Substance

Maybe what to do with this site?

This is Darby.

I have pondered and thought and pondered again about what I might do here, and have decided that I’ll use this place to keep track of my reading in my areas of research (current, as they develop, as they trail off into nothingness as they sometimes do) and how they race around in my head and collide with each other—and the furniture that’s already there, too.

“Decided.” I’m not sure how to use this platform best, but for right now, I’ll post what I’m reading with a bibliography, in case you want to find the original, a summary (not AI written, thank you, so you’ll see “summary” can be idiosyncratic [ahem]), and then a short bit of what this thing I’m reading makes me think about. I’ll use titles to identify the traces so you can read what interests you in a through-line that masses the reading/research, I hope helpfully.

I can’t promise that I’ll be here regularly, but I’ll post as I can. If you know me, you know that the work is pressing, my life is a kind of shitshow of distractions and emergencies (which is apparently how I like it, who knew?), and I start and walk away from things like this often enough, so we’ll see. I’m too old to be building a freaking “brand” or whatever it is. Good god, the weight of such a thing for young people, I can’t say.

So for now. Right now, I’m reading texts about nonheterocoital kinship, especially ones from the past I know about but haven’t read yet. But my choices for this can vary pretty widely and eclectically. Then there’s Frankenstein, about which I’ve been writing for a couple of years.

I’ll revisit the substance of this as I go. But for now, this — Warmly, E