Aran Ward Sell

@aranws.bsky.social

307 Followers 504 Following

Contemporary Irish lit, modernism, weird fic, environmental lit. "Streams of Damaged Consciousness" coming 2027, @syracuseup.bsky.social Writer & critic. Music: Writhe & Succumb, Prophet Rossi. Cite as Ward Sell, not Sell.

A gorgeously eerie grey-and-white sketch of a dead mouse, by the author and illustrator Mervyn Peake.
"White Cat, Black Dog" by Kelly Link, propped on a crowded bookshelf.
Waiting for Godot script extract: ESTRAGON: An Englishman having drunk a little more than usual proceeds to a brothel. The bawd asks him if he wants a fair one, a dark one or a red-haired one. Go on. VLADIMIR: STOP IT! Exit Vladimir hurriedly. Estragon gets up and follows him as far as the limit of the stage. Gestures of Estragon like those of a spectator encouraging a pugilist. Enter Vladimir. He brushes past Estragon, crosses the stage with bowed head. Estragon takes a step towards him, halts. ESTRAGON: (gently.) You wanted to speak to me? (Silence. Estragon takes a step forward.) You had something to say to me? (Silence. Another step forward.) Didi... VLADIMIR: (without turning). I've nothing to say to you.
Financial Times screenshot: "In particular, Suleyman said Microsoft’s goal is to capture more of the enterprise market by working on “professional grade AGI” [artificial general intelligence], meaning powerful AI tools that can complete daily tasks for knowledge workers." Source: https://www.ft.com/content/f1ec830c-2f08-4b1a-b70f-7330f260753c
One perhaps obvious caveat, but one that can get lost amid breathless evocations of particular texts' experimentalism, is that such ‘experimental’ books are not, fundamentally, unbooklike. Indeed, in their deviations in form and comprehensibility, and their consistency with a vaunted modernist tradition, they are fulfilling exactly what one would expect of artefacts bought and sold as ‘experimental literature’. Similarly, it must be borne in mind when thrilling either at the experimentalism of Denton or that of his modernist forebears such as Joyce or Stein, or at the weirdness of celebrated ‘Weird Fiction’ texts such as those of China Miéville, Jeff VanderMeer or H. P. Lovecraft, that we may be thrilled as much by these texts” congruence to our expectation that they will disorient us, as by that disorientation itself. Fisher does analyse the “pulp modernist Lovecraft” as a key writer of weirdness, and in doing so quotes extensively both from Lovecraft’s “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction” and from China Miéville’s own work on Lovecraft. However, he does so from a position outside, and strangely ignorant towards, the “Weird Fiction” traditions in which both participate. Lovecraft’s essays are often treated as a foundational manifesto for “Weird Fiction” as a subgenre of speculative writing, particularly his essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature” (1927), in which he writes that “The one test of the really weird is simply this – whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers.” This definition, with its emphasis on dread, is not incompatible with Fisher’s emphasis on wrongness, but nor is it identical.
A sign: NO LIGHTHOUSES IN THIS PARK
Guardian headline reads: Mountain gorillas are back. But what happens if they run out of room?
Delete Account reason given as: "I do not agree with the Academia terms of service or consent to having "AI podcasts" made of my work."
Eze in an interview saying "No man, when you use words sometimes, you can ruin something you know."
Google screenshot: "People also ask ... "Is it pronounced detritus or detritus?""
"AI Overview" for the search term "moby dick" reads: ""MOBIDIC" can refer to several things, most notably a Wikipedia article on the MOBIDIC computer and the novel Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. There's also a mobile solution for reducing natural gas loss called MoBiDic, and a guitar chords app called MobiDic Chords."
A survey where parents are asked: “When I think about my child’s experience growing up, I wish ___ had never been invented.” Results go from 72% for "Mature Online Content" down to 9% for "Bicycles"
A search for Bloomsday returns the result: "People also search for: Halloween, International Day of the African Child, Christmas"
A pile of books; News From Nowhere by William Morris, Oil! by Upton Sinclair, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, The Drowned World by J G Ballard, Dune by Frank Herbert, The Tolkien Reader, The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K LeGuin, When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, The Nutmeg's Curse and Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh, Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer and The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing.
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, and a Teach at ND mug
Pokémon "Cubone" image with this description: Cubone's mother is a Marowak who was killed by Team Rocket while protecting her child. Her ghost haunts the Pokémon Tower to warn people of Team Rocket and prevent access to the top floor. Cubone wears its mother's skull and cries when it sees the full moon, which it perceives as a likeness of its mother. The stains on the skull are from Cubone's tears
Mad Max: The Road Warrior
The Wood at Midwinter, by Susanna Clarke, photographed in front of a window through which a snowy parking lot is visible
At first it seemed all right. You knew that S. P. U. was a glorious college, and had splendid teams, and won victories that resounded up and down the coast. And presently there was a stadium, and a vast business of athletics, that resulted in infinite applause and free advertising for your alma mater. Of this you were proud, the whole student body was made one by it—the thing called “college spirit.” Bunny, a trackrunner, had had his share of cheering; and here was a “game” he could play with all his heart! But now he was a senior, and on the inside of things, just as with the oil-game, and with strikes, and with political campaigns. And what did he find? Why, simply that all the football and track and other athletic glory that had come to Southern Pacific had been stolen, and “Young Pete” O’Reilly was the thief! The oil king’s son had put up a fund of fifty thousand dollars every year, for the purpose of turning the game of college athletics into a swindle! The fund was administered by a secret committee of alumni and students, and used for the purpose of going out into the market and buying athletes, to come and enroll themselves under false pretenses and win victories for S. P. U. Husky young truck-drivers and lumbermen and ranch-hands and longshoremen, who could not speak correct English, but could batter down “interference” and crash through to a goal! And the pious Methodists who constituted the faculty were conniving at the procedure, to the extent of permitting these young huskies to pass farcical examinations—well knowing that any professor who presumed to flunk a promising quarterback would soon be looking for some other university to presume in. Was not “Young Pete” showing what he thought of professors, by paying a football coach three times the salary of the best?
"CoPilot" options in PowerPoint: auto-rewrite, condense and make professional
Quite from a Guardian article: Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, said the investment meant that Britain was “now within grasping distance of unlocking the power of the sun and providing families with secure, clean, unlimited energy”.
A presentation slide: Detached Prophets' Songs: the contemporary Irish novelist as soothsayer of disaster
A laptop and the MLA program on a coffee shop table in New Orleans
Screenshot of the search result described in the post
A Bank of Scotland notification that reads: You spent £20.38 at PASTY SHOP.
Early life: Stewart was born in 1952 in Sunderland, England, son of John ("Jack") and Sadie Stewart.[6] Distantly related both to the Dukes of Northumberland and to pirates, Stewart was from a middle-class, "well-off family", with accountant parents
A pile of books by: Yeats, Joyce x3, Beckett x2, McBride, Rooney, Keegan, Okorie, Denton
Cover of "The Earlie King and the Kid in Yellow" by Danny Denton
PMLA program
Books, mostly novels, with a focus on Energy and the Environment are lines up on an office bookshelf, along with printouts of academic articles. They are: News From Nowhere, Oil!, Silent Spring, Dune, The Road, Gun Island, Annihilation, The Word for World is Forest, The Mushroom at the End of the World, a Tolkein "reader" and severely works by Amitav Ghosh
This Hostel Life, by Melatu Uche Okorie