Weekly Readings #201 (12/08/25-12/14/25)

A weekly newsletter on what I’ve written, read, and otherwise enjoyed.

Thanks to Tobias Carroll and Reactor for listing my new novel Major Arcana among “The Best Books of 2025.” (Carroll also wrote a great essay for Zona Motel back in August explicating the real-life comics inspirations behind Major Arcana.) If you’d like to catch up with one of this quickly disappearing year’s most talked-about novels, you can order it in all formats (print, ebook, audio) here; you can also find it in print wherever books are sold online. You can buy it directly from Belt Publishing, too—we receive more of a profit that way—or you might also suggest that your local library or independent bookstore acquire a copy. Please also leave a Goodreads, Amazon, or other rating and review. Thanks to all my readers!

Then there’s The Invisible College, my literature podcast for paid subscribers. This week, Christmas came early when I released “The Language God Spoke In,” an almost three-hour episode on the rare contemporary (or contemporary-ish) novel that seeks quasi-scriptural status: Toni Morrison’s neglected neo-/late-/post-modernist revisionist-Biblical dystopic-utopian magical-realist fairy-tale masterpiece Paradise, in which the Nobel-winning novelist esoterically promotes a syncretic gnostic-infused1 non-dualistic neo-Christianity presided over by a Black Madonna.2 (Happy holy days!) We’re taking a little holiday break for the new two weeks, but The Invisible College will return before the New Year with 2025’s final episode, one devoted to Thomas Pynchon.3 I will release the 2026 schedule, as is customary, on New Year’s Day, and we’ll begin again, also as per usual, on the third Friday in January. I haven’t made the 2026 schedule yet—or rather, I keep making it and then remaking it—so please let me know in the comments if there’s anything you urgently need to read next year.4 A paid subscription to Grand Hotel Abyss buys you access to The Invisible College’s ever-expanding archive, with almost 90 two- to three-hour episodes on subjects from Homer to Joyce, and from ancient to contemporary literature. Thanks to all my current and future paid subscribers!

For today, I repost a brief Q&A from my super-secret Tumblr, with a long expansion in the footnotes, plus further footnotes on Eyes Wide Shut, Platonic Romanticism, John Carey, and more. Please enjoy!

To a Person: Perspective in Fiction

An anonymous inquirer recently wrote to