Autumn plans include growing the terrible Empson beard and thinking about ambiguity.

Gabriele Annan on Sebald: "So the past is seen at several removes, like a print of a print of a painting, or a reflection in a suite of mirrors, growing fainter and more poignant at every stage: verbal sepia."

Galleys for the first two volumes of ON THE CALCULATION OF VOLUME — a Danish speculative fiction septology — have arrived from New Directions.

My piece on José Donoso’s “The Obscene Bird of Night” is now out from behind paywall. Thanks to SwR for the opportunity. southwestreview.com/volume-109-num…

Hawkes covers

Pieces forthcoming

Everything you want in the NYT book review and almost never get Dustin Illingworth nytimes.com/2024/06/12/boo…

HERSCHT 07769. The apocalyptic excess of Krasznahorkai. Familiar pleasures abound. We’ve got the holy fool, the gorgeous derangement, the terminal gloom, the particle physics, the energy and motion. His work is, as M Hofmann said of Lowry’s Volcano, “more world than product.”

Open "The Pound Era" at random, read a line or two, return to the work at hand refreshed. Hardwick's "Collected Essays," too. Deep, cool wells.

Writing about a graphic novel has opened a new critical perspective for me. I want to write about art and film, too. Parse the linkages between forms, that sort of thing. I don't know, it's early, we'll see.

In the mail: generally happy enough to wait on finished NYRB Classics copies, but had to request ARC of the too-eagerly-anticipated forthcoming Augusto Monterroso novel, 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑅𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑆𝑖𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 nyrb.com/products/the-r… It does not disappoint !

For The Washington Post, I wrote about the new Olga Tokarczuk novel. washingtonpost.com/books/2024/09/…

Good as it gets

The literary world, the most repellent of all worlds.

For The Baffler, I wrote about Charles Burns, one of the great American graphic novelists. thebaffler.com/latest/teenage…