Weekly Readings #207 (01/19/26-01/25/26)

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

Welcome back to Grand Hotel Abyss! The above is a Goodreads review of my recent novel, Major Arcana. I’m not actually convinced there are “normies” anymore as society hyper-fractionates into micro-cults making any normative monoculture1 impossible, but if you, too, would like to shed the “normie” stigma and experience this “deep” novel of “amazing and complex characters” who negotiate the perils of “[p]hilosophy, magic, spirituality,” you can order Major Arcana 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 Anne Trubek’s distinguished 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. Finally, I remind you that Major Arcana will be the topic of Ian Cattanach’s book club on January 31st if you’d like to read it in company. Thanks to all my readers!

Also wrestling with philosophy, magic, and spirituality is Hans Castorp in The Magic Mountain, and we are wrestling them along with him in The Invisible College, my literature podcast for paid subscribers to this Substack. The College assembled this week for “Life’s Lascivious Form,” the second of four episodes on Thomas Mann’s great 20th-century novel. Of particular interest in this episode is our discussion of how cutting-edge technology—which means the x-ray and the cinema in the novel’s 1900s setting—does not banish in the name of Enlightenment but rather summon in the name of archeo-futurism the worlds of death and the spirit back into modern lives.2 We will finish Mann’s novel in the next two weeks, after which will follow episodes on Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and then Virgil and Dante as winter becomes spring. If you’d like join us, please offer a paid subscription today. You can also peruse the 2026 schedule and consult the ever-expanding two-year archive, with almost 100 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, a repost of an interesting question about James Joyce sent by an anonymous reader to my super-secret Tumblr, and an answer that bears upon The Magic Mountain and