Ben. Literature scholar & writer; Ass. Prof. of English at Marquette University. He/him, boring transsexual. DRY LAND (2023, UWP): https://uwpress.wisc.edu/Books/D/Dry-Land; other stuff elsewhere.
website: bpladek.net
B. Pladek
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not all novels need to do this but I also love it when a book self-evidently About something names it precisely, not in order to feed you a lesson but to render the idea in its full articulated complexity; clarity as irreducibility is so hard to do well & MM does it
ok wow so was not expecting a mic drop of a ghost scene at the end of The Magic Mountain, a book I thought was unspoilerable bc the final twist is literally just WWI
done. phew. what an achievement--the apex of the c19 novel-as-self-destroying-dialectic; like watching modernism burst from its egg. the final line, asking if love will "someday rise out of [WWI]," has the same bleak irony as Hugo having Enjolras say "the c19 is great but the c20 will be happy."
I have (not programmatically) found myself reading several new-to-me brick-sized Classic novels per year. mostly they're good; some disappointing; a few excellent. Magic Mountain's excellent. ponderous, inevitable, horrifying, like being crushed by a glacier (the glacier is Europe)
so happy OFTV's back with a new ep that gives the people what we want: fun trans history & an outro that's a nearly full play of Fleetwood Mac's "Rhiannon." never have I felt so seen
I received this "informed" poll, which was v obvs funded by the Rodriguez campaign but did not disclose so when I asked (repeatedly) abt it. It was a joke; scant mention of other candidates, biased questions, seemed to be digging for ammo against Hong in particular
