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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Not to be confused with characters named after cheeses. Can’t think of any examples offhand, but it feels like something Trollope would do.

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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Thank you! My memory might easily have tweaked this passage toward the formulation I offered. That seems likely...and yet part of me thinks/worries that I'm accurately remembering someone else's (or Moretti's own) tweaking.

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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Niche query for novel studies scholars: who was it who said that the basic plot of the Bildungsroman or the 19C novel could be boiled down to the sequence of two classic titles: Great Expectations, Lost Illusions? Moretti? Thanks!

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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

P.S. I'm pretty much the very last person to argue against attention to deliberate rewritings or responses, but I have found that students often get more excited when the intertextual relationships haven't been planted by the author for them to find.

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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Leaning into Elegy: To the Lighthouse (not pre20C but close enough?), which of course Woolf described as an elegy, paired with Never Let Me Go-- the pairing would both underscore the elegiac element of the Ishiguro and, grounded in that commonality, lead to differences in form and style, etc.

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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Patsy was my colleague and I still remember her telling me about that piece when she was working on it, and blowing my mind

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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Ah, my bad. I’ll have to work on my close reading skills

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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Fifteen years, but the point stands

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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

Deronda first meets Mordecai in a used-book store

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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Congrats, Lauren! I look forward to reading.

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Reposted by Daniel Hack

Deidre Lynch @drbibliomane.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

In time for April Fool's Day, which may be apt, my article on Gothic fiction and #18thc hoaxing has appeared in Novel, in a banger of an issue on Belief in Fiction, co-ed by @danielhack.bsky.social & Rachel Ablow. Take a look at this exciting t.o.c. I'm grateful to be in such great company.

Contents:
Rachel Ablow/Introduction: Belief and Disbelief after Secularization
Daniel Hack/Why Always That Dorothea? Realism and the Rise of Meaning
Colin Jager/ The Suspension of Disbelief, Again
Timothy Bewes/ "Things Can Always Be otherwise": Believing (in) Twenty-First-Century Fiction
Deidre Lynch/Believing in Novels: Hoax, Hocus, and the Fictionality of the Gothic
Ian Duncan/ Excessive Belief: Transport and Immersion in Nineteenth-Century Historical Ficton
Ayelet Ben-Yishai/ "A Look She Cannot Read": Novelistic Epistemology between Genre and Narrative Mode in Paul Lynch's Prophet Song
Amy Hollywood: Henry James, Minny Temple, and the 'Demon of the Why, Whence, and Whither"

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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

I'm thrilled that this is now in the world: a special issue of NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, guest-edited by Rachel Ablow and me, on "Belief in Fiction." Wherein we are joined by a dream team of contributors: Colin Jager, Tim Bewes, Deidre Lynch, Ian Duncan, Ayelet Ben-Yishai, and Amy Hollywood.

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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

Spent ten weeks on Middlemarch last semester. One of my best teaching experiences ever.

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Reposted by Daniel Hack

American Ornithological Society @amornith.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

Join us Mon 2/9 at Noon (ET) for a free seminar: "Spatiotemporal dynamics of geographic range in seasonally migratory birds" w/ Matthew Hack, PhD candidate, University of Michigan; 2024 AOS Student Research Grant winner. #AOSmembers americanornithology.org/calendar/spa... #AOS_SRGS

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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

Send me the details and I can check this afternoon.

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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Wait, are you suggesting that Marxist historicism is not also easily turned into a banal formula?!

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Reposted by Daniel Hack

Public Books @publicbooks.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

“But how full and lasting is this healing? We don’t know.” New at PB: Daniel Hack on the enigmas of J. L. Carr’s “A Month in the Country.”

publicbooks.org

B-Sides: J. L. Carr’s “A Month in the Country” - Public Books

The impact of the novel’s silences and enigmas is amplified by the enigma that is Carr himself.

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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

You already know this, but: New Grub Street

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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

"Exploring complex texts together, sharing our reactions and our insights, developing analyses through dialogue, and trying out ideas on one another is the best way to learn, and also the most fun."

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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

Thanks! I had arrived at pretty much the same place in terms of policy, but was still calling it "participation," even though that seemed inadequate. I will probably blend some of your phrasing with my existing language:

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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

Is this yours, Nathan? I want to make sure I credit the right person when I adopt/adapt this!

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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

My university is encouraging me to use ChatGPT for my research, and I'm so glad I did. Otherwise I never would have known about @carolinelevine.bsky.social's 2004 article, "Victorian Plots and the Twentieth Century Novel: The Case of Kazuo Ishiguro"! Sounds fascinating! How could I have missed it?

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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

This is why, despite misgivings (which I will share with the class), I am teaching a course in the fall I named “The Greatest Novel and the Biggest Question: Middlemarch and Meaning.”

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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Congratulations, Deidre! Why am I not shocked?

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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

About twenty years ago, in Buffalo. Plus we had the soundtrack CD on high rotation. Great stuff.

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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

“I am not afraid. Well, I am, but I’m still brave.”

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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

We find reassurance where we can. They say the English major is dying and no one reads anymore, but some one left a beat-up copy of MCTEAGUE on the "free books" shelf in my department this morning and it's already gone.

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Daniel Hack @danielhack.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

More self-interrupting songs: “Wrong ‘em Boyo,” “I Want You (She’s So Heavy”

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