As always I enjoyed this but was also gripped by the mystery of the sore on your leg. What eventually happened? Did it heal itself? All through the section on writing your new novel I kept wondering if your painful sore was dealt with. Anyway, Minor Black Figures sounds like a terrific book and I look forward to reading it.
I do believe that Citadines is roughly where Les Halles potato vendors used to be in Zola's time, so part of the market Claude Lantier walks through in The Belly of Paris.
OMG!—so excited for this novel and thank you for blessing the world again with your wisdom, sass, and grace. Is this the "paperwork thriller" we've been waiting for? (love that term, thank you for inventing it).
I also got caught up in the Crowd Strike debacles while traveling, and it was surreal. I ended up taking a 24hr Amtrak from West Palm Beach to NYC instead—which sounds miserable, but the only seat available was a $1,600 private cabin which Delta ended up reluctantly-kindly reimbursing. Airlines apparently can't delay a plane more than three times without promising some amenity or money. I'm still confused about how the official narrative for all the shutdowns was "software update." It's insane something so clearly malicious is still understood as a big whoopsie. The container ship crashing into US Oil Tanker the other day is another recent example of all the orchestrated-feeling chaos. The coincidence of your intended plane also getting hit by lightning before is strange and sublime, and perhaps consoling; not everything needs to be a conspiracy.
"Like I was trying to check into the hotel of my life only to discover that there was already someone inside"—such a beautiful sentiment, and feels like the start of a short story!
Also, I appreciate your notes on journal entries and braided essays—I honestly love these forms for how they involve the reader's participation and perhaps breathe life into otherwise lost stories. Parable of the Sower and Kindred by Octavia Butler are some favorite clear examples where maybe the content and genre justify the leaps/splicing. But I can see the argument for how the forms sacrifice fluidity and maintain some of the writer's scaffolding.
Discovering that one's not a Zola sort of writer but a Munro/James sort of writer despite much admiration for Zola is well worth an artistic detour. Your hunch re maybe reading too much Lukacs/Jameson could be right!
So eager to absorb myself in this, dear Brandon (and glad to know of your adventures with *Group Show*). Also: I wrapped myself up in the warm words of your two "story basics" posts.
This is such a great piece of writing - I’ll read all your novels but I think I’d like your “memoirs of the present” even better. And so appreciated the rain from Citadines. More please!
It read like a séance with your own mind—a dispatch from that shadow-realm between art and illness, travel and dislocation, memory and myth. What began as a book update unfurled into something far more intimate: a meditation on what it means to make while being unmade. I felt the ache of Group Show not working. I felt the weight of the Zola novels hanging over your sense of form. And God, that sore—somehow that physical rupture mirrored the spiritual one. It’s wild how a wound can clarify the work.
Your reflections on mediation hit deep. That sense of being watched—by the state, by peers, by imagined readers—can make the simple act of making feel like an act of espionage. And yet Minor Black Figures sounds like the most honest resistance: to surveillance, to expectation, to the aesthetic flattening of this moment. I can’t wait to read it.
Also: that ending with the hotel mix-up and the vanishing takeout spot? That’s gothic. That’s Borges. That’s Paris in the uncanny register.
Thank you for sharing this ghost story disguised as a writing update.
I just realized that two of my favorite novels involve painters and paintings: Ali Smith’s How to be Both and Cusk’s Second Place. Any preliminary parallels I should prepare for in the meantime?
I am so excited for Minor Black Figures yes!! Also I am so glad to hear someone agree that the braided timeline is truly the worst thing. If your story won't hang together chronologically....is it good? I'm sure there's someone out there doing it wonderfully but I have not met this book.
As always I enjoyed this but was also gripped by the mystery of the sore on your leg. What eventually happened? Did it heal itself? All through the section on writing your new novel I kept wondering if your painful sore was dealt with. Anyway, Minor Black Figures sounds like a terrific book and I look forward to reading it.
Yes eventually it got better, after it ruptured, but it was a CRAAAAAZY few days. I learned…so much about my own anatomy.
Not to arm chair physician but you should look into hidradenitis suppurativa.
...I shall be taking this up with my derm, lol. You very well might be right. TY.
If that is what it is and you do get a diagnosis feel free to PM me if you want management tips.
Whew.
You’re telling me!!! Haha.
I do believe that Citadines is roughly where Les Halles potato vendors used to be in Zola's time, so part of the market Claude Lantier walks through in The Belly of Paris.
Yes exactly! I was geeking out.
I love this—the felt unity between the title and the cover, the insight into the process, the aesthetics, the ghost story. I am even more excited now.
OMG!—so excited for this novel and thank you for blessing the world again with your wisdom, sass, and grace. Is this the "paperwork thriller" we've been waiting for? (love that term, thank you for inventing it).
I also got caught up in the Crowd Strike debacles while traveling, and it was surreal. I ended up taking a 24hr Amtrak from West Palm Beach to NYC instead—which sounds miserable, but the only seat available was a $1,600 private cabin which Delta ended up reluctantly-kindly reimbursing. Airlines apparently can't delay a plane more than three times without promising some amenity or money. I'm still confused about how the official narrative for all the shutdowns was "software update." It's insane something so clearly malicious is still understood as a big whoopsie. The container ship crashing into US Oil Tanker the other day is another recent example of all the orchestrated-feeling chaos. The coincidence of your intended plane also getting hit by lightning before is strange and sublime, and perhaps consoling; not everything needs to be a conspiracy.
"Like I was trying to check into the hotel of my life only to discover that there was already someone inside"—such a beautiful sentiment, and feels like the start of a short story!
Also, I appreciate your notes on journal entries and braided essays—I honestly love these forms for how they involve the reader's participation and perhaps breathe life into otherwise lost stories. Parable of the Sower and Kindred by Octavia Butler are some favorite clear examples where maybe the content and genre justify the leaps/splicing. But I can see the argument for how the forms sacrifice fluidity and maintain some of the writer's scaffolding.
Discovering that one's not a Zola sort of writer but a Munro/James sort of writer despite much admiration for Zola is well worth an artistic detour. Your hunch re maybe reading too much Lukacs/Jameson could be right!
So eager to absorb myself in this, dear Brandon (and glad to know of your adventures with *Group Show*). Also: I wrapped myself up in the warm words of your two "story basics" posts.
Cover is hard as fuck
This is such a great piece of writing - I’ll read all your novels but I think I’d like your “memoirs of the present” even better. And so appreciated the rain from Citadines. More please!
so excited for this holy shit
Brandon, this was stunning.
It read like a séance with your own mind—a dispatch from that shadow-realm between art and illness, travel and dislocation, memory and myth. What began as a book update unfurled into something far more intimate: a meditation on what it means to make while being unmade. I felt the ache of Group Show not working. I felt the weight of the Zola novels hanging over your sense of form. And God, that sore—somehow that physical rupture mirrored the spiritual one. It’s wild how a wound can clarify the work.
Your reflections on mediation hit deep. That sense of being watched—by the state, by peers, by imagined readers—can make the simple act of making feel like an act of espionage. And yet Minor Black Figures sounds like the most honest resistance: to surveillance, to expectation, to the aesthetic flattening of this moment. I can’t wait to read it.
Also: that ending with the hotel mix-up and the vanishing takeout spot? That’s gothic. That’s Borges. That’s Paris in the uncanny register.
Thank you for sharing this ghost story disguised as a writing update.
—Anton
the book cover is great!
I am speechless, as is fitting. move over, George Saunders.
This is a paid post from Classical Wisdom but runs over here instantly
https://classicalwisdom.substack.com/p/the-maligning-of-medusa
Actual primary sources as opposed to the Bulfinch I was working off earlier
I just realized that two of my favorite novels involve painters and paintings: Ali Smith’s How to be Both and Cusk’s Second Place. Any preliminary parallels I should prepare for in the meantime?
Timing is a hell of a thing, and it reminds us all of that in some strange ways at times. Hoping your new book has a lovely, smooth debut!
I am so excited for Minor Black Figures yes!! Also I am so glad to hear someone agree that the braided timeline is truly the worst thing. If your story won't hang together chronologically....is it good? I'm sure there's someone out there doing it wonderfully but I have not met this book.