Niles H. Frasier

Damn, so Hollywood wasn't cooked from three minute AI videos of Batman fighting seven-fingered Bruce Lee on a comet?

excellent news: the NYRB has reissued Coover’s baseball novel which means (LARB controversy aside) I can engage in some shameless self-promotion and recirculate this (written before coming to Berkeley, even, god, that’s so long ago) lareviewofbooks.org/article/dungeo…

Not to be a vulgar Marxist, but the easiest proof that the secular crisis/long downturn theory is real is that there are more Americans in the workforce than ever before and yet understaffing is a near-universal phenomenon.

Ralph Fiennes, "Strange Days" (dir. Kathryn Bigelow, 1995)

Perverts make great art? Sure. But, everyone is a pervert. So not very enlightening.

If your read "Biscuit" and want more, purchase the first issue of Miscellany at the link below, and buy @TheGloryFires's poetry collection when it releases in the fall. You won't be disappointed, I promise. zeffy.com/en-US/ticketin…

All of this to say: it was a dream come true when Lee agreed to send us something. We met in Atlanta in December, and had a wonderful lunch; whoever said not to meet your heroes was dead wrong here. A mensch with punk rock chops and a first rate poet.

When I think of what I want from @Miscjournal, I think of this. No matter where they're from, none of our writer's speak in the sterile code of LA-NYC-Berlin. Their language creaks with place and people, their forms wrestling the weight of history.

When I thought about what I wanted my writing to be and not to be, I thought of these lines from "Whitewash":

In 2021, Lee started to get the national recognition he deserved; a selection of poems was published by the New Yorker. Analyzing them formed the basis of a seminar paper I wrote on Adorno and subjectivity, one that has shaped my dissertation.

He’s got a poetry collection coming out in the Fall under that same name. I cannot wait to get my hands on it.

Later, when I was working on my master’s thesis, and couldn’t come up with a term for describing our contemporary subjectivity. Then Post-Life was released, and it became clear:

When I was at school up north, I'd listen to "Commencement Address for the Deindustrialized Disenfranchised," expressing that disjointedness of place I couldn't name.

Over the next few years, I’d find myself sending songs to my mom, born in Dothan, Alabama. I'd hear this verse from "God's A-Working, Man" and hear the way my mom’s mom’s would talk to her children, my mom’s connection to the gulf, the childhood trips down to those warm waters.

Since I first heard Youth Detention in December 2017, I have thought about @TheGloryFires's music, particularly Lee's lyrics. Evocative of the South's dreams and demons, it spoke to me in a way little else had.

I was becoming increasingly disaffected with political art, and yet as I yelled along to their punk-gospel-southern rock protest anthems, I couldn’t help but think that there was some residue of mass politics possible.

Today, @Miscjournal is publishing @TheGloryFires poem "Biscuit," a little taste of the three (!!!) Lee poems in the print issue. I am unbelievably excited, and super proud to put these out there. To explain why I'm so jubilant, some background (1/many) miscellanyjournal.com/biscuit

I think about this Ulster coat all the time. Made by a famous Florentine tailor (Antonio Liverano) and now by his former undercutters (Qemal Selimi, Vittorio Salino, Hojun Choi), it's a basic double-breasted style inspired by rustic Irish outerwear, but made in a dressier fabric

@Silent_Mandible @matthiasellis It never wasn't the 1970s tbh

@matthiasellis Man we went from the 1920s to the 70s real fast.

1/ As I reported my book, I noticed something that has completely changed American life: widespread chronic under-staffing. It leads to, among other things, deadly medication errors at pharmacies, flight delays, messy stores, and the crime wave. From me today @TheProspect