Tag Archives: teaching

AI, The Savage Detectives, and Verbosity

Posted on November 9, 2025 by Jon

My wife, Fiona, is reading The Savage Detectives. In fact, she was given the book, by a friend, some seven or eight years ago, but at the time–perhaps a little intimidated by the novel’s length–she didn’t get much further than … 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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The Book as Prison: Edoardo Albinati’s The Catholic School

Posted on October 27, 2025 by Jon

Tim Parks’s review for Harpers (vol. 339, no. 2032 [September 2019]: 84–88) of Edoardo Albinati’s The Catholic School refers frequently to the book’s length. After all, even though it managed to scale “the bestseller lists and [win Italy’s] most prestigious … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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