Matthew Spencer

This is a lovely piece

Smudged bars of charcoal, black tea clouds within a kind of square, on white notebook paper

Impromptu (September)

Not many readers at all, yes, which makes the need for fellowship among them all the more pressing

I find this a tragedy. The great readers are so important to our society. When Harold Bloom died I felt the same way.

Remembering Michael Silverblatt My unexceptional experience with the most exceptional reader of our time

I wrote a short essay about Michael Silverblatt, about being far from the only reader he had a profound effect on: www.paradise-almanac.net/p/rememberin...

On this day in 1922, the first issue of the pioneering horror magazine Weird Tales was published. Its second editor, Farnsworth Wright, would turn the publication into a powerhouse for translated literature, which is documented in our collection Night Fears (@geoliminal.bsky.social)

WIP

Time well spent!

Ulysses in the Alps, Ulysses in Seattle On bickering about a book on the site of a mass shooting

For the Almanac, I wrote about reading Ulysses over Christmas break in the Austrian Alps, arguing with people over whether I actually read it or not, and the strangeness of having that argument on the site of a mass shooting: www.paradise-almanac.net/p/ulysses-in...

An Unexpected Reunion by Johann Peter Hebel “What the earth has returned to me, it will not withhold a second time.”

In honor of Saint Lucia’s Day, here is my translation of “An Unexpected Reunion” by Johann Peter Hebel, which Ernst Bloch (and maybe Franz Kafka too) regarded as the most beautiful story ever written: www.paradise-almanac.net/p/an-unexpec...

We have copies of The Parson in Jubilee by Jean Paul, trans. @unpaginated.bsky.social (the person writing this post) up for sale at Paradise HQ. Grab a copy! paradiseeditions.net/products/the...

(Jewish lit theory guy seeing a Christmas tree for the first time) wow. Dickensian

Frowning at the great apparatus

Even if a reader knows that copyediting errors are the fault of the publisher, I still think a good share of the blame, unconsciously at least, gets transferred to the author. It's their name on the cover, after all.

Thanks to @jsief.bsky.social for editing this book.

"One climbs all stairs—even clandestine ones—faster than the snail staircase of merit." My translation of The Parson in Jubilee: An Appendix by Jean Paul is available now through Empyrean Editions: asterismbooks.com/product/the-...

From the EPA Documerica series

You've been visited by the STRAWBERRY OF PROSPERITY.

really awesome Herman Miller desk I found on FB Marketplace lol

On Calenders Sculpting time with pictures of cute animals

For the Almanac, I wrote about calendars and my interactions with the kinds of animals that appear in calendars: paradisealmanc.substack.com/p/on-calenders

“I knew what they were feeling, because I felt it too—something swelling within, something that had to be art because art was the last chance they would ever get.”

From Backwardness (Letters and Notebooks 1973-2023) by Garielle Lutz

Henry James is underrated as a comic writer

Self-Officiation On getting married in a very Pennsylvanian way in a very Pennsylvanian town

For the Almanac, I write about so-called Quaker marriages and a Pennsylvania town named after an athlete who never lived in or even visited it. (I'm married now.) paradisealmanc.substack.com/p/self-offic...

RIP to a dear friend and eminent scholar, David Bellos.

Another view of the Kleist cover:

goddamn but if @paradiseeditions.bsky.social hasn't knocked it out of the park again