For Public Books, I wrote about Anna Wiener's memoir Uncanny Valley and the HBO tv show Silicon Valley. In grappling with the history and present of Silicon Valley, these both rely on nineteenth-century narratives and tropes to craft their own visions of contemporary capitalism. Read it here: https://www.publicbooks.org/a-tale-of-two-valleys/
Tag: Essay
“Copyright, 1892, by Elizabeth S. Melville”: Rethinking the Field Formation of Melville Studies
With Jordan Stein, I wrote this article on the role of Elizabeth Shaw Melville in the formation of the career and study of her husband Herman Melville. It was the result of a long process of archival research and scholarly collaboration. We are currently pursuing follow up work on the matter. You can find a pdf of the article here: https://tinyurl.com/CopyrightESM
Utopia Can Be Banal: The Unfinished Ballad of Kenny Dennis
For Full Stop, I wrote an essay on meta-fiction in the work of the rapper Serengeti, especially his Kenny Dennis projects. You can read it here: https://www.full-stop.net/2018/12/07/features/adam-fales/kennydennis/
Horror in Revision: On the Contemporary Gothic
For LARB, I wrote about three contemporary books that are revising and rewriting gothic novels: Chase Berggrun's R E D (Birds LLC, 2018), Sarah Perry's Melmoth (Custom House, 2018), and Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad (Penguin, 2018). You can read the essay here: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/horror-in-revision-on-the-contemporary-gothic/#!
Here Comes the Sun
For Real Life, I wrote an essay about the history of morning shows and one recent attempt to revamp the morning show for Twitter. I use this history to think about the regulation of time and the way that we sync our schedules together. Read it here: https://reallifemag.com/here-comes-the-sun/
