James Elkins Professor School of the Art Institute of Chicago Commons username: @jameselkins Following 130 members View ProfileActivitySites 1Following 130Followers 41Groups 15ForumsDocs 0 Academic Interests19th-century German literature19th-century Russian literature20th-century American literature20th-century American novel20th-century British literature20th-century French literature20th-century German literature20th-century Italian literature20th-century literature20th-century Modern Greek Literature20th-century poetics20th-century transnational literature20th-century world literature21st-century American literature21st-century anglophone literature21st-century British literature21st-century Chinese literature21st-century French literature21st-century German literature21st-century Irish literature21st-century literature21st-century poetics21st-century Spanish literature21st-century transnational literatureAesthetic theoryAnne CarsonArabic literatureArgentine literatureArno SchmidtArt theoryBorder theoryCanadian literatureCentral American literatureCesar AiraChinese-Western comparative literatureClassical rhetoricComparative literary studiesComparative literatureContemporary global fictionCritical theoryDavid Foster WallaceDavid MarksonDecolonial theoryEnglish world literaturesExperimental approaches to literatureFernando PessoaFin-de-Sìecle Literature & CultureFlann O’BrienFrench literatureGeorges PerecGlobal anglophone literatureGlobal literary flowsHistory of literary studyHistory of rhetoricHistory of the novelInterdisciplinary literary criticismJames JoyceLiterary criticismLiterary modernismLiterary translationLudwig WittgensteinMarianne FritzModern and contemporary Japanese literature and cultureNovel criticismOulipoPostmodern American literatureRhetoric of literary criticismRobert MusilRoberto BolañoSamuel BeckettThomas AquinasThomas BernhardThomas PynchonWord and image studies Commons GroupsHCAdvocating for the HumanitiesAmerican LiteratureArchivesDigital HumanistsFrankfurt School Critical TheoryGerman Literature and CultureGlobal & Transnational StudiesHistory of Linguistics and Language StudyHumanities AdvocacyIrish Literature and CultureLiterary TranslationMusic and SoundPhilosophyThe Commons RoomWriting Systems Recent Commons Activity posted an update: Join our international reading group! Georges Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual, one of the world’s strangest (and most accessible) books. We will read everything: his own notes for the book, his lists of self-imposed constraints, the scholarship, the different translations, the books he read. “Fun.” It’s an informal group, for everyone—readers, write…[Read more] joined the group 2018 Annual Conference started the topic Online summer reading group o… in the discussion Writing Systems started the topic Online summer reading group o… in the discussion Philosophy started the topic Online summer reading group o… in the discussion Literary Translation AboutHistorian of art. On HC I post mainly in MLA groups, about literature. I am active on Academia and Facebook. Texts and books are uploaded at Academia and on my website. EducationSee the vita. Blog Posts KCWorksJournal articleWhat Is a Fragment of / in Fiction? Thoughts on Pierre Senges’s “Fragments of Lichtenberg” (2017)On Late Romanticism in Fiction: Peter Handke’s “Slow Homecoming” (2017)A Relation Between Theory and the Machinic Imagination: Notes on Christine Brooke-Rose’s “Life, End of” (2017)The Prehistory of Constrained Writing: Thoughts on Michel Butor’s “Degrees, A Novel” (2017)The Logic of Sensation and Logique de la sensation as Models for Experimental Writing on Images (2017)Misunderstanding the Relation between Literary Modernism and Gender, Identity, and Other Contemporary Concerns: Some Notes on Zadie Smith (2017)A History of the Novel Without Literary Theory: Notes on Steven Moore, The Novel: An Alternative History, 1600-1800 (2017)What is a Rant in Literature: Notes on Gaddis’s Agape Agape (2017)What Does it Mean to Claim a Novel is a Single Sentence? Notes on Mathias Enard, Zone (2017)The Material of Writing Before Materiality Theory: On A.R. Ammons’s Tape for the Turn of the Year (2017)When Novels are Too Comforting: Thoughts on Ann Patchett’s “Bel Canto” (2017)On the Aesthetic Pleasure and Fictive Nature of Footnotes: Nabokov’s 1,200 Pages of Commentary on Eugene Onegin (2017)Why Should Novels About Science Be Coy About Including Science (or Mathematics)? On Michele Audin (2017)Deconstructing Danielewski’s “Complexity” (2017)The Idea of Second Rank Writers; And a Connection between Similes and Autism: Notes on Nicholson Baker (2017)What Counts as Good Writing for Knausgaard? (2017)High Point of the American Experimental Novel: Notes on David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress (2017)On A Lack of Ambition: Notes on Laszlo Krasznahorkai, The Last Wolf (2017)On the Possibility of Teaching the Reader Chinese (I.e., Including a New Language): On Harry Mathews’s The Journalist (2017)What it Means to Write a Novel After Novels Have Ended: Thoughts on Bolano’s “By Night in Chile” (2017)What is the Genuinely Strange in Literature? Notes on Flann O’Brien, The Third Policeman (2017)Why Write Average Books? On Julian Barnes’s “The Sense of an Ending” (2017)How to Structure a 1,300 Page Book: Notes on William Vollmann’s Imperial (2017)Why it is Important That Novels Fail in Many Ways: Notes on Romina Paula, August (2017)Anne Carson, “Nox” (2017)Representing a Ruined Mind in Fiction; and a Note on How Google Ruins Reading: On Markson’s “Reader’s Block” (2017)The Difference between Fragments and Parts: Notes on Will Eaves’s “The Absent Therapist” (2017)Why is Extremely Violent or Disgusting Subject Matter Still Inimical to Literature? Notes on Stokoe’s Novel Cows (2017)What is Psychological Complexity? Notes on Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (2017)Compulsively Fractal Writing and Its Limits: Thoughts on Stephen Dixon, and Especially “Frog” (2017)New Ways of Experimenting with Images in Literature: On Christian Bok’s Xenotext (2017)The Ultimate Failed Modernist Hyper-Novel: Miklos Szentkuthy, Prae, part one (2017)On the Limits of Wit and of Plotting in Maximalist Novels: Notes on Sergio De la Pava, Naked Singularity (2017)Frantic Cleverness as a Style: Notes on Nell Zink’s “The Wallcreeper” (2017)A Misunderstanding of Fiction: Thoughts on William Gibson’s “The Peripheral” (2017)What Happens When Constrained Writing Doesn’t Follow Its Constraints? Notes on Alejandro Zambra, Multiple Choice (2017)How Philosophical Fiction Works Against Fiction: Notes on DeLillo’s Point Omega (2017)A Vertiginous Slide Into Literary Self-Regard: Notes on Enrique Vila-Matas, Because She Never Asked (2017)The “Finnegans Wake of Russia,” And Its Translation Problems: On Sasha Sokolov’s “Between Dog and Wolf” (2017)EssayThe Photographs in Wright Morris’s “The Home Place” (2017)The Images in Monica Ong’s “Silent Anatomies” (2017)Images in Sebald’s “Rings of Saturn” (2017)The Anonymous Images in Raymond Roussel’s “New Impressions of Africa” (2017)Yves Bonnefoy, The arriere-pays (2017)Photographs and Text in John Gardner’s “Mickelsson’s Ghosts” (2017)Images in Andre Breton’s “Nadja” (2017)The Very Strange Photographs in Kobo Abe’s Very Strange “Box Man” (2017)Images in Susan Howe’s “The Midnight” (2017)Remarks on a Little-Known Book of Images and Text: Helene Sommers’s wonderful “I Was There” (2017)Images of Art and Science in Christian Bok’s “Crystallography” (2017)Images in Umberto Exo’s “Mysterious Flame of Queen Loanna” (2017)The first illustrated novel: Georges Rodenbach’s “Bruges-la-morte” (2017) PublicationsSee the live vita online. ProjectsSee the updated listing on my website. Upcoming Talks and ConferencesSee the updated listing on my website.
