Hi, Everyone
In which I say hello and beg you to say hello back, and to complete a survey
It’s beautiful early fall/late summer here in Buffalo—the leaves are turning and the mornings are crisp; the sky in midday is highlighter blue. The vines in the garden are giving us their last tomatoes, which are being turned into sauces and soups for the winter ahead. Football’s on TV. It’s the best time of the year.
Anyway, last Saturday morning, my wife and I are doing fall stuff: going to the farmer’s market, buying decorative gourds (I am not kidding), and then getting ready to go home and paint the basement. I open up my phone to transfer some money and notice that I have over 100 unread emails, and that they’re all from Substack, notifying me of new subscribers. Interesting! But there’s lots to do; I have basements to paint, dinner to eat, and all I can hope is that I am not at the center of some swirling controversy. As I paint my basement, the emails pile up, until I have 600 of ‘em.
Eventually, I figure out what’s going on. (Thanks, Naomi.) Employees somewhere at
have reposted one of my newsletters to their official account, the Substack Post. More people have read it than have read anything else I’ve ever written, and most of them seem to like it. (Those who hated it have, at least, stayed quiet.) It’s been, so far, basically a 100% positive, good experience.So there are a bunch of new internet friends/acquaintances/readers here. The polite thing to do seems to be to introduce myself, and to give any readers of this newsletter—old or new—a chance to introduce themselves. So that’s what I’ll do.
About Me
My name is Isaac, and I live in Buffalo, NY with my wife and cat. We have a good little life here. I’m currently finishing a Ph.D. in English at the State University of New York at Buffalo (will be done next May!), where I also teach writing and literature. My Ph.D. dissertation is an attempt to tell the history of why so many people think that heavy-handed political novels are automatically bad art (listen to me explain here). This history took me back to the 19th century and the hugely influential antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, then through dozens of American novels and through the year 1901.
I love research, but a year or two ago I found myself worried: my research was getting so in-the-weeds and technical that it was hard to imagine anyone actually wanting to read it. I’ve always wanted, first and foremost, to be a writer, so this was concerning to me. The ideas were interesting, but the writing was dull, as I wrote back in my first post. So I started this newsletter as an experiment to see what would happen if I abandoned the requirements of academic writing and just tried to write stuff that was fun to read. I really love teaching, and the kind of writing I do here is a lot closer to the way I teach than the way I research. It’s been a huge amount of fun, and I have no plans to stop.
Further Reading
To give you an idea of the kind of stuff I write on this newsletter—and so the kind of stuff you’ll keep getting in your inbox if you stay subscribed—here are a few samples.
I like writing about the pleasure of reading, like in this post about Mark Twain.
…or how that pleasure can be a little painful, like in this post about Madame Bovary.
At other times, I try to explain core concepts of literary theory1, or methods for reading literature, in approachable, (hopefully) fun language.
Or (in my previously most popular post) about what it feels like to be a graduate student.
I also have some sillier posts.
Each post is accompanied by cartoons, drawn by me, of dubious quality.2 If you read any of these and liked them, chances are you’ll enjoy the new stuff I’m writing now. If you really hate them… well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you!
About You
But enough about me. What about you? Who’re you, and what kinds of things do you like? It’d be cool to hear about where you’re from and what kinds of experiences you’ve had. If you feel like introducing yourself in a DM or in the comments section, go for it!
If you don’t feel like writing something out, you might consider taking a survey by clicking here. I’ve been thinking for a while that once I get to the 1,000-subscriber mark, I might start trying to be a bit more disciplined about this newsletter: writing more consistently, at the least, maybe trying some new things, like offering benefits to paid subscribers, or giving classes online, or who knows what. So I want to measure whether anyone might be interested in that sort of thing.
About Them
In closing, and in the spirit of “if you like… then you might like…” I want to pass along a few writers on Substack, who I enjoy reading and who you might also enjoy reading.
’s writing about poetry is great. is writing a comic memoir of her education—“from unschooled,” as she puts it, “to Oxford.” Every post is a delight. intermittently publishes really thoughtful, good work on books and, most recently, music. Sam Kahn’s literary magazine, , has published a few of my essays along with work by great writers like Robbie Herbst. And ’s Woman of Letters is a model for literary criticism that is both clear and thoroughly entertaining.If you are bored at work or looking for something good and nourishing to read, go check these folks out.
OK, that’s it for now. It’s nice to meet you, and I’m glad you’re here. And now it’s time to go work on my dissertation!
(And if you haven’t already…)
This four-part series has been unfinished for some time. I swear I’m going to finish it! These posts just take forever to write!
I did not draw my avatar. My mom, who is a great visual artist, did.
I’ve been to Buffalo. The leaves don’t fall there; they shuffle.
Great news! Congratulations!