"Thoreau's Axe" is out in paperback today. The book asks how we came to see distraction as the damage that history does to our minds, and how we try to repair ourselves with disciplines of attention. Sharing some of my favorite reviews in the thread.

Here’s a smart essay about media, distraction, and who decides what’s worth paying attention to:. What if the Attention Crisis Is All a Distraction?

Los Angeles, I love you! . Some ways to help, via @MutualaidLA :.

Writers, critics, scholars, readers, I like it when you share your work, or work you like by others, on this site! God knows it’s not much use for anything else. Keep the links & recs coming, please.

RT @aldaily: For Fredric Jameson, theory, in its turning away from common sense, offered a trip through the looking glass .

RT @chronicle: Review: Fredric Jameson's death marks the end of an era.

I especially loved Jameson's ways of thinking about experiencing 'le regard' (the gaze, or the look) as vulnerability to the others, rather than the acknowledgment of one's identity. And he reminds us of the reasons why the critique of the subject felt like a liberation.

More than an argument, though, it is a teacherly exercise in exploring, inhabiting, & experimenting with a set of difficult, beguiling works.

The book makes some intriguing arguments, subtly. It historicizes "postwar French thought" as a search for a "third way" between Soviet-style communism and US-style liberalism. It treats Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze &c as following Sartre's existentialism, not reactions against it.

Many thanks to @GutkinLen for his editorial work here. And a reminder that you can get through the paywall by creating a free account.

‘Is there a death of theory, along with the death of the author, the end of art, & all the rest?’ Fredric Jameson wonders. I wrote about his fantastic master class, The Years of Theory (@VersoBooks) for the @chronicle.

RT @dauveblunt:

Thanks to the venerable Center for American Literary Studies for inviting me to talk about Thoreau’s Axe. We got into the method wars, the crisis of higher ed, & how Arkansas skateboarders & underground musicians taught me to think about discipline.

Trying this: new handle is.@c-also.bsky.social

RT @dedication_bot: Thoreau's Axe: Distraction and Discipline in American Culture by Caleb Smith

Five bucks at the door, and they mark the back of your fist with a stamp or just an X, and then you step right into heaven.

Happy birthday to the great Joe Lally. Feeling those Fugazi bass tracks rumble everybody’s bones in tiny, piss-smelling, underground all-ages venues in the 1990s was one of the great aesthetic and political experiences of my life.

RK’s longform essay for @Harpers about hot rod racing, parenthood, and the communities that take shape around craft work just might be an all-time great.

Shout out to my colleagues who founded an @AAUP chapter on campus. We met tonight to talk about what’s coming on the fronts of academics, immigration, & labor. The situation is dire, but it’s good to get clarity & get organized. I recommend it.

On disavowal and contemporary disasters, I also recommend "We Know Well, but All the Same. : Factual Truths, Historical Narratives, and the Work of Disavowal," on the historiography (and disavowal) of the Nakba, by @NadiaAbuElHaj1 in @HistoryOfThePr1.