Weekly Readings #193 (10/13/25-10/19/25)

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

My new novel, Major Arcana, is so enjoyable that even some real-life inspirations for its hero-villain are saying they enjoyed it, instead, for example, of suing me.1 Imagine, then, how much you would enjoy what readers have called “a deliriously creative tour-de-force” (Booklist), “the first cult hit of the 21st century” (Leviathan Bookstore), and “a bravura, hallucinatory tarot of art, madness, and the fatal poignance of being alive” (Bruce Wagner). 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, and 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. We are well into a 15-part sequence on the modern American novel. This week, in an episode called “Getting Modern,” we explored the fake autobiography and real novel known as The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein. In examining what Stein called her “audience” book, as opposed to her more experimental work, we considered what modernism meant to Stein as she recounts her time spent with the great artists and her service in the Great War. We further explored Stein’s theory of writing and culture and the increasingly controversial question of her politics.2 In her literary and political difficulty, we concluded, she presents a case no less vexing than that of Ezra Pound. Next week: we return to expat Paris (and to right-wing lesbian modernism) for the phantasmagoria of Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood.3 A paid subscription to Grand Hotel Abyss buys you access to The Invisible College’s ever-expanding archive, with over 80 two- to three-hour episodes on literary subjects from Homer to Joyce. Thanks to all my current and future paid subscribers!

For today, literary parlor games, searching footnotes, and more. Please enjoy!

Pulling Rank: Great Books vs. Great Authors in the American Canon

Based on last week’s post,4 a reader writes in to inquire, with the shared understanding that ranks and lists are meant to be stimuli to thought, a game or an exercise to clarify values, rather than a stern, serious critical judgment:

Okay so in