Mark Sarvas
banner
marksarvas.bsky.social
Mark Sarvas
@marksarvas.bsky.social
American Book Award winning author of MEMENTO PARK (FSG) and HARRY, REVISED (Bloomsbury). @UGMAN June 2025 from ITNA Press. Scold-proof.
“ … ceaselessly intelligent” - Joseph O’Neill.
"Chilling, flawlessly executed" - Kirkus Reviews
www.marksarvas.com
There are other days I prefer to remember John by - his birthday, for example - but my life was changed this day 45 years ago. My memories of those 48 hours remain vivid, too personal to share here. But it's true to say that into my 40s, there wasn't a day I didn't think of him.
December 8, 2025 at 6:16 PM
Tarantino has always given me "incel-who-hit-it-big" vibes ...
December 7, 2025 at 11:51 PM
Reposted by Mark Sarvas
After a 2025 hiatus, I will be hosting another Monterey writing retreat in 2026. Treat yourself to four days of dedicated writing time to jump start your work. Details are posted here:

www.tothelighthouse.net/retreats
Retreats — To the Lighthouse
www.tothelighthouse.net
December 4, 2025 at 12:10 AM
Reposted by Mark Sarvas
You must react everyday to what is happening. But that is no way to write a book or a sentence.

-James Baldwin, intv w Joe Walker, 1972
December 7, 2025 at 12:20 AM
Please do not delude yourself that blocking me will make your asinine hot take any less stupid.
December 7, 2025 at 1:46 AM
I love that you don't have to know Danish to appreciate "shit show" and "idioter" ...
Jeg fatter ikke at Danmark bakker FIFA op i det her shit show. Der må da være en nedre grænse for hvad sportsverdenen gider finde sig i? Eller hvad er sportsverdenen bare nyttige idioter? #ynkeligt #FIFAshitshow #dkmedier #dkpol #dksport
December 6, 2025 at 5:51 PM
Reposted by Mark Sarvas
"Even by Gehry’s elevated standards, no contemporary museum anywhere is more enchanting than the Louis Vuitton Foundation."

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/paris-envy-frank-gehrys-vuitton-foundation/
Paris Envy: Frank Gehry’s Vuitton Foundation
Historically, the architects of cathedrals have always used the powers of a subjective and sometimes sumptuous architecture to condition worshippers to the messages delivered inside.
lareviewofbooks.org
December 6, 2025 at 5:34 PM
@nytimes.com trying too hard. Swing and a miss.
December 6, 2025 at 5:20 PM
Reposted by Mark Sarvas
👀
December 5, 2025 at 11:07 PM
This is precisely the kind of dopey, unqualified hot take that makes me lament the X-ification of Bluesky ... It's almost too silly to engage with but let this stand as a reminder that first thought is not necessarily best thought.
December 5, 2025 at 8:32 PM
Reposted by Mark Sarvas
I just finished “One to One” (about John and Yoko in the early ‘70s) and it has this whole secondary narrative in which an array of assistants are trying to locate flies for one of Yoko’s art projects and I am 💀⚰️

www.hbomax.com/movies/one-t...
Watch One to One: John & Yoko | HBO Max
Watch One to One: John & Yoko on HBO Max. Plans start at $10.99/month. Directed by Academy Award® winner Kevin Macdonald (HBO's One Day in September), this documentary offers a rare and revelatory ins...
www.hbomax.com
December 5, 2025 at 6:56 AM
This will legit keep me awake tonight.

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/04/s...
When a Murder Hornet Becomes a Tasty Meal
www.nytimes.com
December 5, 2025 at 1:15 AM
Reposted by Mark Sarvas
Agree with this thread. Worth reading in full.

25 years ago John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and AC Barrett all worked on GWBush's 2000 Florida recount team. What they're doing now is, if anything, more nakedly partisan.

Fire-breathing dissent by Kagan, with Sotomayor and Jackson.
They're not even trying to appear nonpartisan anymore.
#BREAKING: Over dissents from the three democratic appointees, #SCOTUS puts Texas's new House maps back into effect for (and, presumably, through) the 2026 midterms.

The three Democratic appointees, in an opinion by Justice Kagan, dissent.

I'll post the ruling shortly.
December 4, 2025 at 11:57 PM
Reposted by Mark Sarvas
It's good—very good, and very important—that district courts keep issuing these 100-page rulings upholding the law. It must be incredibly dispiriting to see them overturned in a two-page, lawless, unsigned order, but please, keep them coming. They expose SCOTUS' corruption like nothing else.
December 5, 2025 at 12:41 AM
This truly is the most corrupt and partisan Supreme Court of my lifetime. I imagine this is how the kangaroo courts in the old Soviet Union felt.
December 5, 2025 at 12:51 AM
"My favorite memory of this visit came during the intermission of the second play, when an older British gentleman sitting a few rows in front of me turned to me and asked with exquisite diffidence, 'Do you … understand what is going on?' "
I have just published a newsletter in which I remember Tom Stoppard's enduring influence in my life and offer a full-throated defense (among other things) of Shakespeare in Love.

eternal.beehiiv.com/p/tom-stoppa...
Tom Stoppard, my real thing
"Since we cannot hope for order, let us withdraw with style from the chaos."
eternal.beehiiv.com
December 4, 2025 at 11:23 PM
I have just published a newsletter in which I remember Tom Stoppard's enduring influence in my life and offer a full-throated defense (among other things) of Shakespeare in Love.

eternal.beehiiv.com/p/tom-stoppa...
Tom Stoppard, my real thing
"Since we cannot hope for order, let us withdraw with style from the chaos."
eternal.beehiiv.com
December 4, 2025 at 10:40 PM
Oh lord, this is quite splendid.
Holy matzoh brei this is hilarious: If Hallmark did Hanukah
(RACHEL walks past children playing. Her biological clock ticks. She’s thirty, almost dead.)

LITTLE GIRL: Are you excited for the County Hanukkah Fair?

RACHEL: Not really. I’m not super into Hanukkah.
December 4, 2025 at 4:09 PM
I, too, have been in this position in my life ...
December 4, 2025 at 3:46 AM
After a 2025 hiatus, I will be hosting another Monterey writing retreat in 2026. Treat yourself to four days of dedicated writing time to jump start your work. Details are posted here:

www.tothelighthouse.net/retreats
Retreats — To the Lighthouse
www.tothelighthouse.net
December 4, 2025 at 12:10 AM
I'm wrapping up a Philip Norman deep dive and conclude he is over-esteemed as a Beatles biographer. Setting aside his absurd anti-McCartney bias in SHOUT (which he does correct in his McCartney solo bio), I find he simply has zero feel for the music itself. Not a tin ear; no ear at all.
December 3, 2025 at 10:29 PM
We have become those people. I have no excuses left.
December 3, 2025 at 2:09 AM
A lovely, insider remembrance.

www.newstatesman.com/appreciation...
The many Tom Stoppards I knew
Tom's summer parties at the Chelsea Physic Garden were legendary
www.newstatesman.com
December 2, 2025 at 9:43 PM
Reposted by Mark Sarvas
I don't ever report my disability bc I'm so tired of shit like this, but as someone who has navigated this issue for myself, as a parent, & as an instructor, the actual story here is how expensive & difficult it is to afford to get a diagnosis, even if it isn't for medication or accommodation.
Even by the standards of The Atlantic, this is an extraordinarily weak evidence base for an article.

Data from a tiny handful of schools that isn't measuring the variable at issue and a few thin, secondhand anecdotes.
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...
December 2, 2025 at 6:52 PM