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Dubyedee

@wdclarke.bsky.social

800 followers 220 following 700 posts

—Writer/border collie slave —PhD English UWarwick 2009, PoliticalEcon & the Novel —Published on Thomas Pynchon —Blog: exploratory fic reviews, lit crit, political economy —Two novels with @coronasamizdat.bsky.social https://wdclarke.org Ontario, Canada

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Dubyedee @wdclarke.bsky.social · Nov 14

Don't self-promo much, this only for pinned post:
My first novel, White Mythology, was also published by @coronasamizdat.bsky.social ...
My third, Take Your Guns to Town, forthcoming in 2025
—a c\s and @galleonbooks.bsky.social co-production !

Alchemical image: "Luna is as requisite to Sol as a Hen is to a Cock" from Atalanta Fugiens by Michael Maier (1617), depicting a naked man and woman, with moon and sun for heads respectively, in front of a pastoral scene, scattered greenery, mountains, blue lake, clouds floating in blue sky. A ship sailing by.

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Dubyedee @wdclarke.bsky.social · 1d

Just finished the first chapter of Shadow Ticket...IMO the most Pynchon moment thus far:

So began Skeet's pinsetting career: which would before
long come to be described all over tow-n as ' 'illustrious." A
tough monkey a number of speeds to his gearbox: Skeet
quickly leamed his v.•-ay around a bowling environment
unforgiving as any on the planet.

Reposted by Dubyedee

biblioklept @biblioklept.bsky.social · 1d

I’m getting decrepit, while Pynchon is even older | William T. Vollmann reviews Thomas Pynchon's Shadow Ticket biblioklept.org/2025/10/06/i...

I’m getting decrepit, while Pynchon is even older | William T. Vollmann reviews Thomas Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket

I’ve avoided reviews of Thomas Pynchon’s newest novel Shadow Ticket, but I couldn’t help but read William T. Vollmann’s piece on the novel at UnHerd. From Vollmann’s r…

biblioklept.org

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Dubyedee @wdclarke.bsky.social · 2d

True story, walking the South Downs Way this May with my brother, above Lewes we met a mountain biker, who eventually said his family had long owned land hereabouts. We asked where, and he made a circular gesture & replied, well, nearly all of it, & since 1066. (He Earl So&so)

Lewis is a fine pleasant town, well built, agreeably
situated in the middle of an open champaign country,
and on the edge of the South Downs, the pleasantest,
and most delightful of their kind in the nation; it lies on
the bank of a little wholesome fresh river, within twelve
miles of the sea; but that which adds to the character of
this town, is, that both the town and the country
adjacent, is full of gentlemen of good families and
fortunes, of which the Pelhams may be named with the
first. Here are also the ancient families of Gage, Shely,
&c. formerly Roman, but now Protestant, with many
others.

Dubyedee @wdclarke.bsky.social · 2d

Mostly read paper books, but I make notes on eBook version w BookFusion (cross-platform, privacy respecting Kindle/Google Play Books alternative).
BF syncs highlights/notes to notetaking apps like Notion (or, for more privacy, Obsidian).
Highly recommended!

www.blog.bookfusion.com/from-margins...

From Margins to Metadata: Rethinking Annotation in the Digital Age

www.blog.bookfusion.com

Dubyedee @wdclarke.bsky.social · 5d

Daniel Defoe, beer hunter

(fr A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, 1724)

As to the north of England they formerly used but few
hops there, their drink being chiefly pale smooth ale,
which required no hops, and consequently they planted
no hops in all that part of England, north of Trent; nor
did I ever see one acre of hop-ground planted beyond
Trent, in my observations; but as for some years past,
they not only brew great quantities of beer in the
north; but also use hops in the brewing their ale much
more than they did before; so they all come south of
Trent to buy their hops; and here being vast quantities
bought, 'tis great part of their back carriage into
Yorkshire, and Northampton shire, Derbyshire,
Lancashire, and all those counties; nay, of late, since
the Union, even to Scotland it self; for I must not omit

Here likewise, and in the country adjacent, are great
quantities of hops planted, and this is called the
Mother of Hop Grounds in England; being the first
place in England where hops were planted in any
quantity, and long before any were planted at
Canterbury, though that be now supposed to be the
chief place in England. These were the hops, I suppose,
which were planted at the beginning of the
Reformation, and which gave occasion to that old
distich:
Hops, Reformation, bays, and beer,
Came into Fngland all in a year.

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Dubyedee @wdclarke.bsky.social · 8d

OED confirms (though also derives from Kabbalah a bit earlier, 1616)

1859
6.
Applied in the reign ofCharles 11 to the small committee or junto of the Privy Council,
otheruise called the 'Committee for Foreign Affairs', which had the chief management of the
course of government, and was the precursor of the modern cabinet.
1665— 1667
b.
historical. Applied spec. to the five ministers ofCharles 11, who signed the Treaty of Alliance
uith France for war against Holland in 1672: these were Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley
(Earl of Shaftesbury), and Lauderdale, the initials of whose names thus arranged chanced to spell
the word cabal.
This was merely a witticism referring to sense 6; in point of fact these five men did not constitute the
whole 'Cabal', or Committee for Foreign Affairs; nor were they so closely united in policy as to
constitute a 'cabal' in sense S where quot.
1670 shows that three of them belonged to one 'cabal' or
clique, and two to another. The name seems to have been first given to the five ministers in the
pamphlet of 1673 'England's Appeal from the pri v ate Cabal at White-hall to the Great Council of the
nation.. by a true lover of his country Modern historians often write loosely of the Buckingham-
Arlington administration from the fall of Clarendon in 1667 to 1673 as the Cabal Cabinet or Cabal
Ministry.

Dubyedee @wdclarke.bsky.social · 8d

I did not know this

(fr Daniel Defoe, A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724) #c18th #18c

The Duke oi now Lord Lieutenant of Ireland,
has also a stately house at Euston, near this town, which he
enjoys in right of his mother, daughter to the Earl of Arling-
ton, one of the chief ministers of state in the reign of King
Charles 11 and who made the second letter in the word
CABAL; a word formed by that famous satirist Andrew
Marvell, to represent the five heads of the politics of that time.

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Reposted by Dubyedee

Daniel Green @greenlitcrit.bsky.social · 9d

Beaming up The Reading Experience: readexperience.net

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Reposted by Dubyedee

Eric Williams @geoliminal.bsky.social · 10d

if you wanna read that ezra klein/ta-nehisi coates back-and-forth thing, here's a free version. worth a read, if only to really understand the depth of klein's dumbness
archive.is/rfoT1

archive.is

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Dubyedee @wdclarke.bsky.social · 10d

(courtier not courier but who knows)

Dubyedee @wdclarke.bsky.social · 10d

He's a huge exaggeration of a trait we all have...the desire to be heard, be the focus of attention in the room, taken to an extreme which permits him (somehow!) to bend and twist in the political wind like some courier in Liliput, so desperate is he to be seen and heard through the Overton Window

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Reposted by Dubyedee

Dubyedee @wdclarke.bsky.social · 14d

I went on and on for 10k words about Gary Amdahl's Visigoth
(it's that good).

longform.wdclarke.org/visigoth-sto...

A goalie in a red, white and blue jersey lies face down on the ice in a posture of defeat

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Dubyedee @wdclarke.bsky.social · 14d

I went on and on for 10k words about Gary Amdahl's Visigoth
(it's that good).

longform.wdclarke.org/visigoth-sto...

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Dubyedee @wdclarke.bsky.social · 14d

Periodic Walter Benjamin update:
"Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet."

A Klee painting named "Angelus Novus" shows an angel looking as though
he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His
eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread.
This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the
past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe
which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet.
The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has
been smashed.
But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with
such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm
irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the
pile of debris before him grows skyward.
This storm is what we call progress.

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Dubyedee @wdclarke.bsky.social · 14d

Angels of History Incoming!

An ARC of The Tavern At the End of History held in my hand.
One of the angels of history, "Bill" from Schoolhouse Rock" appears above the book

Dubyedee @wdclarke.bsky.social · 14d

It was that windless hour of dawn when madness wakes

Towards dawn he awoke. O what sweet music ! His
was all dewy wet. Over his limbs in sleep pale
cool waves of light had passed. He lay still, as if his soul
lay amid cool Waters, Conscious of faint sweet musie.
His mind waking slowly to a tremulous morning
knowledge, a morning inspiration. A spirit filled him,
pure as the purest water, Sweet as dew, moving as musie.
But how faintly it was inbreathed, how passionlesly,
as if the seraphim themselves were breathing upon him !
His soul was waking slowly, fearing to awake wholly.
It was that windless hour of dawn when madness wakes
[pg254]

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Reposted by Dubyedee

Morris Collins @morriscollins.bsky.social · 28d

Teaching Hawthorne in my Love and Death in the American Novel class tomorrow and my prime takeaway from this is, their radical ability (so they think) to recognize semiotic coherence notwithstanding, what a bunch of little fuckers these Puritan kids are:

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Dubyedee @wdclarke.bsky.social · 14d

treacle. (tracle a shrinkflated ownbrand knock-off from Aldi with not nearly enough Rewe for our fine young gentlemen)

—Based on an inferior Eton College copycat recipe:
collections.etoncollege.com/a-spoonful-o...

Dubyedee @wdclarke.bsky.social · 14d

Any Hard Times shitpost earns an extra scoop of brimstone and tracle for each of my 144 well-fed boarding students
—Thomas Gradgrind, esq.
Acting Principal, Dotheboys Hall, Dotheboys, Greta Bridge, Yorkshire.

Emaciated students lining up for Brimstone and Treacle at Dotheboys Hall, in Nicholas Nicklby

Reposted by Dubyedee

Morris Collins @morriscollins.bsky.social · 14d

Please sir, may I have some more?

Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 14d

Henry James: The advantage, the luxury, as well as the torment and responsibility of the novelist, is that there is no limit to what he may attempt—no limit to his possible experiments, efforts, discoveries.

Dickens: this guy is named “M'Choakumchild”

James:

Dickens: he be chokin them childs!

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Dubyedee @wdclarke.bsky.social · 16d

If the⬆️ above reflects *that* part of the Xhitter's self-talk, this⬇️ is what it says out loud, all the time, to the unlucky interloper

[fr Ring Lardner, "The Young Immigrunts"

Are you lost daddy I arsked tenderly.
Shut up he explained.

Dubyedee @wdclarke.bsky.social · 16d

When I indulge in the "For You" algorithm in the Pther Place (or click too far down any discussion tree)

["The Hand" appears in Leonard Michaels second book of short stories, I Would Have Saved Them If I Could]

THE HAND
I smacked my little boy. My anger was powerful. Like justice.
Then I discovered no feeling in the hand. I said, "Listen, I want
to explain the complexities to you." I spoke with seriousness
and care, particularly of fathers. He asked, when I finished, if I
wanted him to forgive me. I said yes. He said no. I trumps.

Dubyedee @wdclarke.bsky.social · 17d

This will kill that
(fr The Rhetoric of Reaction, Albert O. Hirschmann)