Weekly Readings #191 (09/29/25-10/05/25)

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

Word of my new novel Major Arcana continues to spread, as you can see above from its inclusion (our own Naomi Kanakia is also mentioned) in a publishing news Instagram reel from Story Mtn. Major Arcana, as a saga about magicians and their unpredictable and often horrifying attempt to manifest their deepest desires, will suit your seasonal needs as the October mists deepen. In one chapter, I even invent a little horror movie for the protagonists to watch. As a heteroglossic, polyvocal, and omni-affective epic, Major Arcana spans all four seasons, but autumnal wistfulness might suit it best.1 You can order Major Arcana here in all formats—print, ebook, and audio—or in print wherever books are sold online. You might also suggest that your local library or independent bookstore acquire a copy. Thanks to all my readers!

Then there’s The Invisible College, my literature podcast for paid subscribers. This week we continued our survey of modern American fiction this week with O Pioneers! by Willa Cather in an episode entitled “You Belong to the Land.” Since Cather is still underrated—surely, she is second only to Faulkner in American modernism, a judgment with which Faulkner, not to mention Wallace Stevens, might have agreed—I made the episode completely free to all.2 But a paid subscription to Grand Hotel Abyss buys you access to The Invisible College’s ever-expanding archive, with almost 80 two- to three-hour episodes on literary subjects from Homer to Joyce. Next week: Jean Toomer’s Cane, the unclassifiable high-modernist masterpiece of the Harlem Renaissance.3 Thanks to all my current and future paid subscribers!

For today, some thoughts, prompted by a reader’s question, on some of the last great writers of the American century and what they have to tell us about characterization. Please enjoy!

The Rock or the Cloud: Major American Novelists and the Affirmations of Form

A reader with the Tumblr username McCarthyian-Faulknerian, no doubt inspired by my thoughts about Pynchon from last week, and perhaps also my qualified defense of “ranking” art on recent Invisible College episodes, asks:

DeLillo, McCarthy, or Roth, and why?4

These three are so different from one another.5 I think of Orwell on the question of Dickens vs. Tolstoy:

But one is no more obliged to choose between them than between a sausage and a