GOOD: milton paradise lost books 1-12 (this is 12 feeds; following them all has a notably calming effect on me feed and hence me) melville moby-dick: not a bad sentence in this book, often every funny, i am rereading as a consequence joyce ulysses: funny wise and often pertinent comment on the day's events joyce finnegans wake: much the best way to encounter this book, which is basically a vast compendium of literary-linguistic micro-gags and puns and NOT MUCH MORE jean rhys: my kind of person
BAD: benjamin arcade project: i unfollowed this bcz it overstressed his tendency toward grand spiteful claims abt those twerps over there of which i am not one, and entirely cut away his detailed and sympathetic explorations of the tastes and foibles of unsympathetic ppl and types and classes… (WB's best fragments are paragraph length not sentence length)
― mark s, Wednesday, 24 August 2016 10:37 (eight years ago) link
i love every jean rhys tweet i see, and i see a lot!
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 24 August 2016 10:39 (eight years ago) link
i also followed the william empson till his estate asked it be shut down: it was so-so really, mainly funny for his visceral loathing of derrida
(which is comical bcz i <3 empson for some of the same reasons i <3 derrida)
ps the i in "of which i am not one"in the OP = benjamin not me
― mark s, Wednesday, 24 August 2016 10:48 (eight years ago) link
i like the malcolm lowry one, though possibly cos the guy who runs it seems like a nice person.
― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Wednesday, 24 August 2016 10:54 (eight years ago) link
'novels in three lines' felt surprisingly neutered
― the ghost of tom, choad (thomp), Wednesday, 24 August 2016 13:51 (eight years ago) link
oh, i knew there was another one
GOOD: pepys' diary is A1
― mark s, Wednesday, 24 August 2016 13:53 (eight years ago) link
joyce finnegans wake: much the best way to encounter this book, which is basically a vast compendium of literary-linguistic micro-gags and puns and NOT MUCH MORE
Completely and utterly disagree with this. I follow it b/c it gives me some amusing little bits every now and again, and I do think that the Wake doesn't necessarily need to be read front-to-back cover-to-cover to get something out of it, HOWEVER, I actually find the twitter feed pretty underwhelming. You miss out on being submerged in the prose, you miss out on the beautiful typographic setting (and much of the time that means you miss out on another layer of meaning b/c Joyce uses carmina figurata), you miss out on any sense of HCE or ALP, you miss the encompassing dreamscape, you miss the thematic connections between the linguistic plays in sections, you miss out on fucking *loads*.
― emil.y, Wednesday, 24 August 2016 16:34 (eight years ago) link
Marcel Proust ftw.
― Matt DC, Wednesday, 24 August 2016 16:47 (eight years ago) link
Although the actual Proust is easily in my top ten 20th Century authors who would have been awful on Twitter.
― Matt DC, Wednesday, 24 August 2016 16:49 (eight years ago) link
yes i'm being a bit challopsy there -- but i'd been trying to read FW "properly" since i wz a pretentious teen and not really feeling it, and really did start to enjoy it more via the twitterfeed
(beyond the DO-YOU-SEE mythological elements, i'm not persuaded the HCE/ALP stuff is actually that interesting? i've definitely never read anyone writing anything attention-catching about it, once they got past weightily noting that it's there…)
― mark s, Wednesday, 24 August 2016 16:53 (eight years ago) link
I'm pretty sure I have read some good pieces on them when I was doing Joyce at university but I'm really straining to think what they were - my own specialism was on the typographical elements b/c everyone says it's a very auditory book so I wanted to return to it as a written artefact. Though doing a whiskey tasting surrounded by Dubliners reading from the text during Bloomsday has definitely made me appreciate the phonics more. Also moving around the geography of 'Howth Castle & Environs' kind of helps give you a sense of them existing as the land. Obviously you shouldn't *have* to visit somewhere to understand a text, and I don't think you do in this case, but it helped me to move it out of theoretical analysis and into lived and shared experience.
― emil.y, Wednesday, 24 August 2016 17:11 (eight years ago) link
yr humble author's contribution: https://twitter.com/SchoonerTweeter
(also a huge fan of howl tweeter)
― Salma Hayek's racist predatory lesbian taco (s.clover), Wednesday, 24 August 2016 17:13 (eight years ago) link
i've said it before and i'll say it again
literary and experimental twitter is the only good thing twitter does
for everything else there are better solutions/avenues
this was fun while it lasted: https://twitter.com/libraryofbabel_
it moved elsewhere, though. more info: https://libraryofbabel.info
― F♯ A♯ (∞), Wednesday, 24 August 2016 18:52 (eight years ago) link
twitter does many good things and many bad. it would be easy to spend time in one part of it and assume the rest was bad if it didn't meet your interests.
― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Wednesday, 24 August 2016 20:50 (eight years ago) link
how diplomatic
unlike twitter
― F♯ A♯ (∞), Wednesday, 24 August 2016 20:53 (eight years ago) link
Did it here (not exactly easy to search)
"Lit -Twitter"
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 24 August 2016 23:29 (eight years ago) link
In addition to what I posted before:
- I'd forgotten the Empson account - my bio on twitter is a quote from that. There was this bitchyness around Oxford poets and Auden that was funny. Shame but the person who ran it kept repeating a lot of tweets so idk wasn't fussed when that stopped.- The Proust account is a good re-working - gets to an essence of his long sentences to tweet level. The person who runs it clearly works at it. Rhys also v good.- JH Prynne is bets of the recent poetry batch except there isn't much lately. Re-tweeted a couple of things just recently to hopefully wake whoever up.
Mark I see what you mean around Arcades Porject but like the Finnegans Wake I haven't read it so in the sense that you can find something of the flavour in it - could be the wrong take so...Both accounts are so so - ignore for days then something amazing pops up. The habit of getting the initial quote of a passage in the Arcades and then a whole excerpt does annoy over time. Certainly feel like I'll get around FW as a book, whereas before it felt either forbidding or so much quackery.
LIKE TO SEE:
Accounts on Musil, Celine and Platonov.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 24 August 2016 23:44 (eight years ago) link
celine as twitter troll would be a tonne of fun
but it would probably be taken down super fast once he gets to the racist remarks
― F♯ A♯ (∞), Wednesday, 24 August 2016 23:46 (eight years ago) link
https://twitter.com/FW_WOTD
I need to learn new words so #vGdTick
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 2 September 2016 18:34 (eight years ago) link
joyce finnegans wake: much the best way to encounter this book, which is basically a vast compendium of literary-literary-linguistic micro-gags and puns and NOT MUCH MORE
― mark s, Wednesday, August 24, 2016 6:37 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
lol i been following this one for a while and its utterly indistinguishable from a lot of the bots i follow, joyce was the original bot my phd thesis
― lag∞n, Friday, 2 September 2016 18:45 (eight years ago) link
Sappho: https://twitter.com/sapphobot
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 10 September 2016 15:36 (eight years ago) link
came back to reiterate how great the 12 multi-milton feeds are, esp.as they sometimes get in weirdly appropriate synch with one another and the world
(milton often wrote good lines who knew ect ect)
― mark s, Thursday, 15 December 2016 01:59 (eight years ago) link
because I am a stone cold bitch https://t.co/kahsnvagMh— S. E. Hinton (@se4realhinton) January 24, 2018
― mookieproof, Wednesday, 24 January 2018 21:21 (seven years ago) link
@DailyYeats for alternating snippets of his poems viz
From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have ranged / In rambling talk with an image of air: / Vague memories, nothing but memories.— W. B. Yeats (@DailyYeats) December 30, 2018
and
The trees are in their autumn beauty, The woodland paths are dry,Under the October twilight the water Mirrors a still sky;— W. B. Yeats (@DailyYeats) December 30, 2018
with such important commentary as:
The Weirdest Pizza Toppings Ever - https://t.co/cmIsceU7Z8 pic.twitter.com/tF5lY9Mgp3— W. B. Yeats (@DailyYeats) December 30, 2018
Films You Wish Disney Would Make - https://t.co/FG4eT8ppSE pic.twitter.com/pox40bqsP9— W. B. Yeats (@DailyYeats) December 30, 2018
― mark s, Monday, 31 December 2018 12:07 (six years ago) link
lol:
There is a Garda speed check car going around Sligo.— W. B. Yeats (@DailyYeats) March 5, 2019
― mark s, Tuesday, 5 March 2019 16:51 (five years ago) link
pepys on pen (every time): FUCK THIS GUY
To the office, where all the morning sitting and did discover three or four fresh instances of Sir W. Pen’s old cheating dissembling tricks, he being as false a fellow as ever was born.— Samuel Pepys (@samuelpepys) March 8, 2019
― mark s, Friday, 8 March 2019 22:27 (five years ago) link
Tasty, and also I would rather receive tweets about pizza toppings and the speed check car than solemn vapid versification of those Dec. 30 offerings.
― dow, Saturday, 9 March 2019 02:46 (five years ago) link
Oops they're all four Dec. 30!
― dow, Saturday, 9 March 2019 02:47 (five years ago) link
Well WB knew Dec.30 was end of the bolt/time for a change.
― dow, Saturday, 9 March 2019 02:48 (five years ago) link
Kinda like this one, even though it hasn't taken off:
https://twitter.com/GenjiMonoBot
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 7 June 2019 20:06 (five years ago) link
Not that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books.— Jean Rhys (@MsJeanRhys) March 18, 2020
― felt jute gyte delete later (wins), Wednesday, 18 March 2020 18:28 (four years ago) link
Use your intelligence, can’t you?— Samuel Beckett (@samuelbbeckett) August 14, 2021
― mark s, Saturday, 14 August 2021 08:43 (three years ago) link
]]queen]]— Sappho Bot (@sapphobot) August 14, 2021
(my love miltonbot has shut up shop for good i think, and all sanity departed the site with it)
― mark s, Saturday, 14 August 2021 08:44 (three years ago) link
s/b lovely, but why not declare my passion for all to know
joyce finnegans wake: much the best way to encounter this book
I have always remembered this opinion and, having spent many hours reading certain passages of FW with fanatical closeness, I admit that it has a kernel of truth.
― the pinefox, Saturday, 14 August 2021 09:37 (three years ago) link
yeats pizza topping tweet is still all time SITO
― mark s, Saturday, 29 January 2022 13:45 (three years ago) link
Paying my respects.
rereading "classics" of American literature & have to concede, much prose by truly great writers (Poe, Melville, James) is actually just awkward, inept, hit-or-miss, something like stream-of-consciousness in an era before revising was relatively easy. oy!--sorry to have assigned.— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) April 12, 2022
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 12 April 2022 22:04 (two years ago) link
Joyce Carol Roaste
― Tracer Hand, Saturday, 16 April 2022 03:24 (two years ago) link
Whether or not you like James' sentences the idea that he (or any of them, but especially him) wrote that way because he didn't have a word processor is hilarious.
― ledge, Saturday, 16 April 2022 06:00 (two years ago) link
maybe she was feeling hangry and fired off a grumpy tweet & reconsidered later after she had something to eat
― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Saturday, 16 April 2022 07:37 (two years ago) link
Lots of classics could have used an editor
― corrs unplugged, Saturday, 16 April 2022 09:08 (two years ago) link
i like the reply guy who boldly claims this is why *all* these authors read better in spanish
― mark s, Saturday, 16 April 2022 11:26 (two years ago) link
this is also what i think now (i don't read spanish)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46XqDu_54iA
― Ramones Leave the Capitol (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 16 April 2022 11:34 (two years ago) link
will her tweets be better now that there’s an edit function??
― Tracer Hand, Saturday, 16 April 2022 14:27 (two years ago) link
It would seem that man was born a slave, and that slavery is his natural condition. At the same time nothing on earth can stop man from feeling himself born for liberty. Never, whatever may happen, can he accept servitude; for he is a thinking creature.— Simone Weil (@simone_says_en) July 4, 2022
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 4 July 2022 08:11 (two years ago) link
Milk, rolls and chocolate.Franz Kafka, 1916.— The sunny side of Franz Kafka (@AmschelKavka) December 18, 2022
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 19 December 2022 22:55 (two years ago) link
Any good literary mastodon feeds out there?
― emil.y, Monday, 19 December 2022 23:12 (two years ago) link
Kafka would definitely toot after that shopping list —rolling laughing crying emoji X 3
― Lord Pickles (Boring, Maryland), Tuesday, 20 December 2022 00:26 (two years ago) link
Re: mastodon. Only joined for now, and have followed some ppl that I found through twitter/lit twitter but not gone beyond that.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 20 December 2022 11:57 (two years ago) link
Wouldn't know of this poetry if it wasn't for people sharing in grief (died a couple of days ago):
Gboyega and I met in Jan 2020, at a reading in a weird, tiny jazz club. Our fee was whatever got taken at the door, so afterwards we each took our £5 and hit the pub. It was always a joy to see him - he was so funny, and so brilliant. This poem is one of my favourites by anyone. pic.twitter.com/jsypaMeeLU— Susannah Dickey (@SusannahDickey) September 1, 2023
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 1 September 2023 12:43 (one year ago) link
A fund is going to be established for low-income black writers
Please donate & share ~ Gboyega Odubanjo – beloved son, brother, friend https://t.co/mzAgfw2hmQ— Amy Key (@msamykey) September 1, 2023
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 1 September 2023 19:27 (one year ago) link
Ofc all this is saying is that this hack hasn't read the bible or Milton.
there’s a genre of phrases that sound like they’re from the bible or like paradise lost, but really, really aren’t. like “there are cathedrals everywhere for those with the eyes to see” which is ofc a jordan peterson tweet about a bottle of evian. what are the others?— Imogen West-Knights (@ImogenWK) May 16, 2024
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 18 May 2024 14:48 (eight months ago) link
https://nimrodjournal.substack.com/p/just-saying-lyric-unseriousness-online
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 27 January 2025 17:27 (two weeks ago) link