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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 20h

David Neil Lee, The Battle of the Five Spot: Ornette Coleman and The New York Jazz Field. Uses Coleman's epochal 1959 club debut as a case study for Bourdieu's account of position-taking. Well-researched, persuasive, & dispiriting: to me, the theory's anti-aesthetic bent is deeply cynical. #readin26

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Gabriel Josipovici, Conversations in Another Room. Author was born in Nice but writes in English. Short 1984 nouveau roman, 80% terse dialogue between a dying matriarch and a niece, modeled on Beckett and Robbe-Grillet (w/o sadism). I have patience for the style, but the material is thin. #readin26

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Joanna Furhman, Data Mind. 2022; Prose poems (+ a few memes), meant to come to terms w/ the internet's excess and banality. A bit quieter, syntactically if not satirically, than flarf: if some results read as soft surrealism, blame the source, not the poet. Fave title "Chapstick Traces" #readin26

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Jeff Schwarz, Free Jazz. Matter-of-fact 2022 overview of the music since Coleman, w/ semi-technical descriptions of harmolodics & the compositional systems of Braxton, Threadgill, etc. Treats surrounding racial issues w/o polemics. Can't imagine anyone covering this topic better in 125 p. #readin26.

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meadow!! @meadowdetector.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

the only cishet person from Boston I want to hear talking about lesbian bars is Jonathan Richman

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Joyce Carol Oates, Beasts. B/B- 21st-c. Oates novella w/ standard equipment: New England academic setting, sexual power dynamics w/ violent climax, overt literary signposting (here, Ovid & Lawrence). Less hallucinatory and more calmly paced than her better work in this vein; pat ending. #readin26

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Douglas Wolk @douglaswolk.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I find that list entirely accurate and would not change the placement of a single item on it.

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Frank Kofsky, Black Music, White Business: Illuminating the History and Political Economy of Jazz. Posthumous sequel to his '71 book on Black nat'lism & jazz. Frequently plausible Marxist analysis, buried in reams of aggrieved score-settling w/ white critics. Sorry, -other- white critics. #readin26

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Colin Bramwell, Fetch. Poems in English and in Scots, glossed like an edition of Burns, many in rec'd forms, inc. a crown of sonnets; themes of death, nature, impermanence are also traditional. Refreshing colloquial passages don't fully overcome an air of stiffness, too common in UK poets. #readin26

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Robert Hewison, Under Siege, Literary Life in London 1939-1945. Cultural history of UK writing (also painting and music) during WWII: covers the Blitz, poets in combat, state/BBC arts funding. Informative, but broader than it is deep, outside a downbeat postscript on postwar prospects. #readin26

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Jennifer Higgie, Bedlam. Biographical novel on the English painter/murderer/inmate Richard Dadd (1817-88), in 1st-person. The style and diction, arch yet feverish, are hard to bring off, and there are lapses, but Dadd's descent into visionary madness is rendered with a harrowing lyricism. #readin26

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Iain Anderson, This Is Our Music; Free Jazz, the Sixties and American Culture. Narrates how post-Coltrane jazz used grants and academia to survive outside the market, at the cost of defusing some of its claims to political/racial radicalism. Flatly written, heavy on well-known background. #readin26

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

If you'd like to see a person who was not encouraged to learn to ride a bike attempt to do so well into middle age, AND hear "Still in Error," the first single from the Human Hearts' forthcoming album on Dromedary Records, pls check out our new video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8tn...

youtube.com

The Human Hearts • "Still in Error"

YouTube video by DromedaryRecords

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Arthur Taylor, Notes and Tones: Musician-to-Musician Interviews. 29 sit-downs, '68-'71, w/ jazz heavy hitters by expat drummer Taylor. Recurring topics include U.S. racism, white economic control of the music, and older players' distaste for free jazz & "electronics." Few punches pulled. #readin26.

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

U. Lindberg, et. al., Rock Criticism From the Beginning. Sociological account of the field's development from the late '60s on, by 4 Nordic scholars writing in English. The cultural distance shows, but I learned a lot about the UK music papers, & some writers I haven't read, esp. Landau. #readin26

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Miss Kimmi Kitty Mama @miss-kimmi.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

The Earl Carroll Theatre is a former stage facility at 6230 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. It was built by showman Earl Carroll and designed in the Streamline Moderne style by architect Gordon Kaufmann in 1938.

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Jan Murray, The Body Merchant: The Life of Earl Carroll. Source-free bio of B'way/H'wd revue producer (Earl Carroll's Vanities), Ziegfeld's main rival in the '20s/'30s, by a vaudevillian who worked for him later. Prurient and highly embellished, befitting this Barnum among flesh-peddlers. #readin26

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

A Flea the Size of Paris: The Old French Fatrasies & Fatras, trans. Ted Byrne & Donato Mancini. Eng. versions of 13th c. genres of carnivalesque 11-line poems that travesty courtly verse w/ paradox & wordplay. "Fart just once with your throat/& I'll love you perfectly." In a word, flarf. #readin26.

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Coraline Jortay 喬海霖 @qiaoj.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Got a new google scholar notification, so I go check and find this very cool poem by Wang Jibing 王计兵, the recent Lu Xun prize winner, prefacing a PhD thesis on women migrant workers and the gig economy PhD students in all disciplines: more poems in theses please, we love to see them! ✨💫

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Saul Bellow, Seize the Day. Haven't touched him since reading The Dean's December far too young; lacking bandwidth for, say, Herzog, this 1956 100-pager was a fine way back in. The pitch of desperation reached is hard to credit, but the prose vaults over what one reads now. Maybe then too. #readin26

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Robin Z @firepile.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Vaguely regretting buying what I thought were chips but turn out, on closer inspection, to be "flavored triangles"

Bag of tostitos mexican street corn flavored triangles

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Missouri Williams, The Vivisectionists. Touted young UK writer's campus novel, w/ (anti?)-woke elements, a gothy mise en scene, and a hard-hearted narrator whose language gets richer as she softens - nice trick. Still, vague and underdramatized overall. Uneven and, to me, overhyped. #readin26

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Will anyone ever be allowed to write a sentence about what's worthwhile about a Go-Betweens song or record without also writing one about how they didn't have hits or get that famous? Can the work be the subject, and the standard, once in, oh, 40 years?

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Franz Nicolay, Band People: Life and Work in Popular Music. Pro keyboardist's interview-based acct of sidepersons like himself. It takes related skills to write such a well-organized, theory-informed 3rd-person book instead of a memoir. Gave me insight into my own "career"; can recommend. #readin26

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Guillevic, Geometries, trans. Richard Sieburth. "Euclidiennes" (1967) in French; 40 short poems voiced (?) by various plane and solid figures (scalene triangle, cone, parabola). Charmingly idealist; so, at odds w/ the militant CP sonnets I'm familiar with. These could make good art songs! #readin26

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pmamtraveller.bsky.social @pmamtraveller.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

The power of light and shadows

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Edna O'Brien, The Love Object. 8 late-'60s stories, varied in tone, pace, pov, on women's thwarted desires, whether at the hands of a particular man, society, or their own illusions. Fine realist prose; "Paradise", one of 2 bookending (& sexy) mistress stories, doesn't earn its length. #readin26

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Li-Young Lee, Behind My Eyes. A deep image poet, if I grasp the term. I read him mainly for how his poems move forward (by verbal repetition, paradox, and wisps of narrative; less involved w/ rhythm, anaphora aside), but he's also devastating on his parents, and family life in general. #readin26

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Zachary Leader, Writer's Block. Not an advice book; mostly a survey of psychoanalytic accounts of the concept, and their roots in Romanticism, plus long case studies/close readings of Wordsworth & Coleridge. Never having studied them, I didn't know the latter was such a wreck of a person. #readin26

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Should I write to avoid exercising, or exercise to avoid writing?

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Gore Vidal Sassoon @jimmyjazz1968.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Michael McDonald FACT: he cannot sing the letter G

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Douglas Wolk @douglaswolk.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

“Political Song for Rosemary Clooney to Sing”

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory, A Very Short Introduction. Emphasizes speculative, destabilizing character of the field; as much about big ideas (e.g., identity) as their application to lit. works. Probably as clearly written as such a book can be. Treatment of Marxism seems a bit thin. #readin26

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

Don Cherry & Graeme Ewens, Eternal Rhythm: Conversations and Travelations. Oral memoir of global jazz legend, w/ add'l text by UK friend/archivist Evans. Best on early L.A./NYC years w/ Ornette; frank on D.C.'s drug use. Jumps around after that, but so did he. A real bio would fill a gap. #readin26

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Michael Anderson, Locative Poesis. Obscure, L.A.-based Language-adjacent writer: short 1987 book typeset by Diane Ward. The "Europe" half is a Cook's tour there of atomized, macaronic travel notes; "America," covering CA/"the West," is better-observed, w/ wisps of narrative and Latinidad. #readin26

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Analytic and continental philosophers going nyah-nyah-nyah at each other 280 characters at a time is not only incredibly interesting and intellectually productive, it's novel and never tiresome.

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Ann Beattie, Secrets and Surprises. 1978 collection of sad realist tales, most from p.o.v. of a couple's weaker, more passive half. Didn't expect the post-hippie milieu, w/ refs to "tokes," "screwing," & Michael Hurley. Favors dialogue, detail over metaphor; can be moving despite flatness. #readin26

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

I'd say that Possession ties Willy Wonka for film least in need of a remake.

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Emma Tholozan, Self-Worth, trans. Emma Ramadan. 2024 French novel: a phil. grad's boyfriend vomits 20€ notes; she can't cope when he stops. Unsubtle consumerist satire, but warmer than V. Latroncio's Perfection. Unevenly written, w/ some good lines: "We have the nightmares of our class." #readin26

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Gerald Murnane, The Plains. His most-lauded book, but not the one I get the most out of. Marvelous, mood-altering prose, like Ashbery's 3 Poems at times, but I sense the effort it cost to create his "Inner Australia." Lacks the inevitability of some later, just as imaginative, work. [re] #readin26

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 24/06/2026

also not lost on me that as democratic socialists are winning some elections, a new red scare targeting anarchists, antifascists, and their allies is digging in hard, and today handed down 30, 50, and 100 year prison sentences to activists and organizers

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Hadas Weiss @hadas.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

tfw a publisher is so transparent, considerate & genuinely excited about your book that you ask yourself if you shouldn't hold out for one that treats you like shit

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

What, if anything, would be the 2026 equivalent of Was (Not Was)?

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Dag Solstad, Shyness & Dignity, trans. Sverre Lyngstad. Oslo h.s. teacher's marriage and career fall apart; a long flashback explains how/why, sort of. Narrative voice can recall Bernhard, but in close 3rd person, and more glum than furious. Won't change your notions of Nordic literature. #readin26.

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

David Huddle, The Writing Habit. Craft essays by a short-story writer, more aesthetically conservative than me, but honest and sensible. Particularly good stylistic analysis of Mansfield's "The Garden Party." As for the writing habit, he recommends a discipline I do not (yet) have. #readin26

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Hadas Weiss @hadas.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

we received a large number of strong applications

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Franklin Bruno @humanfranklin.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Aaron Shurin, Involuntary Lyrics (2005). 85 14-liners w/ end-words borrowed from Shakespeare's sonnets. The rhyme schemes are scrambled; the prosody, free and varied. Results range from telegraphic "language things" to love (sex) poems in a post-AIDS shadow. Unmistakably Bay Area writing. #readin26.

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