iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Bryan Alistair Charles @bryanacharles.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

last two books I finished: A Violent Masterpiece, Jordan Harper--kind of interesting for a bit but the prose is so overheated & ultimately too much of an Ellroy rip The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann--so much so say that I can't fit here but this book absolutely brought me to my knees

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Bryan Alistair Charles @bryanacharles.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

#lastfourwatched Primetime (2026) Harlan County USA (1976) Tropic Thunder (2008) Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979) And going to see Digger this afternoon...

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Two Dollar Radio @twodollarradio.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

What a special time it is to be alive 🤩! After 16 years of the spectacular splash of THE ORANGE EATS CREEPS the Overlord of gothic speculative horror is BACK! Grab yourself a copy of ACID GREEN VELVET TODAY!! #indiebook #indiepress #twodollarradio #indieauthor #spookyseason

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Charlotte Mandell @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

My translation of Céline's LONDON got a starred review in PW! "With a hypnotic power generated by Mandell’s indefatigable translation, Céline’s novel wrings high art out of the bottom rungs of society, where 'how you sin determines how you die.' It’s a marvel. (Oct.)"

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Bryan Alistair Charles @bryanacharles.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

At Malkmus show in Santa Cruz he played Trojan Curfew which I was hoping to hear but not expecting, and I was overcome with emotion & 9/11 era memories-- Later, during Here, I looked over and a young woman maybe 22 was openly weeping, wiping flowing tears with a tissue. SM speaking to all ages

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Charlotte Mandell @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Just finished translating a 409-word sentence by Mathias Énard (from part 2 of his memoir, called Hotel Balkan)

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David Ulin @davidulin.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

“We obliterate ourselves in each other, that is the way of things. … The threats on our freedom will flatten to nothing, it’ll be weather grazing the surface of water.” www.altaonline.com/books/fictio...

altaonline.com

West Is West

Grace Krilanovich’s Acid Green Velvet reimagines the Western through a feminist lens.

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Roland Bates @rolandbates.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Listening to Proust as an audiobook. IN FRENCH. I should have thought of this AGES ago. It's magical

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Bryan Alistair Charles @bryanacharles.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

The chapter "Snow" in The Magic Mountain is one of the greatest things I've ever read!! I am reading the Woods version but the other day learned of two new translations. I have the Pare translation from Oxford coming & look forward to rereading that chapter straight away!

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Bryan Alistair Charles @bryanacharles.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Lately I have been listening to Malkmus's first solo album which will forever remind me of summer 2001 when I played it constantly including to and from my job in the World Trade Center, "Vague Space" lasted about as long as my walk from the subway to my cubicle on the 70th floor---

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Grace Krilanovich @gracekrilanovich.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Patton Oswalt looking forward to my book is like Edna Lewis glancing approvingly at the bowl of macaroni salad I just set down at the potluck

kirkusreviews.com

Fall Preview 2026: Patton Oswalt | Kirkus Reviews

The actor who narrates the audiobook of Stephen King and Peter Straub’s ‘Other World Than These’ answers our questions.

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Bryan Alistair Charles @bryanacharles.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I also read Proust's Lesbianism (uncensored cover flagged by Bsky as "adult content" 😂), highly recommended for those looking to go deeper with the many tangled questions raised in the roman d'Albertine. (E. Ladenson also writes the intro for Oxford Proust's forthcoming The Captive.)

PROUST'S LESBIANISM by Elisabeth Ladenson.

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Bryan Alistair Charles @bryanacharles.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Finished the Oxford Sodom and Gomorrah. Helen Constantine's lovely translation vividly captures the novel's sexual intrigue/anxiety and exquisite society-by-the-seaside atmosphere of the narrator's return to Balbec. #Proust

Marcel Proust's SODOM AND GOMORRAH translated by Helen Constantine.

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Bryan Alistair Charles @bryanacharles.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

tv/movies don't care about US regional accents unless they are east coast/south. (Fargo maybe the lone exception.) Went to see The End of Oak Street yesterday, which takes place in my homeland of MI, and once more no MI/midwestern accents, and worse Ewan McGregor was doing some weird robot voice.

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Bryan Alistair Charles @bryanacharles.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

"No doubt he spoke like that because he was cross about not being invited [to the Verdurins], but also because of the satisfaction that 'busy' people feel--even if their work is the most futile--in 'not having time' to do whatever you are doing.

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Bryan Alistair Charles @bryanacharles.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I am very sad about Hayden Panettiere. I was obsessed with Nashville. HP was great as Juliette Barnes (though the writing soon let her down). I watched the show weekly when it aired and bought all the cd soundtracks.

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Robert de Saint-Loup @insearchofproust.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

🧵(1/x) Paintings not in #Karpeles but mentioned in the Oxford #Proust, an ongoing series. See alt-text for details. "His features were flushed with cold, bringing to mind…the ruddy cheeks Brueghel gives to his boisterous, carousing, frostbitten peasants." (The Guermantes Way, tr. Peter Bush)

Peter Brueghel the Elder, The Hunters in the Snow (1565)

Peter Brueghel the Elder, Peasant Wedding (1567)

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Bryan Alistair Charles @bryanacharles.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

"Seldom has any fictional character been quite so mother-obsessed as Proust's narrator, although it should also be said that the work of no other author besides P.G. Wodehouse features quite so many uncles and aunts and so few parents." --Elisabeth Ladenson #Proust

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Robert de Saint-Loup @insearchofproust.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

@bryanacharles.bsky.social is referring to the Oxford #Proust Sodom and Gomorrah, tr. Helen Constantine. Some Googling and OED'ing indicate that "zounds" is a remarkable rendering of "saperlipopette," since both interjections have religious origins, gradually transformed to avoid blasphemy. ⬇️⬇️

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Bryan Alistair Charles @bryanacharles.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

mini film festival with my kid away at summer camp The Red Shoes (1948) Viridiana (1961) Early Summer (1951) Late Spring (1949) Tokyo Story (1953) Repo Man (1984) The Prisoner ep. 1 #lastfourwatched (plus extra)

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Bryan Alistair Charles @bryanacharles.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

"The attention the narrator devotes to the mystery of Albertine's desires takes up more textual space than any other concern in the Recherche, and Albertine's name occurs more often than that of any other character. [2,360 times]

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Bryan Alistair Charles @bryanacharles.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

The other night I semirandomly selected TOKYO STORY on Criterion Channel & now am hooked on Ozu's films, which I had never seen (C. Channel has a bunch). Last night I watched LATE SPRING, again featuring the mesmerizing Setsuko Hara whose smile can convey 1000 different thoughts and feelings

Setsuko Hara in Yasujirō Ozu's LATE SPRING.

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nora 🍐 @pear-jelly.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Horny 🥵

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Bryan Alistair Charles @bryanacharles.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Always a delight when "Céleste Albaret" appears in The Search. *no one* in the whole of the novel talks to the narrator the way she does: "...lucky for you that those who created you made sure you were born rich...I've never seen such a clumsy oaf...Poor little ploumissou!" 😂 ❤️ #Proust

A portrait of Céleste Albaret, Marcel Proust's housekeeper.

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Bryan Alistair Charles @bryanacharles.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Excellent piece in the Financial Times by @joshspero.ft.com. Featuring an appearance by la traductrice géniale @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social. Welcome to the club, Josh I am pretty much always reading The Search and maybe it will be the same for you! giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

giftarticle.ft.com

Proust in the age of TikTok

The French writer’s seven-volume magnum opus was a challenging choice for a book club — but its evocation of the human psyche makes essential reading for our times

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Bryan Alistair Charles @bryanacharles.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

History of translation of a single key line in The Search: "Bouleversement de toute ma personne." #Proust "Complete physical collapse." Moncrieff "Disruption of my entire being." Moncrieff/Kilmartin "Upheaval of my entire being." Moncrieff/Kilmartin/Enright Moncrieff/Carter

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Karine M. Donelle @karinemdonelle.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Très fan de cette affiche pour la nouvelle restauration 4K de Manhunter de Michael Mann

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Bryan Alistair Charles @bryanacharles.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Excellent (short) life of Proust. Especially good, given the brevity, on the Dreyfus Affair and war years. #Proust

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Jane Mayl🍷n 🍇 @janetrad.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

"The main part of a translation is giving it the music in English—not the same music—but whatever flow, whatever music it had in the original language. [...] I honestly don’t know if machines will ever do that. But there are plenty of humans who aren’t that good at it either."

lithub.com

Can ChatGPT Produce a Version of Proust Worth Reading?

“The part of ourselves that matters, when it matters, is outside time… Think of yourself simply as an instrument capable of whatever experiments in beauty or truth you wish to perform, and yo…

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Jim Rion・ライオンジミー @jimrion.com · 11/07/2026

Reading this made me want to just stare out the window in quiet, resigned despair. If the ones *teaching* translation just shrug and hop on board, what future can there be for those of us who think translation actually has value as creative expression? And I only translate "popcorn" fiction!

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Charlotte Mandell @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

As well as being Proust's birthday, today is also Saul Bellow's birthday-- The Adventures of Augie March was a life-changing book for me at the age of 13. I wrote him a fan letter from France which he never answered :(

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Bryan Alistair Charles @bryanacharles.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

"I may be dead from the neck up, but cudgel my brains as I may, I fail to understand why a man needs thirty pages to describe how he tosses and turns in bed before falling asleep." --Paul Ollendorff reader's report rejecting Swann's Way #Proust

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Bryan Alistair Charles @bryanacharles.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

"712-page manuscript...one has no notion--none--of what it is about. What is it all for? What does it all mean? Where is it all leading?--It's impossible to know! It's impossible to say!" --Fasquelle reader's report rejecting Swann's Way #Proust

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Bryan Alistair Charles @bryanacharles.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Always so electric in Proust bios when Marcel finally begins writing LA RECHERCHE! "..the bedside table of this seemingly unproductive lightweight and sleeper-in groaned with the notebooks of a masterwork that was to challenge the novel as decisively as Stravinsky had challenged music.."

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Skot Armstrong @skot.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

“Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces.” -Marcel Proust #BOTD

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Martin Shaw @thebooksdesk.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Such a good reflection this. I've actually always wondered to what degree translators of not just Proust but say Kafka compare their work line-by-line to previous translators? If they do, having them on screen to compare is doubtless useful!

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Michael Shallcross @michaelshallcross.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Hitching a ride on this excellent, thoughtful article because it coincides with a puzzling research rabbit-hole I've recently fallen down: Is anyone on here knowledgeable on the life of Proust's first English translator, C. K. Scott Moncrieff? If so, I have questions prompted by archival digging...

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Bryan Alistair Charles @bryanacharles.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Indredible thread, almost a supplementary essay, by my fellow Proustian @insearchofproust.bsky.social.

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Ste @stefifofum.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Not to cherry pick something controversial in an otherwise even-handed piece, but... 🤔

'Rothwell told me that while he has given research presentations on his use of translation tools, he never explicitly mentioned his methodology to Oxford. "I assume they'll take the text that I send them and it'll be reviewed academically to see whether it's up to standard. But how it's originated really doesn't matter, I don't think."'

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Grace Krilanovich @gracekrilanovich.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Great piece on a fraught subject

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Bryan Alistair Charles @bryanacharles.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Watched CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT on Criterion. Really interesting. Welles is a great Falstaff. The moment when Hal turns his back on Falstaff so beautifully played-- sad to flash ahead & think of me absorbed in THE MAN WHO SAW TOMORROW campy Nostradamus doc narrated by Welles, class movie in 6th grade.

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