iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

I am delighted to learn that I will be speaking at the 9th Faulkner Studies in the UK Colloquium which marks the 90th anniversary of the publication of Absalom, Absalom! I will be talking on Thomas Sutpen, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Marxism.

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 14/12/2025

Happy publication day! Delighted to learn as the year closes that our excellent collection American Writers in Paris: Then and Now has been published by Palgrave and is available today for pre-order. My essay in the collection is on Faulkner, Cézanne, and phenomenology.

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

Body, remember not only how much you were loved, not only the beds you lay on, but also those desires that glowed openly in eyes that looked at you, trembled for you in the voices— —Constantine P. Cavafy

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Political violence is a kind of rot that sets in when those values by which we live together as cultures and as people die off. Sad beyond telling to see it in such clear ascendancy.

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

Was very happy to write this review for The Faulkner Journal. On the excellent edited collection Digitizing Faulkner: Yoknapatawpha in the Twenty-First Century.

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

Check out the mammoth, 5-hour discussion I had recently w/ Glen Rockney over at Rare Candy Podcast on Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow! So much fun. So much covered. Links to parts 1, 2, and 3: open.spotify.com/episode/6fet... open.spotify.com/episode/4roY... open.spotify.com/episode/4GvS...

open.spotify.com

Gravity's Rainbow pt. 1 w/ Bernard T. Joy

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

It was my first day of my 13th year of teaching today. Unlucky for some.

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

In just a few hours I'm starting my journey to Mississippi where I'll be speaking at the 51st annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, 'Faulkner's Bodies'. I've been looking forward to this one. There is so much to say about Faulkner, phenomenology, and the body.

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

Sometimes you just need to see the conference programme before you really start to get enthusiastic.

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

The thousand times that he had proved it meant nothing. Now he was proving it again. Each time was a new time and he never thought about the past when he was doing it. —Ernest Hemingway

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

You have to inject yourself with fantasy every day so you don't die of reality. —Ray Bradbury

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

On the last day of the world I would want to plant a tree —W. S. Merwin

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex. —Aldous Huxley

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

Me talking about Faulkner and Cézanne, in Boston last month. Courtesy of a friend of mine. Good times!

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

Always a good night when you receive proofs from The Faulkner Journal.

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

Come, come. Even if you have broken your vow. Even a thousand times. —Rumi

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

Please join us via Zoom on May 10th and May 11th, 2025, for the 8th Faulkner Studies in the UK Colloquium celebrating the 100th anniversary of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Faulkner's early writing. I will be speaking on Faulkner and Merleau-Ponty. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/under-the-...

eventbrite.co.uk

Under the Red, White, and Blue: Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and America

The 8th Faulkner Studies in the UK Colloquium celebrates the 100th anniversary of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Faulkner's early writing

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

Art is not construction, artifice, meticulous relationship to a space and a world existing outside. It is truly the "inarticulate cry,” as Hermes Trismegistus said, "which seemed to be the voice of the light." —Maurice Merleau-Ponty

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

Registration is now open for "Under the Red, White, and Blue: Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and America"! Come along and celebrate the 100th anniversary of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and listen to me chat about Faulkner and phenomenology. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/under-the-...

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

Any conference whatsoever (let alone the famous Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha!) that uses this image on their poster is okay in my book. I think, judging by initial signs, we're all going to have a blast at the end of July!

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

I'm thrilled to learn that, in May, I'll be speaking at the 8th annual Faulkner Studies in the UK Colloquium "Under the Red, White, and Blue: Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and America"! I will be talking about two of Faulkner's most memorable characters: Benjy Compson & Darl Bundren.

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

Wake up little butterfly— it's late, we have miles to go together. —Matsuo Bashō

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

The secret of success seems to be that it doesn't matter where you are now; it matters where you are by tomorrow. Sadly, this does not also seem to be the secret of contentment.

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

I am delighted to learn that I will be travelling to Mississippi in July to speak at 2025's Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha conference, "Faulkner's Bodies," on Merleau-Pontian embodiment and the truly outstanding novel Absalom, Absalom! I can't wait!

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

A little silent prayer goes out to all those of you who write avidly and hard but who also have day jobs and find the writing magic only really ignites when it's already time to sleep for work. May you be reincarnated as Marcel Proust.

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

Just daydreaming about your writing is part of the writing process. In fact, everything that happens in your mind, life, and general vicinity is part of the writing process, rightly seen.

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 02/03/2025

How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home. —William Faulkner

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

Wishing another blessed Ramadan to all my friends who observe.

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

I am actually still astounded, almost daily, by the talent and evidence of grace I see in people all around me. Rare it may be, but not nowhere. Often falling short of itself or becoming hidden behind other forces or concerns but arising where it does with distinct familiarity.

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

"Can you explain this gap in your résumé?" "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

The great treasure, the one all the fairy stories spoke about, is love. —Rumi

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

We are already born. We are going to die. So you have to do something interesting, that you respect, in between. —Toni Morrison

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

All the books in the world are out there and you can read any of them. The humanities ought to work to make this statement truer, and true for more people.

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Mediocre ideas are easily embraced. Better ideas get pushback. Better ideas still will see you excised from communities. & if you ever happen to have a great idea you'll have to hire private security.

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 16/02/2025

But there's beauty still. I can't remain indifferent to that. —Anton Chekhov

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 16/02/2025

Henry Irving, 'Meadow Cranesbill' (c. 1900)

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 16/02/2025

I don't think I've ever had a student who didn't teach me something.

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Spent the morning reading from the Kalevala about the Birth of Iron and how the primal blacksmith called to the bee to add a drop of honey to the bath in which the first iron lay, but the wasp heard the blacksmith's appeal and added instead to the bath a drop of her poison.

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

A caterpillar, this deep in autumn— still not a butterfly. —Bashō

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Which is your favourite Japanese short story?

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

It's about love. It doesn't matter if you can't love a woman or you can't love a man. If you can't love anyone you're dangerous. —James Baldwin

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

The world does not speak. Only we do. —Richard Rorty

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

If you have a favourite work by William Faulkner then it's fairly clear we can be friends.

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am, also, much more than that. So are we all. —James Baldwin

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

Finished my read through of this truly marvellous book this morning. 2nd time reading it cover to cover, with 26,000 words of notes this time around. Can't think of another book of philosophy I'd rather be working with, as I will be now for several months over three projects.

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Bernard T. Joy @bernardtjoy.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

In honour of Joyce’s 143rd birthday, let’s mess about and make an educational thread. What’s your favourite episode in Ulysses, and why?

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