Christopher Burlinson

A positive reaction?!

Ha! I will!!

Excellent: congratulations!!

An old archway leading to rooms in Jesus College, Cambridge

New teaching year; let’s go!

Thank you!

That’s extremely interesting! I read others saying that Penn’s performance was in the Pynchon spirit, and I get that (and fwiw I really liked him), but the rest of the film didn’t quite aim for that register (or didn’t hit it). Again something that I think Inherent Vice did really well.

Thanks: really interesting! It really made me want to rewatch Inherent Vice (again!).

What a sequence!

Yes I think you’re right! It’s such an interesting moment, isn’t it, because the film has lived in that exaggerated, unreal parallel present, and then suddenly at the end you feel she’s come back into our world, the film’s world has joined up with ours again.

I guess I wonder whether Pynchon/PTA think that revolutionary politics always have that volatile, libidinal, authoritarian energy to them, and what happens to that energy when Perfidia voices her regret - I felt so little sense of danger when Willa/Charlene heads off to Oakland at the end.

Oh I loved almost all of it!! (It feels so long since I’ve enjoyed a new release like this in the cinema; the last few months have felt really thin…) And these are excellent points.

Ah, I think I’ve over-done it: I really, really liked so much of it, and as you say the energy is just amazing!

Still, I loved it. Incredible energy!

I also feel like Pynchon is so good at those narrative dead-ends and stopping points - their pathos, their inertia, their regrets, their contrivance and artifice; OBAA leaves Perfidia in such a difficult place when she crosses the border to Mexico, but then just brings her back to grant a blessing.

Confession: I haven’t read Vineland. But both Pynchon and PTA are typically so good at showing how adversarial characters and movements tread the same psychic and cultural paths (Doc/Bigfoot), are drawn to each other and share the same space. I think that’s short-changed here.

Not just the odd shift into slightly sentimental cosiness, but the weird transformation of Perfidia - such a volatile energy in the first hour of he film, then a wistfully benevolent voiceover, granting blessings at the very end.

One Battle After Another is incredible on the big screen, and there’s so much about it to love and admire (it’s funny, it’s thrilling, it moves with such a sinuous and hazy rhythm), but I left feeling underwhelmed by the final 15 minutes or so.

Such a good book!

Ha ha!! Quaffable is good!

I hope you like it as much as I did!!

Are you enjoying Banffy? He sounds really interesting!

Oh yes I’d definitely recommend! Have you read any of his others? I would start with Melancholy of Resistance or Satantango (both perhaps a bit tighter than Baron Wenckheim). War & War is also brilliant, but less rooted in Hungary. MoR was my first - I was agog - it’s great!

Fantastic translation by Ottilie Mulzet.

László Krasznahorkai, Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming

Wow. This didn’t quite click (for me) until a hundred pages from the end; it’s funny and tender and formally brilliant - and then something desperate and furious and awful bursts out and consumes it. I wasn’t prepared for how hard the ending would hit: I think I always feel that with Krasznahorkai.

Today is publication day for PAPER AND THE MAKING OF EARLY MODERN LITERATURE! Available in paper or digital form www.pennpress.org/978151282744... @pennpress.bsky.social

Hurrah!! Congratulations!

Beehives in the botanical gardens at Leiden, with the inscription Godt voet alle creaturen.

Godt voet alle creaturen / God feeds all creatures.

Leiden botanical gardens

One last day of summer light!

Best thing I've ever read about AI and the academy - every line a banger

I loved his book about Fassbinder too!