thomas de quincey’s observation on why it’s sadder for people to die in the summer is so spectacularly idiosyncratic and beautiful that it is guaranteed to be the best paragraph you read today

for minor literature[s] a conversation about what we want, expect and hope for when we read novels including contributions from J. Mae Barizo, Nancy Freund, Greg Gerke, Daniel Kennedy, Ben Libman, Alvin Lu, Mikra Namani, Lisa Robertson, Ryan Ruby and more ... youtu.be/kmP-ku2Ty0U

Twenty years in the making.

I think often about Jacques Derrida’s last interview, published in English as Learning to Live Finally, specifically about this fragment on death: “I leave a piece of paper behind, I go away, I die: it is impossible to escape this structure, it is the unchanging form of my life.”

Somehow missed this incredible story by my neighbor and pal David Nutt which makes a weirdly great compliment to the other big vasectomy story by Zac Smith (X-R-A-Y has been publishing a lot of vasectomy stories lately)

My writing world is so damn blessed by Alvin and Name of Author🇵🇸🇺🇦. I firmly believe the most interesting literary things are happening in small rooms, in minor keys, between ellipses and backyard tire fires. 🖤

Our Summer 2025 Issue is OUT NOW! Featuring some fantastic works of eco-writing in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry as well as some marvelous visual art. Read now on our website (link in bio)!

I think Pynchon took the photo

Lately I've been thinking about how DFW was a huge Bernhard fan and how the monologues in DFW's fiction are themselves Bernhardian and how all these writers who were imitating DFW in the early 2000s were really imitating Bernhard at a remove.

I wrote about "the Bernhardian" for The Baffler a while back. thebaffler.com/latest/old-mas…

If I ever somehow got the chance to speak with Thomas Pynchon, I wouldn't even ask him a single solitary thing about his books. I would just talk to him about jazz and Looney Tunes. That's it.

Gerald Murnane recalling his first encounter with Kerouac’s On the Road: (from his 1986 essay “On the Road to Bendigo”)

The mass starvation & killing of Palestinians in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli gov’t is a chillul hashem, a desecration of God. Jewish leaders who criticized Zohran Mamdani for three words he doesn’t use should raise their voices loudly here as well.forward.com/opinion/757549…

Speaking of galleys, there’s still no better galley cover. All time great work from Biblioasis for an all time great book.

A great essay for those of us attempting to come to terms with what could have been and what ended up being lareviewofbooks.org/article/much-l…

NW

as a working class kid, 5+ years to read and write with healthcare was the best decision i have ever made. didn't matter what happened after