Let’s take a break from American literature for a bit and talk about Japanese. Do you know any low-IQ people who need something to read? Strange Pictures, a mystery novel by a Japanese author who conceals his identity, is great for readers who suffer from medium to slight retardation. It’s written in very short sentences with many repetitions. There are little graphs explaining the most primitive concepts. Imagine explaining something veeeery slooowly to a very stupid person. And then doing it again. And again. That’s what this novel does.

It’s like that video of an African tribesman who is handed a bottle of Coke and has no idea what to do with it. He presses it to his ear, tries to blow into it. Uketsu is like that with a mystery novel v

It’s the last week of class, and my intellect is at a low ebb, so this novel wasn’t as annoying as it would normally be. Uketsu has millions of devoted fans which figures. Maybe everybody is always on their last week of class.

I was asked in the Q&A if I “had the misfortune” of speaking with an individual named RD. I won’t give his name because we don’t doxx people here but yes, I know RD. He has the fame of being difficult. But he’s always been mega nice to me, as people tend to be. 

I’m sorry if you had a bad experience. You are not alone. I’ve had people gather next to my office to complain about RD for years.

If there was ever a country unable to repay kindness with kindness:

Per information obtained by Haaretz, four shipments of stolen Ukrainian grain have already been unloaded in Israel this year. Another suspected ship – PANORMITIS – arrived at Haifa Bay this morning and is waiting its turn to enter the porthttps://t.co/BlginkiZB0

— avi scharf (@avischarf) April 26, 2026

For absolutely no reason whatsoever and exceptionally tiny economic gain, Israel is assisting Russian genocide of Ukrainians.

I can’t even say that I’m disappointed because I didn’t expect anything better.

Hold on to your old cars for dear life:

Every new car in the U.S. will be required by law to have tech that puts constant surveillance on the driver by 2027.

AI in your car will determine if you're sober and fit to drive, automatically turning off the vehicle if it determines you're a danger on the road. pic.twitter.com/7SDbAJ2GyC

— Pubity (@pubity) April 25, 2026

Enough Republicans joined the Dems in voting for this that the measure passed. It’s very disappointing.

Very important truth.

When was the last time you met a Communist – or "4B rad-fem," white nationalist, police abolitionist, just etc – in real life? https://t.co/FUcyQV5rVQ

— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) April 26, 2026

I’m a college professor, so yesterday. This is everybody at work and completely unironically.

We are truly spoiled for choice with the great novels of academia in American literature. There are many, and they’re all so good. In this post, however, I want to highlight a novel that I believe to be the absolute best of the genre because it explains so much about academia. The novel in question is not political. And that is fitting because, believe it or not, the main problems of academia are not in the least political. Or rather, academia gets into political trouble because it is incapable of solving its non-political problems.

Stoner by John Williams depicts a college professor who is extremely typical. He is a good person who genuinely loves reading and wants to live the life of the mind. But he has no executive function. He won’t move a millimeter to organize for himself the kind of life that he would enjoy. This is widespread in academia where people routinely refuse to do the very thing that would bring them joy. They end up blaming “society” or “structural injustice” or “capitalism” for what is, in reality, a weakness of character. The politicization of self-imposed weakness is absent from Stoner but is everywhere in our lives today.

Unlike many novels of academia, Stoner is not humorous. It’s sad. I don’t think that the author’s intention was to make his readers angry or frustrated with Stoner. A reader who is not an academia is likely to feel compassion for the character. I am an academic, however. I am surrounded by people who will complain endlessly about the world’s injustice but wouldn’t bother to organize a comfortable writing schedule for themselves or find out what it is the prevents them from getting published. I strongly believe that many academics would have a much more positive view of the society in which we live if, instead of feeling sorry for themselves, they started working on their productivity and fighting their own laziness instead of imaginary power imbalances.

Roger Scruton on the origins of anti-nationalism:

Wait, what? Another assassination attempt on Trump?

Is the shooter another young man with no online presence, does anybody know?

Remember how I kept saying that there’s no such thing as “mental illness”? Because the second you accept that there is, this begins to happen:

Virginia is quietly setting up to mandate all 6-12th graders be screened for mental conditions annually—will push HUGE numbers of kids toward to mis- and overdiagnosis. @ALegalProcess —who spots more scary details in legalese than anyone else—writes how bad it is. @CityJournal pic.twitter.com/Aj4fkKKzIQ

— Carolyn D. Gorman (@CarolynGorman_) April 24, 2026

You can’t “screen for mental conditions.” You can’t diagnose them. There is no blood work you can run. No X-rays. No CT scans. It’s all words.

This is a terrible government overreach that will do untold harm. But try explaining it to normies. Or don’t because it’s a total waste of time. Many kids will be medicated needlessly. Others will be excluded from public education. All of this will happen because they’ll choose some words on some stupid questionnaire that has zero meaning.

This is worse than COVID, people. It’s an absolute disaster.

Protect your kids. Don’t let these “screenings” anywhere near them.

The second and the third novels on my list of the Great American novels of the regions have to do with New England / Midwest and Appalachia. And, yes, they are long. But bear with me. I promise there will be very short novels on the list, too.

Also, as promised, these are not going to be modernist novels. These are naturalism, which is a variety of reallist literature, in the first case, and postmodern social realism in the second. They are easy to read but they require a significant time investment.

Without further ado, I present to you the novel that I have read maybe 15 times in spite of it being so incredibly long, and it is:

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser.

I couldn’t begin to imagine when I first read it as a teenager in the USSR that the differences between New England and the Midwest that the novel explores would become so central to my own life.

The novel is shockingly relevant to our reality today. A Midwestern boy from a religious family of a very conservative preacher abandons his traditional upbringing and tries to join the ranks of the coastal New England elite. Tension between sexual immorality and social striving is the main theme of the book. In Dreiser’s times, as in ours, voracious self indulgence was the enemy of success.

Beyond these extremely interesting and important themes, the novel portrays the daily life of the early 20th century America in so much delicious detail that this alone makes it worth reading.

The third novel on the American Regions list is

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver.

I wrote about it fairly recently here, and I won’t repeat myself.

What the three novels have in common is that they all depict striving, determined, fascinating men. This doesn’t mean that these male characters are successful in their striving. Their quests can end in terrible failure. But what is interesting – and very American – is that the cause of their failures is always within themselves.

The next installments in this series will include the great American novels of academia, the great sci-fi and fantasy novels, the great American romance, and others.