THE ANNALS OF HAROLD

OV COMEDY TOUR

ARE U HAPPY?

MINAS GERAIS DIARY

HOW I REWROTE NANA'S FUNERAL

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INFINITE JEST 2: REALITY PROBLEMS!

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RAN BACK INFINITE JEST

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SUETONIUS IS ACTUALLY GOATED

ON MY SUETONIUS S**T

DROPPING SOME KNOWLEDGE ON U FOOLS. . .

ON HAVING IMPREGNABLY THICK SKIN. . .

WROTE A CRAZY-ASS ESSAY ABT TIME VS SPACE, THE HAPSBURGS, AND BOSCH FOR BLAST 2:

BOOKS USED BUT NOT ALWAYS CITED:

ART IN A STATE OF SIEGE (2025), JOSEPH LEO KOERNER

IMPRUDENT KING (2014), & EMPEROR (2019) GEOFFREY PARKER

TERRA NOSTRA (1975), CARLOS FUENTES

PARADISE LOST (1667), JOHN MILTON

DON QUIXOTE (1606), CERVANTES

ON MANIFESTOS, PUNCH MACHINES, & HOW TO DEFEND URSELF AGAINST OLD LECHERS.

AUDIO OF MY TRAVELOGUE IN THE PLACES REVIEW:

READ IT HERE. . .

READ MORE ABT HOW I WROTE IT HERE:

HERE IS THE FULL AUDIO OF BOTH PARTS OF MY NOTES TOWARD AN AVANTGARDE MANIFESTO. . .

AND A LIST OF THE 63 BOOKS POSITIVELY MENTIONED. . .

BOOKS MENTIONED:

The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Venerable Bede (731)

Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas (1265–1274)

Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne (1759)

Journals, Lewis & Clark (1806)

Moby-Dick, Herman Melville (1851)

Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll (1871)

The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin (1871)

The Golden Bough, James George Frazer (1890)

The Cantos, Ezra Pound (1915-1962)

The Realms of The Unreal, He...

NOTES TOWARD AN AVANTGARDE MANIFESTO 2. . .

NOTES TOWARD AN AVANTGARDE MANIFESTO. . .

THE TITLE SAYS IT ALL. . .

DRUNK TRAVOLOGUE

AND READING OF

A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO ANNELIESE (2025) BY JAMES ELKINS,

JOEY CHESTNUT,

THE PAINTER ANGELES SANTOS

ON WEAK IN COMPARISON TO DREAMS (2023) BY JAMES ELKINS:

REVIEW ON SUBSTACK.

READ MY STORY IN THE METROPOLITAN REVIEW.

AND HERE IS MY POST ABOUT REVISING THE STORY:

HOW I REVISED I WON :)

ON ART VS LOVE

READ THE WHOLE POST ON SUBSTACK

ON MATHIAS ENARD'S

ZONE (2008)

COMPASS (2015)

THE ANNUAL BANQUET OF THE GRAVEDIGGERS' GUILD (2023)

I DID AN ALASKAN CRUISE WITH MY FAMILY.

REVIEWS OF

THE SLEEPERS BY MATTHEW GASDA

VIA ÁPIA BY GEOVANI MARTINS (TR. JULIA SANCHES)

HAPPINESS FOREVER BY ADELAIDE FAITH

THE DESERTERS BY MATHIAS ÉNARD (TR. CHARLOTTE MANDELL)

EVERY LIVING THING BY JASON ROBERTS

1. NARCOLEPTIC FAUVISM PART 1

It was just a regular, bum-ass, bad vibes, midweek open mic. The most ubiquitous part of being a fledgling comedian in the big city.

There was a dude in the front row wearing a suit.

He was locked in, smiling sprightly even when the comics on the stage were clowning him for nothing more than wearing a suit; he was so bushy-eyed & bright-tailed I thought he must be a newbie.

Though often the newer comics wear the most bitter and acrid faces. I was like that, starting out...

THE DEVIL IS OTHER PPL. . .

ON THE MRS. DALLOWAY CENTENNIAL

SCHATTENFROH

GABY & ME BE ROMPING

YEAH I'M A BOXING COACH, WHAT'S IT TO YA?

1. GABY GONE

Gaby was off to the International Conference of Handsome Young Professionals in Mexico City. Of course I was skeptical of the ICHYP whose website brags,

there is not a greater agglomeration of handsome ambitious young men with money in the entire world!

I asked her, “you’re going to network? in Mexico?”

She responded, while hastily cramming her best outfits into a suitcase, “you never know where these guys can get you a job!”

“Why are you bringing so many bikinis?”

“Pool parties!”

I thought that was...

* NOT EVERYONE CAN GO TO THE MOON

We are living in a Doofdom. There is a type that doesn’t seem to exist anymore: let’s call him the Serious Man. Men have abdicated their responsibility to the preservation of our (the culture’s) intellectual patrimony. The reasons for this may be myriad and difficult to pin down, but the truth of it is hard to argue.

Find me a man who really knows something; most of our intelligent stock have devoted themselves to professional corporate usury (mud; mire). The rest are rotting their brains with D...

AN EXCERPT FROM MY DAD'S BOOK I, BOOKIE

BENEVOLENCE CERTAINLY HAS ITS LIMITS. . .

AN EARLY DRAFT OF WHAT WILL BECOME DOM PEDRO & THE CARAVELS (2029). . .

THE HUMPTY DUMPTY MANIFESTO

HUMPTY DUMPTY (FSG 2026) BY HAROLD. . .

MY 28 FAVORITE NOVELS

AN ALL-TIME HAROLD CLASSIC:

NANA'S FUNERAL :(

BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES. . .

Let’s start easy. Taking our clue from the most notoriously difficult novel of the 20th century, ULYSSES (1922) by James Joyce, with its eminently comprehensible opening paragraph:

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:

—Introibo ad altare Dei.

The novel opens on Stephen Dedalus’s frenemy and soon-to-be-ex-roommate Buck Mulligan who is plump and stately, a rich robust...

MILKMAN BY ANNA BURNS. . .

WHAT R U SUPPOSED TO WRITE LITERATURE ABT?

NO CAP: THIS STORY GOT ME IN TROUBLE. . .

*SHAKES FIST AT SKY*

HOOPLA!!!!!!!

EARLY VERSION OF A STORY PUBLISHED IN THE METROPOLITAN REVIEW. . .

ON

CAROL BENSIMON'S DIORAMA

AND

CARLOS EDUARDO PEREIRA'S AGORA AGORA

1. SILVANA

Rio is the most beautiful city in the world (just edging out New York and Steubenville, Ohio—no I’m not biased), but when you’re expecting scorching inexorable summer sunshine and instead getting a gray block of clouds interrupted occasionally by chilly drizzles, it can make you wanna drink.

The bar (that I described in my last post) on Santa Clara is called Casa Suzanna. The lady who serves drinks from 8AM until 3PM is Silvana. My dad was going there for years, religiously, around lunchtime. He would stack one plastic chair on top of...

RANDOM TRANSLATION. . .

I landed in Rio de Janeiro on Friday morning.

The airport is located on the Ilha do Governador—the Governor’s Island. My mom was born on the Ilha and her ancestors have been dust-to-dusting there for several generations.

Here’s a story my grandma just told me: her grandpa was a surly racist German married to a woman who was the granddaughter of slaves. He owned an ant poison factory on the Island. So one of his children, my grandma’s Uncle Mauri; —this woman said he knocked her up. This was way back then so yo...

ON TRISTRAM SHANDY BY LAURENCE STERNE

THE TITLE OF THIS ONE KINDA SPEAKS FOR ITSELF. . .

Putting out a list of your year’s favorite books, I think, is hack and anti-literature; however, I saw Bruna’s Carta para navegantes stack do an awards thing, and I liked reading it, so I have thereby stolen her idea, and I am doing my own version of those awards here:

JOÃO GUIMARÃES ROSA AWARD

(this is named after my favorite writer, the greatest brasilian writer, author of the greatest novel in world literature, Grande Sertão:Veredas—or as it will be known in its new english translation, Vastlands: The Crossing—and it awar...

I TALK STRANGELY, AT LEAST ACCORDING TO GABY. . .

ON GOGOL'S DEAD SOULS

EARLY VERSION OF HUMPTY, BACK WHEN IT WAS CALLED STEUBENVILLE. . .

A CLASSIC STB DIARY FEATURING PAUL

ON MACHADO DE ASSIS

YOUR FACE TOMORROW

AND SOME LURID STEUBENVILLE GOSSIP

HAROLD IS AN A*****E BRO, F**K HIM. . .