I learned about natural rights. In the evening, natural interest rates. Probably unrelated!

I regret to inform you "being a henpecked husband is bad for your health, possibly fatal" has been added to my Ming-Qing tropes spreadsheet

This is why I take no stock in calling something "wish fulfillment literature."That label applies to all literature (even weird fiction, by the way...) The devil is in the details!

By the way, have you ever considered that Harry Potter is basically just a gender-swapped, morally-inverted Jane Eyre, written by someone far less intelligent and of low moral calibre?

I read the fortune teller scene from Jane Eyre late last night for the first time, and I nearly hallucinated! Wow, what a scene! #JaneEyre

Could almost do another post on the perverse "economics of Pamela," where Pamela is "rewarded" for the "accrued virtue" of withstanding sexual assault and not "selling too low" Pamela doesn't have access to credit... but at one critical juncture, she faints? If debt is death, then fainting?

A Pledged Heart 定情人 (17th C.) is throwing some curves. Is the Crown Prince going to seize the heroine?! Our heroine is suddenly at risk of being Yuan chun'd (元春'd)?!

Pretentious, Pedestrian, and Ponderous Pamela (1740) Takes 🔥 #booksky

Some very kind words on "Against Money" from @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social . Thank you very much! It is so gratifying to see the book make its way into the world, to see it being read, and perhaps even being helpful for folks! @jwmason.bsky.social , @chadzimmerman.bsky.social

I know this isn't your overall point, but I am absolutely going to use "doing an orientalism" when talking about some modern scholarship or some seventeenth or eighteenth century texts. (I can think of one scholar's book that I read this term.) "Doing an orientalism" is way too common.

Same for modern literature. I’ve heard readers say that it’s difficult to feel “connected” to modern Chinese literature (written by people born before the cultural revolution) because they’re so “different” from us. But if you read Swedish novels from the 1949s or 40s they’re remarkably similar.

no one: absolutely no one: me at 30 (and now, let’s be honest):

i’m a cultural anthropologist and this is one of the core ideas of our field—the idea that careful, empirical, comparative study of phenomena across cultures can help us identify commonalities in human experience, no matter how different they appear on the surface.

Pretentious, Pedestrian, and Ponderous Pamela (1740) Takes 🔥 #booksky

Real, non-invidious specialization in the humanities isn't setting up walls, checkpoints, and barriers, it's finding a central node, a critical vantage point from which to view the world, a non-proprietary place to leave and return to, a formant profile that resonates for you with everything else

We don't talk enough about how rare it is, as an early novel, for the Tale of Genji not to be adorned with endless rhetorical excuses and justifications for its existence, nowhere claiming to be a "cautionary tale" or an "aid in moral edification"

Real, non-invidious specialization in the humanities isn't setting up walls, checkpoints, and barriers, it's finding a central node, a critical vantage point from which to view the world, a non-proprietary place to leave and return to, a formant profile that resonates for you with everything else

I haven't read this, but I happened upon the cover and I thought it was striking enough, maybe I should squeeze it into the queue at some point

Don't most people's thoughts and actions presuppose a kind of moderate relativism? Isn't that good? Is it really necessary for "Shakespeare is good" to be etched into the fabric of the universe for me to be able to appreciate Hamlet?

only a few chapters in, but this is clearly a defining text of our era, a book that everyone sooner or later will have read press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Have there been any good articles on these "anime cars" I keep seeing? (i.e., regular sedans adorned with huge stickers of various anime characters, almost always young women, perhaps famous characters but I don't really know?) What is this subculture? Seems... inadvisable

Cover to Man, oh man! 人啊,人! (1980), by Dai Houying 戴厚英

Cover to Man, oh man! 人啊,人! (1980), by Dai Houying 戴厚英

[guy who absolutely does not give a shit about sports, but who still wants to post] you all should ring the church bells since you're so delighted, like they did in that English village that one time (possibly apocryphal)

This is fairly abstract, although it becomes very concretely evident what I'm talking about when the examples later in the essay come rolling in (I wish people would read the essay, it's genuinely amusing to see the same errors being made for 100+ years)

just what I'm writing/ translating/ reading/ listening to/ watching/ thinking about, etc.

How long it takes and how hard it is to undo the damage will depend in large part on the political will of the people elected to do it. If you get hand-wringing caveat peddlers who want to deliberate for years before acting it'll never happen. Plan has to be ready on day one

... my family caring responsibilities here in Brisbane, with Dad needing another operation. If anyone is able to help us out towards the costs of earthquake coping, we super appreciate your kindness 🙏 ❤️ www.paypal.com/paypalme/drm...

just what I'm writing/ translating/ reading/ listening to/ watching/ thinking about, etc.

this is what I wrote about people in the humanities who claim access to "objective" and "timeless" truths these excerpts were written before the "Vanderbilt Report"; this is the "relativism" that they are willing to destroy the humanities to defeat

This reflects my own "forced sabbatical" experiences (no job opportunities post-graduation), which have extended now far beyond a scant 5.5 months. (Amateur numbers, honestly, and only every 5 years? Sad.)

everyone is posting doomslop, better re-up these nice covers to improve the mood

cover art for Zhang Henshui 張恨水 (1895 – 1967) novels, of the Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies school 鴛鴦蝴蝶派 (ca. 1910s-1920s)

gonna try my hand at translating the cool dream parable from the commentary on Fated Mates of the Embroidered Screen 繡屏緣 (ca. 17th C.) that I mentioned on the blog as vibing with Freud's _The Interpretation of Dreams_ in interesting ways

wonder if it would be possible simply to make it illegal to paywall journals

Pamela (1740) *really* drags in places (e.g., there's several pages on whether to have the wedding on a Monday or a Thursday) but, if you can hold out, there's a great scene when "the sister arrives uninvited," and something about having Pamela narrate it in her tedious fashion is just *chef's kiss*

cover art for Zhang Henshui 張恨水 (1895 – 1967) novels, of the Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies school 鴛鴦蝴蝶派 (ca. 1910s-1920s)

I don't necessary think pre-history was great, but it's wrong to assume that life was necessarily "nasty, brutish, and short," or even uninteresting. And it's sadly unimaginative not to wonder whether pre-historic people often enjoyed political and social freedoms unlike any we've ever seen.

"We did all this for good reasons" That's actually the kind of thing that scholars are supposed to debate back and forth, not simply posit as obviously true This is why Graeber was such a good scholar; just admit that he was so much better at asking the right questions

This Is Just To Say I have eaten the peaches that were in the garden and which you were probably saving for three to nine thousand years Forgive me they were truly divine so fragrant and so sweet

Here is a new podcast/video of @arjunjayadev.bsky.social and I talking with Nathan Robinson of Current Affairs about Against Money. youtu.be/p3X6D9qsFiU?...

If this painting were from the early Qing Dynasty, the contemporary secondary literature would unanimously agree that it reflects cultural "feminization" due to Han literati emasculation under Manchu rule

This ideology is being deliberately cultivated by bad actors and being adopted by historically illiterate authors and artists Remember last week's absolutely fallacious "the internet is making people less willing to buy poetry collections" hot take?

Sure seems that if Hongloumeng doesn't fit your model of "China's long eighteenth century," maybe you should... adjust your model?

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Just read Richard Rorty's "Looking Back at Literary Theory." (2006) 4 pages. No citations. Okay? Nice blog post, dude.

Caizi jiaren novels were among the most popular works of the Qing Dynasty. They have failed to garner scholarly attention due to shortcomings in how literature is studied in the university. Though neglected by so-called "specialists," they are a critical part of our collective human memory.

most people read The Sorrows of a Young Werther out of an essentialist belief that "The German people are very philosophical and love literature" I'm reengaging with Goethe because he's one of the few people vocally to appreciate Haoqiu zhuan 好逑傳 "惟才識才," I mumble to myself on the bus

would you play a sonata at double speed on the piano, just because you can? no? well, sorry, novels are similarly constrained as an art form you can, in fact, read novels too fast; that's why I refer to "experientially normal" rates of consumption