Tag Archives: affect

Ru: Glimmering through Fragments

Posted on July 15, 2026 by Jon

Kim Thúy’s Ru (2009) is a lyrical evocation of growing up amid displacement, exile, and migration. It proceeds via a series of very short sections or vignettes, many of which are no more than a dozen lines long, and few of which … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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The Possession: the Madness of Meaning

Posted on July 14, 2026 by Jon

Annie Ernaux’s The Possession (2002) is the briefest of tales, at a mere sixty-two pages barely a novella, if a little more than a short story. It explores, and ultimately exorcises (temporarily at least) what Ernaux describes as possession “in both sense … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Little Eyes: Remote Control and Controlled

Posted on July 4, 2026 by Jon

At the very end of Samanta Schweblin’s Little Eyes (2018), there is a mention of a young boy “staring at his own reflection on [a] black screen” (239). The book’s resonance with the TV series, Black Mirror, could hardly be clearer. As with … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Long TV, affect, and mortality

Posted on October 29, 2025 by Jon

Some thoughts on long TV from another old Harpers article, this time Adam Wilson’s “Good Bad Bad Good: What was the Golden Age of TV?” (vol. 339, no. 2033 [October 2019]:43–53): One reason that TV shows develop cult followings is … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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