iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Back in Scotland. Might fake my death and never come back.

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I have a paper to give at Cambridge today but London won’t buy itself so I guess I don’t know how today will go.

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Do I title my upcoming conference paper “Be Humble, Sit Down”?

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Looks more like humbuckers to me.

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Finally watching Paddington 2 and “Exit bear, pursued by a man” is a top notch joke. No notes.

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Y’all do realize that if this was something the Democrats were doing every Republican and several media outlets would be describing this an attempt to cover up blatant child trafficking, right?

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

“She showed her gums when she smiled.” —Vladimir Nabokov

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

I don’t know, maybe I’m just insecure, but I’d feel pretty impotent if I chose to have AI do literally any writing for me. I care too much about the stuff I write, even though the writing and me aren’t two of the same thing. And sometimes it’s shit, but that’s shit I wrote.

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Reposted by Erik Eklund

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 19/08/2026

anyway, i'd say that the most *useful* coursework i did in college was all in the religious studies department

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 19/08/2026

i both think that students in the US should get literary instruction in the Bible (basically the equivalent of an intro religious studies course) and that doing so would be so controversial that it isn't worth the effort

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

There’s this very short essay, I don’t know if anyone has ever heard of it, it’s called “The Death of the Author,” by this unknown French dude, Roland Barthes, that demonstrates quite beautifully just how much this guy has no idea what he’s writing or thinking.

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Guys I just heard fireworks and you wouldn’t believe the dark thought I just had but alas no

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Sometimes I think about submitting a paper to ETS called “Reading Aratus as Christian Scripture” as a bit. I think it’d be fun.

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

I have past high school students from over ten years ago still text me about me assigning Nabokov’s “Signs and Symbols.”

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Well, I know how I’m concluding my paper on Nabokov and Marías, and dammit it’s a bummer: “We tell ourselves lies in order to keep going.”

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Dammit I love Portland. As a Tacoma boy I think my allegiance is in the right place.

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Not quite the same thing, but also women translators! Anyone who has read Marías and so many other contemporary Spanish authors in English translation owe an immense debt of gratitude to Esther Allen and Margaret Jull Costa.

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

John F. K. Donne: Ask not for whom the bell tolls, but for whom you might toll the bell.

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Guys I got new sneakers, a collab between 3sixteen and Saucony, in the most garish color ever and I think I’m obsessed. LIME.

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Thinking about that time I went to a literature conference, gave a paper at a religion and literature panel, after which we all went out to dinner and drinks, and some people got judgy over me and another senior scholar saying things like shit and fuck and talking about whisky.

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Laughing to myself about one of my PhD supervisor’s notion of a good holiday. We were on the shores of Lake Geneva three summers ago and she complained about the weather: mid-70s and sunny. Now she’s heading to the Shetlands, where the high is 57 and this week’s weather is wind and rain.

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

This is a great way of putting it. I think a lot of us have our own weird little guys we can’t not bring up despite them not being the subject at hand. Typically, Borges is my weird little guy. Right now, in an article on Nabokov’s Pnin, it’s Javier Marías.

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Makeshift Bee’s Knees tonight. 2 oz Johnnie Red. Few dashes plum bitters. Homemade chamomile-lemon tea, honey, and ginger simple syrup. Floral and earthy.

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Guys this paper is getting so depressing I’m having so much fun.

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Began today drafting my paper on pacts of forgetting in Nabokov and Marías for the upcoming International Society for Religion, Literature and Culture conference. Paragraph two is entirely on Borges. Why do I always do this? I always do this.

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Fucking dammit. (A red Enzo)

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Walking around Whole Foods while hungry I feel like a recently divorced man walking through Amsterdam. Everything looks good but I’m sure it’s all bad for me.

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

y’all I’ve said it for years if you don’t go to taco bell you’ll be fine this is universal wisdom

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

So I guess we have to call it The New York now. The Queens sounds weird but okay I’ll add the “the.” Y’all do y’all.

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Reposted by Erik Eklund

Anne M. Carpenter @catholickungfu.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

me, reading Beloved: … my brain, with its capacity to relate facts to other facts: “the clearing? Heidegger uses this word.” me: “it’s definitely not that.” (later) my brain: “ooh! clearing! Heidegger!” me: “no. it’s a clearing in a forest in a fiction book.” my brain: “LICHTUNG.”

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Borges v Cervantes and Flaubert v Shakespeare LFG

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Okay so Cervantes is the first or second best writer in the world, and Flaubert is the third or fourth best writer. Soon we will know where stand Borges and Shakespeare.

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

I spend a lot of time in Nabokov, Borges, and Flaubert, after them Marías, but only when I return to Shakespeare do I understand what Borges meant when he said that the library of Alexandria must sometimes be burned.

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Guys a human being wrote Macbeth like what the fuck

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Had a chat with my high school English teacher and we agree that people who like film think the Coen Bros’ Macbeth is better. People who like Shakespeare know that Kurzel’s Macbeth not only is the best but is actually good.

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em dash dual wielder @juicyb3rry.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

That feeling when I can finally post an image I saved a year and a half ago

American chopper meme, with text from Darcy’s proposal:

In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you

If I could feel gratitude, I would now thank you. But I cannot I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly

And this is all the reply which I am to have the honour of expecting

Do you think that any consideration would tempt me to accept the man who has been the means of ruining, perhaps for ever, the happiness of a most beloved sister?

My faults, according to this calculation, are heavy indeed

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Javier Marías Jon Fosse Olga Tokarczuk

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Let’s be real the big question for Balogun right now is whether he is willing to take on all the absolutely justified hate (not the acts of hate, mind you) he will get not only now but for years to come by allowing himself to become Trump’s poster boy.

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

What absolute and utter bullshit from UMSNT coach.

"For me, there isn't much debate here, though I do understand Belgium's perspective and Rudi's point of view," Pochettino told reporters. "I understand why people conflate issues—people always do, because there's often an agenda to mix things up—but in this case, I don't think it's right. If anyone was harmed in this whole situation, it was the United States. Can anyone justify the idea that we weren't punished? I mean, playing 30 or 35 minutes a man down in a World Cup knockout match? It's not as if we're benefiting. No, no. There's no extraordinary gain we're getting out of all this. I mean, ultimately, we aren't victims, but we aren't the villains of this story either."

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Erik Eklund @eklundsays.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Oh Jude Bellingham is English? I bet he can’t name one of the three witches from Macbeth.

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