Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Kevin

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 13h

Or perhaps not.

Back cover blurb of St. Clair's Sign of the Labrys.

WOMEN ARE WRITING SCIENCE-FICTION!

ORIGINAL! BRILLIANT!! DAZZLING!!

Women are closer to the primitive than men. They are conscious of the moon-pulls, the earth-tides. They possess a buried memory of humankind’s obscure and ancient past which can emerge to uniquely color and flavor a novel.

Such a woman is Margaret St. Clair, author of this novel. Such a novel is this. SIGN OF THE LABRYS, the story of a doomed world of the future, saved by recourse to the ageless, immemorial rites...

FRESH! IMAGINATIVE!! INVENTIVE!!!

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 1h

a recent example from my stuff: there must be least a hundred articles speculating on whether Pu Songling is also the author of A Marriage Fate to Awaken the Ages 醒世姻緣傳 (17th C.)?

millions of words, and the only connection is that they both use some Shandong local dialectic... 🫤

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 1h

99% of all secondary literature in all subfields is tedious claptrap that causes its reader legitimate brain damage

doesn't mean you shouldn't read it, though

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 1d

Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat

1

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 1h

Ibis (1985) is good, actually

www.typebarmagazine.com/2024/08/29/s...

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 2h

if your theory of history reduces all destruction to production ("the linen was destroyed to produce the shirt"), and you're witnessing billionaires buy up all the newspapers just to destroy them, maybe you need a new theory of history

1

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 2h

it's very clear the OP isn't advocating for anything other than masking when it's convenient in public

don't feed the trolls, jamelle

5

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 22h

anyway, it's not a coincidence that I might notice this

basically, the same dialectic occurs with Buddhist monks in Ming-Qing literature

every single text is like, "Damn, curious how this man who has dedicated his life to the disavowal of desire himself now resembles a large phallus? Significant?

1

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 22h

there is a monkey's paw logic to how the "pursuit of masculinity" and the use of weird supplements has resulted in so many men who now themselves physically resemble phalluses

1 3

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 23h

("canon" in the broadest possible sense... novels from this period that are extant and widely available)

1

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 23h

(obscurely) I think you could read through most of the Ming-Qing canon of xiaoshuo novels in about 3000 hours

1 3

Reposted by Kevin

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 1d

don't retweet if you've never let loose (morally) (風流過) in Chongqing

你在重庆风流过, asks Zhan-zhang from Qianfu (2008)

1 1

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 1d

don't retweet if you've never let loose (morally) (風流過) in Chongqing

1 1

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 1d

Infinite Jest (1996)

minor subplot to Dream of the Red Chamber, Jia Rui clowning with the so-called mirror for romantics 風月寶鑑

1

Reposted by Kevin

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 4d

icymi 🌸🌺✨🪞

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 7d

though Flower Bouquet in the Polished Mirror 品花寶鑑 (1849) is not, as is sometimes claimed, an "ancient gay encyclopedia," it is one of the greatest queer novels of the nineteenth century, and it still does not have an English-language wikipedia entry

www.patreon.com/posts/reflec...

Reflections on Flower Bouquet in the Polished Mirror 品花寶鑑 (1849) | kmichaelwilson

Get more from kmichaelwilson on Patreon

www.patreon.com

1

Reposted by Kevin

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 2d

the second rule of Qing Dynasty poly marriage:

NO Daoists
NO monks
NO degenerates

🀄📚

excerpt from Lin Lan Xiang 林蘭香 (19th C.)

又令眾允需有孚重定治家法度，一不許私出私人，冥頑生非。二不許延道延僧，接交匪類，三不許無男無女，聚賭群飲。四不許說東說西，遞語傳言。五不許穿用錦繡，戴用金珠。六不許侮人貧窮，欺人良善。如有犯者，事小三次後一總責罰，事大則立即處治，斷不寬恕。以此家下內外，又都愛敬夢卿。

林蘭香（19th. C.) -> 第十五回燕夢卿讓居別院　林雲屏承理家私

2 3

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 2d

this novel Lin Lan Xiang 林蘭香 (19th C.) is giving The Love Dream Clapper 情夢柝 (17th C.) vibes, by the way

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 2d

the second rule of Qing Dynasty poly marriage:

NO Daoists
NO monks
NO degenerates

🀄📚

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 2d

the second rule of Qing Dynasty poly marriage:

NO Daoists
NO monks
NO degenerates

🀄📚

2 3

Reposted by Kevin

Matt Wolfbridge (read Typebar Magazine) @wolfbridge.bsky.social · 6d

Out of touch enough musically that I had never heard of Bad Bunny until the last few days. How are you all staying up to date with musicians??

1 1

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 3d

turns out that the audiobook for Proust's Remembrance is 150 hours long...

[weird pause]

that makes sense, since Remembrance is somewhat longer than a Classic Chinese Novel, which tends to be 100-120 chapters long, and, after all, it takes about a hour to read a chapter of text

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 4d

icymi 🌸🌺✨🪞

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 7d

though Flower Bouquet in the Polished Mirror 品花寶鑑 (1849) is not, as is sometimes claimed, an "ancient gay encyclopedia," it is one of the greatest queer novels of the nineteenth century, and it still does not have an English-language wikipedia entry

www.patreon.com/posts/reflec...

Reflections on Flower Bouquet in the Polished Mirror 品花寶鑑 (1849) | kmichaelwilson

Get more from kmichaelwilson on Patreon

www.patreon.com

1

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 4d

as for romanizing proper names, increasingly I think I like?

Baoyu over Bao-yu
Daiyu over Dai-yu
Qionghua over Qiong-hua
etc.

2

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 5d

etymological speculation, in particular, seems to be an area where it's really hard to distinguish a) hard linguistic truths from b) reasonable speculation on issues where most linguistics would agree and from c) wilder speculation on issues where linguists might have meaningful on-going debates

Reposted by Kevin

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 7d

I'm not saying that Flower Bouquet in the Polished Mirror 品花寶鑑 (1849) is necessarily the best queer novel of the nineteenth century, but I am saying it's definitely in the running

www.patreon.com/posts/reflec...

Reflections on Flower Bouquet in the Polished Mirror 品花寶鑑 (1849) | kmichaelwilson

Get more from kmichaelwilson on Patreon

www.patreon.com

2 5

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 6d

preliminary napkin arithmetic suggests that The Complete Tang Poetry Collection 全唐詩 commissioned by the Kangxi Emperor in 1705 is too long to be read in full during one mortal lifetime

1 4

Kevin @kmichaelwilson.bsky.social · 6d

rough approximation, each of the "four great masterpieces" (viz. classic Chinese novels) is about a million Chinese characters long

3