For my February column @commonweal.bsky.social, I wrote on Dan Chiasson's "Bernie for Burlington"
www.commonwealmagazine.org/bernie-sande...
26.02.2026 20:52
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For my February column @commonweal.bsky.social, I wrote on Dan Chiasson's "Bernie for Burlington"
www.commonwealmagazine.org/bernie-sande...
"The battle of all-against-all giving way to democratic cooperation: this is the alternate political vision Sanders has offered for half a century."
@tonydomestico.bsky.social on Dan Chiasson's 'Bernie for Burlington':
www.commonwealmagazine.org/bernie-sande...
For my February column @commonweal.bsky.social, I wrote on Dan Chiasson's "Bernie for Burlington"
www.commonwealmagazine.org/bernie-sande...
"He had consulted his taste in everything--his taste alone perhaps, as a sick man consciously incurable consults at last only his lawyer: that was what made him so different from every one else."
- "The Portrait of a Lady"
"They stood there knowing each other well and each on the whole willing to accept the satisfaction of knowing as a compensation for the inconvenience—whatever it might be—of being known."
- "The Portrait of a Lady"
I wrote about one part of my reaction to recent events: the importance and nuance of what it means to subscribe to something.
Because Larry Levis deserves to be celebrated.
www.alinastefanescuwriter.com/blog/2026/2/16/larry-levis
"In 'City Hall,' as with practically every Wiseman documentary, there’s a literary bent to the way moments are catalogued, whether deadening bureaucratic meetings or the inspiring successes of vital public works."
Patrick Preziosi for @commonweal.bsky.social
www.commonwealmagazine.org/civic-art
Darryl Pinckney on Elizabeth Hardwick: their relationship, her life, the evolution of her writing, and "the suffering of bad artists." It's on episode 1 of Private Life, the new podcast from @nybooks.com, hosted by Jarrett Earnest.
Close Reading Is For Everyone Dan Sinykin and Johanna Winant Call for Pitches Based on our previous Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century, we are at work on a new version that’s shorter, slimmer, and aimed at a more general audience. We’re looking for a new set of contributors who would write excellent, brief, model close readings of texts that high schoolers might know and care about. Think: “The Gettysburg Address,” Macbeth, and Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” but also song lyrics, idioms, or even a visual image. What is your best, most instructive, most exciting, most welcoming example of how a close reading builds a real argument out from a tiny, perhaps overlooked detail? If you’re interested in pitching us, please send us your 250-word close reading of the text you propose. Your close reading should be mappable using our vocabulary of close reading: the five steps of scene setting, noticing, local claiming, regional argumentation, and global theorizing. (Our close reading of “The Red Wheelbarrow” in the early pages of our introduction is the sort of thing we’re seeking.) If we think we can use yours, we’ll ask you to expand it to a 1,200 word essay in which you explain how your close reading works step by step. We seek close readings both of texts that are canonical and also ones that aren’t. And so we invite contributors both from the discipline of literary studies, and other disciplines across the university, and the public humanities beyond it. Send your pitches—please include your name and contact info—to daniel.sinykin@emory.edu and jwinant@reed.edu by March 15.
CALL FOR PITCHES
@dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I are at work on a new version of Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century aimed at a more general audience.
We’re looking for new contributions: your model close readings of texts, canonical and not, from literary studies and not.
Details below!
Incredible section, first-rate editor, a real loss to the literary world.
there isn’t a better Books desk in the country than the one at the Washington Post. I’m not really sure there’s anything else to say
Shutting down (the stellar) books coverage at WaPo is a real telling move when your owner is literally Jeff Bezos
I'll say more before too long, but for now: Thanks to anyone who has ever read and supported the Post's books coverage.
Another exciting lineup for the Durst Distinguished Lecture Series this spring at Purchase College: Kiran Desai, Yiyun Li, and Emil Ferris.
Free, open to the public, and not too far from the city!
www.purchase.edu/academics/sc...
My January column on Christopher Ricks for @commonweal.bsky.social
www.commonwealmagazine.org/twice-blest-...
“What is a / poem, anyway.”
New on Book Post: Anthony Domestico on the breathtaking clarity and intimacy of James Shuyler’s poetry, arising from a troubled and complex life.
books.substack.com/p/review-ant...
@tonydomestico.bsky.social @fsgbooks.bsky.social
My January column on Christopher Ricks for @commonweal.bsky.social
www.commonwealmagazine.org/twice-blest-...
"How sweet it felt to be out, to see the river, and his breath on the air."
- Claire Keegan, "Small Things Like These"
My piece on James Schuyler for @bookpostusa.bsky.social
books.substack.com/p/review-ant...
That's super generous. I might take you up on it. (We start the semester with a bunch of great reviews, including yours on Stella Maris.)
New Reviewing the Contemporary Novel reading list, featuring @tricialockwood.bsky.social, @justintaylor.bsky.social, @appletwigli.bsky.social, and others.
Coming from NYRB to the US in spring 2027.
Critic Rhoda Feng likes the quick wit and writerly daring of Madeline Cash's debut novel, LOST LAMBS. Her smart review is in the print edition of Sunday's @bostonglobe.com but it's also online now. www.bostonglobe.com/2026/01/06/a...
"It was Sunday morning and all the bells were rocking the bright sky about, boxing its ears with their glorious hands."
- Pamela Hansford Johnson, "The Unspeakable Skipton"
"He drained his coffee, steaming as it was, at a gulp."
- Pamela Hansford Johnson, "The Unspeakable Skipton"
Moses Herzog was 47. Frank Bascombe was 38. Rabbit Angstrom was 26. In Ben Markovits’ very good book, Tom Lanyard is 55. What happens when the male-midlife-crisis novel gets old?
James Merrill. “No dread. No bitterness. The end beginning. Today’s / Dusk room aglow / For the last time / With candlelight. / Faces love lit, / Gifts underfoot. / Still to be so poised, so / Receptive. Still to recall, to praise.”
Lovely year-end notice from @tonydomestico.bsky.social in @commonweal.bsky.social of CLOSE READING FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY. "Sinykin and Winant convincingly argue that close reading isn’t just an intellectual but also a social and ethical practice" www.commonwealmagazine.org/books-domest...
Some of my favorite books of 2025, including criticism by A. S. Hamrah and the diaries of Helen Garner, for @commonweal.bsky.social
www.commonwealmagazine.org/books-domest...