Heat-wilted in Saint-Lizier on the Santiago de Compostela Pilgrim's route. Ordered a glass of wine w/ bad French and worse pointing and accidentally got a half-bottle. Many forms of grace. Didn't make it far and didn't want to.

from my essay on Kafka & Scholem & also an inspiration for my novel The Tavern at the End of History, which asks what use are our accounts of our experience. What can the novel say/what can be expressed? 1/

Kafka's birthday is prob. a good time to repost this essay about Kafka, Jewish mysticism, and the difficulties of knowing how we should be living...

"I wanted to think ... about dreaming correspondences between the aural and the visual that would open up into new zones of thinking about embodiment and voice ..." An Interview with @laurenelkin.bsky.social minorliteratures.com/2026/06/02/s...

On the eve of our submission window opening, we felt we should add an AI policy

I think one thing the AI age has taught me is how many of my colleagues: 1. genuinely hate writing. 2. are bad at writing. 3. are bad at assessing writing. 4. really do not care about how the writing gets done. Which seems bad, because writing=thinking.

UCI has, alas, become one of the sector leaders in Ponzi austerity bullshit. Hiring EdTech execs with no HigherEd credentials as Deans of Continuing Education (for just one instance). @trevorgriffey.bsky.social in Remaking The University.

Weekend reading. @sarabandebooks.bsky.social

There are lies, there are damn lies, and then there are pandering faux anti-elite justifications for drinking Miller Lite.

Feeling nostalgic for a good ol diasporic grifter: born in Łódź, survived the Holocaust via a fake baptism, emigrated thanks to a bogus foundation, married an heiress, and killed himself after leaving a pretty droll note. And wrote some great novels.

"Your body spreads across my brain/ Like a bird-filled summer..." I'm starting summer now and summer doesn't start in New England until we read Rexroth's erotic love poems to the crows and finches and all the seabirds. From "When We With Sapho":

About this time last year I was doing edits on this & reading Alina's My Heresies in the Pyrenees. The best part of publishing is being read by other writers I love to read.

"This place is gorges!" *Kills suitors

the Dem tendency to malign academics as a cheap and lazy populist gesture, at a moment when Republicans are destroying academia while deploying cheap and lazy populist rhetoric, and while the main discernible Dem promise is not being Republicans, is neither great messaging nor great substance

Sorry, you’re telling me that something that doesn’t feel pain, doesn’t have lactic acid build up, doesn’t need adequate hydration or electrolytes, doesn’t need to pee, and doesn’t get tired is only 6 minutes faster than humans? you’ve fucked up a perfectly good Roomba.

I hate having to do the "look, they're normal just like us" post, but sometimes you have to do that when American propaganda tries to convince everyone Iranians are "animals".

The GOP Congress could stop this genocidal horror at any moment & they are responsible every moment that they haven't, & don't. This is their voice echoing out of the moral necropolis at the heart of our republic. "The end of a civilization?" You're alreadty seeing it, here.

Really gratifying to be read so well, by such a good writer, in such great company. I esp. appreciate the mention of the book's prose--it's what I care most about...and what seems to get mentioned least in reviews. Thank you, Caleb!

"There were no books."

Jewish Book Week is a literary festival in London, held annually in February and March, that explores Jewish literature, ideas and culture. Here are Jewish books for adults being published in 2026. Book lists in ALT text. #jewishbookweek #jbw #jewishauthors #jewishbooks #bookpost #booksky #books

What do The Tavern at the End of History by Morris Collins, Hide by Carolina Ebeid, Frog by Anne Fadiman, and The People Can Fly by Joshua Bennett have in common? They’re just a handful of the noteworthy titles included in our latest #PageOne installment. Read on: at.pw.org/PageOne2026x2

my 26 most anticipated books of 2026 😊✨ 💙📚 #booksky

New episode of Books Up Close is out now, with @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and @johannawinant.bsky.social about their @princetonupress.bsky.social book Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century. Subscribe and listen now, wherever you get your podcasts! zencastr.com/dashboard/Bo...

Did you know you can preorder my book? You should go preorder my book. "An intimate year-in-poems capturing the joy and dread of getting older, growing a family, the world’s news … and the miracles—no bigger than a child’s hand—that keep us going." www.publishinggenius.com/catalog/apri...

In my experience the process of putting work into the world is full of frustrations, but imagine waking up to this: such a great pleasure to be read so generously by a writer I've read so admiringly for so long. so. Wildly grateful!

iambic tetrameter ass stick

Forthcoming on April 16—An Absence of Sea—a letter across time woven from dreams, intimacies, lived fragments, and remembered voices, where the self meets its double and those who echo within it. www.erratumpress.com/an-absence-o... My gratitude to @ansgarallen.bsky.social @erratumpress.bsky.social

It's pub day for my new novel, The Tavern at the End of History. When writing I imagined it like The Magic Mountain­, but shorter & with Jews. (& also angels, a dybbuk, & stolen art). Looking forward to sharing it with you all!

One of my favorite writers comparing me to one of my favorite writers (- wallpaper descriptions). I'm delighted!

"She said, hwaet?"

I've been out of work since October so this could not have come at a worse financial time for my ability to help my family. So, I really really appreciate everyone who has donated or shared this!

Sorry to see that James Sallis has died. Sallis was a formative writer for me & modeled an outlaw career, as he phrased it, that was inspiring in its freedom. He’s best known for his tight little crime novel, Drive, that later became an even better movie—1/

My novel, The Tavern at the End of History, comes out next week. In the meantime there's another excerpt (about bad curators, worse museums and who actually lives in Maine) up as one of Literary Hub's daily fiction offerings. lithub.com/title/

How terrible & beautiful not to know ourselves:

Birthday dram

On the eve of MLA, a model of collegiality worth considering. (From @keironpim.bsky.social 's stunning bio of Joseph Roth) "Anyone who insulted them would be challenged to a duel...unscarred cheeks and a nose without a nick in it were unworthy of an academic in the genuine German tradition."

Chag Sameach

Important not to even stock other books.

I'm a huge fan of Angela Woodward. More people need to read her strange, hilarious sui generis work. AFTERLIFE is my most anticipated book of the spring...

Can't wait to hear the trolling re relative stress and caesurae in dactylic hexameter...

I reviewed Gabriele Tergit's THE EFFINGERS, a mighty and brilliant and extremely readable book out now in English thanks to a cracking translation by Sophie Duvernoy >>> www.theguardian.com/books/2025/d...

Happy to see my forthcoming novel,The Tavern at the End of History on @jewishbookcouncil.bsky.social recommended winter reading list. A great book for all the readers in your life who dig dybbuks, art, unhelpful baseball references & diasporic longing! www.jewishbookcouncil.org/pb-daily/jbc...

Pretty good company...

Sure, I’m out of a contract, struggling to finish this novel, and have no clue what’ll happen next in my career, but I’m writing exactly the kind of dark, sad, weird, violent, magical mosaic of a book I want to write and that’s what this whole gig is really about.

In case you, like me, have not yet found this incredible resource/s by @annakornbluh.bsky.social and a few others, IT IS SO GREAT!!! 🙌🔥🙌 against-a-i.com

@annakornbluh.bsky.social (a scholar I've long-admired) is a hero in my dept for her Against AI website as we try to stem our collaboration w/ apocalypse Meanwhile, my own (v. Jewish) new novel about how the stories we tell about the past shape the future www.dzancbooks.org/all-titles/p...

Ah, yes. The "3-women-per-day" school of narratology: "The scenes in Balzac or in Dostoyevsky (the last great Balzacian of the novel form) reflects...a beauty that is very rare...that everyone has known (or at least glimpsed) in the course of his own life." -Kundera, The Curtain

Big mistake. No good mornings, here.

did anyone else know pedro pascal was john ashbery