iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

It’s Drowning Pool Peter. Come on

Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Currently, I think my two favorite fiction writers might be Julia Armfield and Martin MacInnes. Both write smart novels that are also page turners—prose suffused with a sense of descriptive unease and imperceptible horrors that feel palpable even when they fail to materialize.

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

NBN is good. I did an interview with The History of Literature podcast that was fun.

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

Enjoying a chilled stout and listening to Mark Knopfler’s “The Ragpicker’s Dream” is one of my favorite holiday traditions. Wishing you all peace this season.

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

I didn’t think the first AI paper I’d find during grading period would be… from a respected, peer-reviewed journal asking me to review a submission. Fucking bleak.

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 07/12/2025

Against AI is constitutively labor-minded. It’s been a generative topic of discussion among certain people in my department.

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 16/11/2025

This is the classics version of the sci-fi meme “we have created the Death Star from the famous story DO NOT CREATE THE DEATH STAR.” I think @jordanscarroll.bsky.social nailed it when he diagnosed a serious incapacity for reading among a certain instrumentally minded demographic.

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

how is Rose Betts the most majestic combo of Imogen Heap and the Decemberists? And how am I only learning about her now? I’m obsessed.

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

This is one of the first songs I remember hearing as a child that has stuck with me—can’t wait to read! The taconite reference also reminds me of Springsteen’s “Youngstown.” We need more environmental histories via folk songs.

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 12/10/2025

Like my man Zevon says, “If I leave you, it doesn’t mean I love you any less. Keep me in your heart for a while.” We’ll miss you Bon. You were the best cat anyone could ask for.

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

Colleagues and fellow scholars, here’s info on a special issue of Modern Fiction Studies that I’m coediting with Matthew Gannon and @katemarshall.bsky.social: “Long Modernism, Altered Natures,” cfp below—send us your abstracts! call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/09/...

call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu

cfp | call for papers

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 06/07/2025

Let’s be real, LLM is just way too similar to MLM.

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

Of course, this requires a lot of cannibalizing those 37 false starts.

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

Sometimes, the way a draft of something gets written is 37 false starts and aborted efforts and then BAM. 7500 words in two days.

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

1. 2005 2. Brick 3. Burrito bowls

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

This right here is why we study literature.

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

This is wild Nathan. Thank you for posting about it.

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

The upshot of extractive capitalism is a house of mirrors where what’s below is above, as we’re crushed within centuries by what was buried over epochs.

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

The frontier is alive and well in the world-ecology.

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

Stoked and stacked for IMAGINING CRISIS IN 21C AMERICAN LITERATURE in the fall!

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

“Set in Milwaukee, Wisconsin during the Great Depression, Shadow Ticket follows Hicks McTaggart, a detective who is tasked with finding the heiress of a cheese fortune.” I mean, that tracks. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...

theguardian.com

Thomas Pynchon announces Shadow Ticket, his first novel in more than a decade

The elusive 87-year-old author’s new book is a noir caper set during the big band era following a detective in search of a cheese heiress

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

ngl it ain’t easy reading Karen Russell’s THE ANTIDOTE when I feel the urge to write down notes about every. single. page.

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

Michael was my undergrad thesis advisor. This really sucks to see.

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Book 20: Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Book 19: Through the Arc of the Rain Forest (Karen Tei Yamashita)

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Book 18: Blindsight (Peter Watts)

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Book 17: Sing, Unburied, Sing (Jesmyn Ward)

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Book 16: Eleutheria (Allegra Hyde)

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Book 15: Gravity’s Rainbow

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

Bon’s cat mom is a Michigander, so he is watching diligently. Or else no treats (ok there will still be treats)

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Book 14: The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula Le Guin)

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

OK I’m almost done with Jeff VanderMeer’s new Area X novel, Absolution, and why the hell is this final section written as though it’s being narrated by Raoul Duke?

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Book 13: The Names (Don DeLillo)

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Book 12: Nightwood (Djuna Barnes)

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Book 11: Gathering Evidence (Martin MacInnes)

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

How it started: “I shall return eternally to this identical and self-same life.” How it’s going: “Let’s circle back to that next week.”

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Book 10: A Sense of Things: The Object Matter of American Literature (Bill Brown)

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

Not technically horror but Shyamalan’s Trap comes to mind too…

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

Parable of the Sower is a brilliant novel, but it’s important to remember that Butler was writing in the wake of the LA riots and Rodney King. As prescient as the book is about climate change, it’s also very much about structural inequities and tensions spilling over into regional violence.

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Patrick Whitmarsh @whitmarshphd.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Book 9: The Cosmic Web: Scientific Field Models and Literary Strategies in the 20th Century (N. Katherine Hayles)

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