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josevergara.bsky.social
Writes about things: Russian lit, Joycean links, prisons, PTA, weird books, Chornobyl, other passions (and whims). Teaches at Bryn Mawr College. Tends to ducks.
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Your favorite examples of experimental literature? (Let's set aside debates about what that means for now. Just your favs.) Any genre, form, length, origin — as long as it's available in English translation.

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

One of the coolest books: Raymond Queneau‘s A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems.

submitted 31 days ago • 0 comments

Seeing both The Brutalist’s intermission and Nickel Boys’ aspect ratio curtain masking this week made for special movie moments. The films are pretty great, too.

submitted 34 days ago • 0 comments

Not normally the kind of book I’d read, probably, but the Alaskan setting & theme appealed. A fine novel on a clash of cultures & identities. The interstitial chapters on wolves add an intriguing element and complement the narrator’s association with nature, but it’s hard to escape the human POV.

submitted 34 days ago • 0 comments

A novel-in-dialogue based on a summer of recorded conversations, Linda Rosenkrantz’s Talk highlighted for me how reading fiction is an inherently voyeuristic act by dialing up that element to the max. Sometimes it’s just fun to listen in on what others are saying. @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social

submitted 52 days ago • 0 comments

Very happy to have written a few words about @drpollyjones.bsky.social's excellent new book on Gulag fiction for @thetls.bsky.social. Really terrific overview and close readings of various texts and trends, older and recent! www.the-tls.co.uk/regular-feat...

submitted 55 days ago • 0 comments

STATS! STATS! STATS! A generally solid year of film. Thanks, @letterboxd.social.

submitted 57 days ago • 0 comments

Sorry to say Malina did not work for me. I appreciate what Bachmann is doing, and the way everything from the events (rather than “plot”) to the language to the protagonist seems to disassociate from itself, but ultimately, it was a slog through not particularly intriguing spaces and style.

submitted 64 days ago • 1 comment

Looking for fiction, stories, and essays about soccer. Poetry would also do. Not sports journalism or traditional memoirs, but, uh, good writing involving the sport in some way. Any favorites come to mind?

submitted 81 days ago • 0 comments

Like his other works, Dmitry Danilov’s There Are Things More Important Than Football (Soccer) begins as an experiment but unfurls into more. Having gotten back to playing football (soccer) a year ago, I feel more in tune, maybe, with the thrills and bruises of the “novel” than I might otherwise.

submitted 84 days ago • 1 comment

Want a signed book? How about two! Giveaway alert! Last year Europa Editions published Anne Berest's The Postcard, translated by Tina Korver. Next year they are publishing Gabriële, a novel Berest wrote with her sister Claire about their great-grandmother. I have three signed sets to give away!

submitted 86 days ago • 14 comments

Here is my deranged merch proposal for a little tote bag (10 x 7 x 3) that holds Miss MacIntosh, My Darling (9.25 x 6.5 x 2) and NOTHING ELSE

submitted 87 days ago • 7 comments

Nicole Fleetwood’s Marking Time is a brilliant exploration of the many contradictions of what we call “prison art.” What effects do those labels have on incarcerated people? What motivates interest in the subject?

submitted 87 days ago • 1 comment

The @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social sale is always a beautiful thing.

submitted 89 days ago • 0 comments

Garden April-Oct. 2024. It was a tougher season with drought and other hiccups, but it’s always lovely to see it grow, bloom, and recede.

submitted 92 days ago • 2 comments

Any labels won’t do it justice, but @annedemarcken.bsky.social’s dirge-like, novella-length prose poem is amazing. Everything about it: the imagery, the tone, the humor. Just brilliant in what it does with the human body and the experience of loss, sculpting out and together vague memories.

submitted 93 days ago • 1 comment

I created a thing! It is definitely missing people - if you are a person who should be on it, pls let me know! go.bsky.app/8HazBeR

submitted 93 days ago • 37 comments

Some ducks to start.

submitted 97 days ago • 1 comment