Eric Notaro
@ericnotaro.bsky.social
Occasionally published fiction writer. Avid reader. Long time D&D nerd.
Pinned
Eric Notaro
@ericnotaro.bsky.social
· Mar 6
My novel in-progress is centered around the events of upstate New York's Anti-Rent War and its aftermath in the 19th century. In brief, it was the largest tenant strike in American history, comprising 11 largely rural counties. But this description only scratches the surface.
Reposted by Eric Notaro
[SENATOR ERIC SCHMITT]: So you’re telling me under oath that you’ve never spoken with the writer of the short story, "Bullet in the Brain?"
[JACK SMITH]: No
[SCHMITT]: WELL THEN *unveils picture* please explain this picture of you and Tobias Wolff!
[SMITH]: That is Tom Wolfe, sir.
[JACK SMITH]: No
[SCHMITT]: WELL THEN *unveils picture* please explain this picture of you and Tobias Wolff!
[SMITH]: That is Tom Wolfe, sir.
[SENATOR ERIC SCHMITT]: So you’re telling me under oath that you’ve never spoken with a bestselling author who is insane
[JACK SMITH]: No
[SCHMITT]: WELL THEN *unveils poster* please explain this picture of you with Naomi Wolf!
[SMITH]: That is Naomi Klein sir
[JACK SMITH]: No
[SCHMITT]: WELL THEN *unveils poster* please explain this picture of you with Naomi Wolf!
[SMITH]: That is Naomi Klein sir
[SENATOR ERIC SCHMITT]: So you’re telling me under oath that you’ve never spoken with an Attorney General nominee?
[JACK SMITH]: No, I don’t think—
[SCHMITT]: WELL THEN *unveils poster* please explain this picture of you with Matt Gaetz!
[SMITH]: That is Media Matters senior fellow Matt Gertz
[JACK SMITH]: No, I don’t think—
[SCHMITT]: WELL THEN *unveils poster* please explain this picture of you with Matt Gaetz!
[SMITH]: That is Media Matters senior fellow Matt Gertz
September 29, 2026 at 11:42 PM
[SENATOR ERIC SCHMITT]: So you’re telling me under oath that you’ve never spoken with the writer of the short story, "Bullet in the Brain?"
[JACK SMITH]: No
[SCHMITT]: WELL THEN *unveils picture* please explain this picture of you and Tobias Wolff!
[SMITH]: That is Tom Wolfe, sir.
[JACK SMITH]: No
[SCHMITT]: WELL THEN *unveils picture* please explain this picture of you and Tobias Wolff!
[SMITH]: That is Tom Wolfe, sir.
Reposted by Eric Notaro
I am not first and will be far from the last to say this:
I have purchased so many books because I saw them recommended or publicized here on bsky. I cannot urge you all enough to KEEP TALKING ABOUT BOOKS.
I know it's easier to talk up someone else's book, but this also means you, the shy author.
I have purchased so many books because I saw them recommended or publicized here on bsky. I cannot urge you all enough to KEEP TALKING ABOUT BOOKS.
I know it's easier to talk up someone else's book, but this also means you, the shy author.
I have mentioned it before, so maybe, but I know others liked it too. Hooray for word of "mouth" (or post) for getting it seen.
September 12, 2026 at 8:33 PM
I am not first and will be far from the last to say this:
I have purchased so many books because I saw them recommended or publicized here on bsky. I cannot urge you all enough to KEEP TALKING ABOUT BOOKS.
I know it's easier to talk up someone else's book, but this also means you, the shy author.
I have purchased so many books because I saw them recommended or publicized here on bsky. I cannot urge you all enough to KEEP TALKING ABOUT BOOKS.
I know it's easier to talk up someone else's book, but this also means you, the shy author.
Reposted by Eric Notaro
we've never had much reason to articulate this before a.i., but a reason we enjoy literature, art, music, etc. is that we know it is one human mind trying to express something fundamentally human and otherwise inexpressible to another human mind
September 19, 2026 at 2:32 PM
we've never had much reason to articulate this before a.i., but a reason we enjoy literature, art, music, etc. is that we know it is one human mind trying to express something fundamentally human and otherwise inexpressible to another human mind
I was recently at the Met and saw this one nearby the one below. Technically it was griffon but it does have a chicken-like feel to it.
September 14, 2026 at 1:28 AM
I was recently at the Met and saw this one nearby the one below. Technically it was griffon but it does have a chicken-like feel to it.
Just reread Borges' "The Approach to Al Mu'tasim" for the first time in many years, and I had completely forgotten the conclusion/connection to Attar's Conference of the Birds. It means more since I ended up finding a translation of that long poem a few years ago and it was very impactful to me.
September 11, 2026 at 2:12 AM
Just reread Borges' "The Approach to Al Mu'tasim" for the first time in many years, and I had completely forgotten the conclusion/connection to Attar's Conference of the Birds. It means more since I ended up finding a translation of that long poem a few years ago and it was very impactful to me.
This is just to say...
September 11, 2026 at 1:44 AM
This is just to say...
Aside from mirroring far-right misinfo about the concept of taqiyya, this rhetoric of "this entire group is trained to lie to us" goes way back. For example, the Awful Disclosure of Maria Monk literally has a scene in which the Catholic nuns are taught that a lie in service to the church is holy.
Mike Johnson on Iranians: "It's apparently part of their religion that they can just lie to someone they disagree with"
September 1, 2026 at 4:42 PM
Aside from mirroring far-right misinfo about the concept of taqiyya, this rhetoric of "this entire group is trained to lie to us" goes way back. For example, the Awful Disclosure of Maria Monk literally has a scene in which the Catholic nuns are taught that a lie in service to the church is holy.
Reposted by Eric Notaro
Grateful to Maya C. Popa and Poem-A-Day for publishing this translation Katie Farris and I did of a piece by Lyudmyla Khersonsky, a wonderful poet from Odesa, Ukraine. I met Lyudmyla back in 1993 when I was still a sixteen year old in Odesa. She taught me English alphabet.
September 1, 2026 at 2:32 PM
Grateful to Maya C. Popa and Poem-A-Day for publishing this translation Katie Farris and I did of a piece by Lyudmyla Khersonsky, a wonderful poet from Odesa, Ukraine. I met Lyudmyla back in 1993 when I was still a sixteen year old in Odesa. She taught me English alphabet.
Reposted by Eric Notaro
Editing a longer draft into shorter drafts is writing, is thinking, is deciding things. It’s as intimate, perhaps even more intimate, as human, perhaps even more human, as any act of writing.
August 19, 2026 at 10:11 PM
Editing a longer draft into shorter drafts is writing, is thinking, is deciding things. It’s as intimate, perhaps even more intimate, as human, perhaps even more human, as any act of writing.
Reposted by Eric Notaro
We're living in a sludge of toxic nihilism that tells us that self-reliance is the only way because everyone and everything else is either an enemy or a huge conspiracy set up to fuck us personally. It's no way to live, and we in the US are *choosing* it over working together.
August 19, 2026 at 8:28 PM
We're living in a sludge of toxic nihilism that tells us that self-reliance is the only way because everyone and everything else is either an enemy or a huge conspiracy set up to fuck us personally. It's no way to live, and we in the US are *choosing* it over working together.
The Catskills contain fossilized remains of the earliest forests to exist on Earth from the Devonian period. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilboa_...
August 14, 2026 at 2:26 AM
The Catskills contain fossilized remains of the earliest forests to exist on Earth from the Devonian period. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilboa_...
During a class I taught years ago, I assigned a few short stories from Lorrie Moore's "Birds of America." Among my students who gushed about how much they loved her work that semester: a very vocally conservative young man who meets the exact profile these sorts of articles talk about.
Masculinity exists only in crisis. So you at once have the most popular books that are also disappearing or about to disappear. This is the trap.
Excuse me?
August 7, 2026 at 3:36 PM
During a class I taught years ago, I assigned a few short stories from Lorrie Moore's "Birds of America." Among my students who gushed about how much they loved her work that semester: a very vocally conservative young man who meets the exact profile these sorts of articles talk about.
On this date in Anti-Rent War History, 1845: Undersheriff Osman Steele of Delaware county is shot dead by a group of "Calico Indians" at Dingle Hill while trying to enforce a distress sale. Some random thoughts and reflections on those events.
August 7, 2026 at 12:50 PM
On this date in Anti-Rent War History, 1845: Undersheriff Osman Steele of Delaware county is shot dead by a group of "Calico Indians" at Dingle Hill while trying to enforce a distress sale. Some random thoughts and reflections on those events.
Anyone have any recommendations for books on the life of Horace Greeley? Trying to queue up some research for another project I am working on. #booksky📚
August 4, 2026 at 11:12 PM
Anyone have any recommendations for books on the life of Horace Greeley? Trying to queue up some research for another project I am working on. #booksky📚
Reposted by Eric Notaro
“I am the lone wolf in the forest. I am the storm that crashes upon the shore. I am the lion that roars above the savannah” you are 45 and you need to work on your morning physical therapy routine
August 3, 2026 at 7:43 PM
“I am the lone wolf in the forest. I am the storm that crashes upon the shore. I am the lion that roars above the savannah” you are 45 and you need to work on your morning physical therapy routine
For all the talk of "preserving Greek culture" these unhappy doofuses talk about, I recently saw a post from my old English professor, a dual Greek-US citizen, praising the movie and encouraging all of his former students to see it.
The racist backlash to Chris Nolan’s Odyssey is a kind of stolen valor, an attempt by the right to claim credit for achievements they had nothing to do with in order to justify racial hierarchy in the present. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
The Fear of Black Greeks
White people don’t own the accomplishments of ancient Greece.
www.theatlantic.com
July 24, 2026 at 10:12 PM
For all the talk of "preserving Greek culture" these unhappy doofuses talk about, I recently saw a post from my old English professor, a dual Greek-US citizen, praising the movie and encouraging all of his former students to see it.
I am curious if there is an Anti-Renter connection--directly or indirectly. On one hand "make noise to sound alarm" is a basic organizing thing. On the other, the movement made common cause with abolitionism, and Dr. Smith Boughton's home is believed to have been a stop on the underground railroad.
My mom just called to tell me that she went to a museum about the Underground Railroad, where one of the exhibits talked about the locals having horns that they would blow to warn people when the slave catchers were in town
“It’s just like your whistles!”
“It’s just like your whistles!”
July 11, 2026 at 5:11 AM
I am curious if there is an Anti-Renter connection--directly or indirectly. On one hand "make noise to sound alarm" is a basic organizing thing. On the other, the movement made common cause with abolitionism, and Dr. Smith Boughton's home is believed to have been a stop on the underground railroad.
Reposted by Eric Notaro
When my Civ VI game gets really interesting
July 8, 2026 at 1:39 PM
When my Civ VI game gets really interesting
I have been thinking a lot about this w/r/t Anti-Rent era history. Some histories treat the movement as an unabashed triumph of ordinary people over entrenched power even as they describe how the movement disintegrated and Walter Church used literal soldiers to dislodge the holdouts.
I do not have a take on the two books called Charity and Sylvia because I have not read either one. I do have a related thought, as a historical fiction writer, which is that we don't talk enough about how much research for fiction draws on the framing/storytelling that historians and biographers do
July 3, 2026 at 5:01 PM
I have been thinking a lot about this w/r/t Anti-Rent era history. Some histories treat the movement as an unabashed triumph of ordinary people over entrenched power even as they describe how the movement disintegrated and Walter Church used literal soldiers to dislodge the holdouts.
Reposted by Eric Notaro
"Every serious legal mind must inevitably face a fundamental choice: Read the Constitution and apply its words as the bedrock laws of the land, or transcend its tired text and interpret the super-secret invisible version that tells you exactly what you want to hear."
The US Constitution Is for Simple Folk Still Burdened by the Belief That Words Have Meaning
“Every serious legal mind must inevitably face a fundamental choice: Read the Constitution and apply its words as the bedrock laws of the land, or transcend ...
buff.ly
July 1, 2026 at 6:28 PM
"Every serious legal mind must inevitably face a fundamental choice: Read the Constitution and apply its words as the bedrock laws of the land, or transcend its tired text and interpret the super-secret invisible version that tells you exactly what you want to hear."
Mel Brooks is 100 years old today! Drop a gif of a favorite film of his.
June 27, 2026 at 1:36 AM
Mel Brooks is 100 years old today! Drop a gif of a favorite film of his.