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Snacks Pearl

@max-pearl.bsky.social
29 followers 43 following 6 posts

Critic. Translator. Semi-retired raver.

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Reposted by Snacks Pearl
Creative Writing at NEIU @neiu-cw.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
thenation.com
A Rave Novel Rediscovered
Ann Scott’s “Superstars” captures the last gasp of pre-Internet counterculture.
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Reposted by Snacks Pearl
The Border Chronicle @theborderchronicle.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
What if vampires were the world's original stateless people? Laredo author Ito Romo's debut novella Filth Eaters spans 1,000 years of conquest, migration & survival, with fangs. Read full review🔗🦂:
theborderchronicle.com
Vampires without Borders
Spanning a thousand years and multiple continents, the new novel Filth Eaters casts vampires as the world's ultimate stateless people.
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Reposted by Snacks Pearl
Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
What happens when a (very) small press novel is nominated for a Pulitzer? Max Pearl gets to know Stacey Levine, author of Mice 1961.
buff.ly
Who Are You Stacey Levine? What Happens When a “Deeply Weird,” (Very Small) Press Novel is a Pulitzer Finalist
It was like any Monday morning at Seattle Central College, the community college where Stacey Levine has taught creative writing for fifteen years. Arriving at work, she sat down at her office desk…
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Reposted by Snacks Pearl
Snacks Pearl @max-pearl.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
"Death, even in a form as shocking to Christian orthodoxy as self-murder, offends the bourgeois mind less than sex.” I read LOVE AND DEATH IN THE AMERICAN NOVEL (1960) and detected no lies @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social maxxpearl.substack.com/p/i-read-thi...
maxxpearl.substack.com
I read this 500-page history of American fiction so you don’t have to (but you should)
In Love and Death in the American Novel, Leslie Fiedler argues that our entire narrative tradition stems from our aversion to sex.
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Snacks Pearl @max-pearl.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
"Death, even in a form as shocking to Christian orthodoxy as self-murder, offends the bourgeois mind less than sex.” I read LOVE AND DEATH IN THE AMERICAN NOVEL (1960) and detected no lies @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social maxxpearl.substack.com/p/i-read-thi...
maxxpearl.substack.com
I read this 500-page history of American fiction so you don’t have to (but you should)
In Love and Death in the American Novel, Leslie Fiedler argues that our entire narrative tradition stems from our aversion to sex.
064
Reposted by Snacks Pearl
Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
I wish every academic would read this excerpt from Josh Kline's interview about his recent essay on artists, NYC & affordability. I have questions about his broader argument, but this discussion of the political implications of jargon vs clear writing is deeply relevant to current state of academia
 I’d like to dwell a bit on the prose of this essay, which is clean and crisp. It’s often funny, too: I’m thinking here of the part where you note that Christopher Wool’s recent show in a Financial District skyscraper was “LARPing as a kind of Epcot Center version of downtown New York.” This is not the kind of writing that typically appears in October, whose articles are often pocked with jargon. Why did you write it in this way?

Clear, accessible, and effective communication is a political choice. It’s also a political tool. We were taught the function of jargon in the cultural anthropology classes I took in college. While it can be a way to have very specific and nuanced conversations about a subject within a field, jargon can also be used to hide knowledge, exclude the uninitiated, and maintain or build power. If you want to engage working people and the general public politically and make convincing arguments about transforming society, why make those arguments in a form that excludes all of those people? How will you convince anyone of anything if people put down your writing before they finish reading it? You can make urgent ideas legible for readers outside your industry without dumbing them down.
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Reposted by Snacks Pearl
Noah Hurowitz @noahhurowitz.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
Amid the ICE invasion of Minnesota predicated on "Somali fraud," a right-wing news site aggressively deployed a similar playbook in Maine—with $$ from some of the GOP's biggest donors My dive into The Maine Wire, anti-Somali hate, and the dark money fueling it theintercept.com/2026/04/08/m...
theintercept.com
GOP Megadonor Leonard Leo Is Bankrolling a Website on the Warpath Against Somalis
The Maine Wire presents itself as a plucky upstart fighting for the common Mainer, but it’s fueled by powerful right-wing money men.
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Reposted by Snacks Pearl
somanybooks24.bsky.social @somanybooks24.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
“He’s a man of his time and a victim in his own right, someone whose suffering made him susceptible to the worst values of his era.” In @thenation.com, Max Pearl reviews Manuel Mujica Lainez’s newly reissued novel, “Bomarzo” - www.thenation.com/article/cult...
thenation.com
In “Bomarzo,” the Renaissance Man is a Monster
Manuel Mujica Lainez’s historical novel, a strange biography of a 16th-century duke, leaves the reader wondering if human nature can ever change.
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Snacks Pearl @max-pearl.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
I wrote about jobs: having one, not having one, and how it can be hard to tell which is worse maxxpearl.substack.com/p/when-was-t...
maxxpearl.substack.com
When was the last time you laughed at work?
We all know how bad the hiring rate is. Search Work, a new anthology of writing on unemployment, tries to show what stats alone can’t.
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Snacks Pearl @max-pearl.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
This week on 𝑺𝒆𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒐𝒓, I wrote about 𝑬𝒗𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆, the newly reissued photobook that laid the groundwork for found photography. Compiled in ‘77 by Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel, it's a portal to an uncanny dimension, conjured with images from government archives. open.substack.com/pub/maxxpear...
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Snacks Pearl @max-pearl.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
Looooooserrrrr
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Snacks Pearl @max-pearl.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
Hi everybody. My name is Max. I’m a book critic and this is my newsletter, SEPARATOR, edited by @noahhurowitz.bsky.social maxxpearl.substack.com/p/this-is-my...
maxxpearl.substack.com
This is my blog about books
Welcome to Separator.
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