Weekly Readings #198 (11/17/25-11/23/25)
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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The Magic Mountain
13 min read
Central to the author's discussion of Romantic Realism as his model novel combining philosophy, sensuality, and epic grandeur. Understanding Mann's masterwork enriches comprehension of the literary movement being advocated.
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René Girard
14 min read
The author mentions publishing an essay critiquing 'Girardianism qua literary theory' in Literary Imagination. Girard's mimetic theory and its application to literature is a significant intellectual framework being engaged with.
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Pale Fire
12 min read
Mentioned as the subject of an upcoming podcast episode, and Nabokov is referenced multiple times including the phrase 'out-Nabokoving of Nabokov.' This experimental novel exemplifies the literary sophistication the newsletter engages with.
A weekly newsletter on what I’ve written, read, and otherwise enjoyed.
If you, too, would like to read what feels like a classic novel set in the present, what some are even calling “the best novel of the decade,” you can order my new book Major Arcana here in all formats—print, ebook, and audio—or in print wherever books are sold online. You can also buy it directly from Belt Publishing—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. An exciting new episode on Nabokov’s Pale Fire—an experimental novel about which I feel deep ambivalence—will drop this coming Wednesday for my American listeners’ pre-holiday listening pleasure. In the meantime, 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!
The most exciting literary news of the week, however, was perhaps the release of the new issue of Johns Hopkins University Press journal Literary Imagination.1 The headline event, the cause of the stir, was of course James Tussing’s “The Mysteries of Love: On Alice Munro,” which you can read for free here, and which I have personally been waiting for since (I’m glad I’ve finally reached a moment in my life when I can name- and location-drop) James told me about it on the rooftop of the Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research back in May (see here).2 I would be remiss not to inform you, however, that I also have an essay in this issue, “Romantic Truth: Imaginative Authority in the Literary Criticism of René Girard,” which you can read for free here. My reproof of Girardianism qua literary theory has a twist ending that returns us to the wilds of Canada, if not quite to the dark forest of Munro’s “Vandals” and James’s reading thereof. All this and more in Literary Imagination!
For today, two main posts: a neo-Romantic listicle and a rumination on fascist poetry. The latter was meant to be an “incendiary footnote,” thus
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