David Davison

Hoarder of unread books. WUSTL AB, UMich MA (ABD). Comparative global anglophone lit, 1840–2026. Ethics, power, partswork, & ToM. AuDHD longhauler. He/him enby.

[Wayside Scribbles @waysidescribble]

– You seem awfully obsessed with that branch

#longcovid #postcovid #ableism #accessibility #satire

[David Davison @2drdave3]

As a teenager, I thought the intensity was a bit much, and I found his self-destructive patterns exhausting. Then I listened to what *other teenagers* found so compelling about him.

And then, as I grew up, I could feel how much of his tough outer shell is pure defense mechanism.

[David Davison @2drdave3]

Many teenagers **across generations** have seen themselves in Holden. That fact alone means it's bad faith to pin CitR's success on adults not remembering what being a teenager was like!

The novel not only remembers the what of being a teenager—it probingly investigates the why.

[maddie rune🪰 @themaddierune]

Catcher in the Rye is a book about a deeply annoying teenager that adults decided was profound because they forgot what teenagers are actually like. Holden Caulfield would be insufferable on social media and we would all mute him immediately.

[Nikolaj🇺🇦🇵🇸 @nikicaga]

It is generally better to hold more Senate seats, especially with the term persisting for 3 electoral cycles

[Uahikea Maile @uahikea]

An editor suggested I refrain from using "racialized language" in describing the individuals who illegally overthrew the Hawaiian kingdom's government as white. Don't say that I can't take feedback. I'm making the suggested change and revising to "white supremacists."

[Mecha 🇵🇸 @electromechgirl]

“Canada has no minority underclasses” is this what passes for intellectual rigor to liberals

[David Davison @2drdave3]

We know even less about what unmarried lovers said, partaking together alone in premarital sexual exploration. We know even even less about queer lovers participating in illegal, forbidden, or unspoken practices.

But my understanding of what we do know is that "realism" falters.

[David Davison @2drdave3]

As far as I know, this has always been true about historical romances: they are always principally about the present in which they're written.

One benefit to this variance of shifting perspectives is how it unravels lazy assumptions that the past was only ever one way at a time.

[himbo lover @yandjoshi]

can we talk about how historical romances are almost unreadable now cause they’re written with the 21st century mentality. why is ur female lead talking exactly like a contemporary girlboss & facing no period accurate backlash…go write that office romance & put the corsets down

[David Davison @2drdave3]

But buddy, we largely do not know what husbands and wives said to each other in the privacy of darkness. We may know the mean cultural field surrounding it, we may even be able to chart how social configurations differently made room for it, but its nature is gone. Poof.

[David Davison @2drdave3]

There's something here, almost, to a country defined by making apology essentially generalizing that to its politics—without any real interest in avoiding future obligations to owe apologies. There's less shame to admit mistakes: and almost no incentive to avoid making mistakes.

[David Davison @2drdave3]

As an American living in Canada: what babbling ignorance.

First, re "underclass minority": land acknowledgements largely jumped to the US from Canada. Second, national insecurity means "wokeness" doesn't really threaten any shared Canadian identity of historical righteousness.

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

Canada seems like it tried to imitate American wokeness (as it imitates American everything), but wokeness didn't really fit Canadian society as well (because it has no large permanent-underclass minority), so it mutated into something very toxic and bizarre.

[David Davison @2drdave3]

What that means is the resistance Smith would valorize hasn't ever managed to take off. That limits space for overreach by progressive reactionaries to regressive reactionaries. The country is far from woke, but its pragmatic self-image limits political substance or mobilization.

[Not a Good Jewish Girl✡️ @estherzelda0514]

Crashing out about age before you're even close to elderly is a Gen Z phenomenon that you all can keep, don't bring us into that mess.

[Laura Elliott @TinyWriterLaura]

ok but the only reason women’s clothes (and dresses in particular) have functional pockets these days is because millennials made a big deal out of it. like i cannot impress upon you how 90% of women’s jeans never used to have pockets you could put anything in. JEANS ffs

[inefficient rhubarb snackowski @snackowska]

"Wherever we find class, we tend to find violence, and wherever we find the violence of class, we also tend to find work that normalizes and depoliticizes that violence."

[Keith Orejel @keithdorejel]

I really like the work of Gordon Wood. But I’ve seen a lot of declarations the last few days about how we must rededicate ourselves to his vision of the founders and American history. We should acknowledge that this is itself a form of activist scholarship.

[John Ganz @lionel_trolling]

okay this is idiotic, being kind of a dickhead is not the same as being an openly evil rich guy for 80 years

[Matt Dowell @dowellml]

Every academic conversation about falling standards is the (re)announcement of a right wing ideological project. Choose wisely. Or, you know, be a fascist. Your choice.

[Sami Gold @souljagoyteller]

The USSR twice defeated on the battlefield mass campaigns to exterminate it from existence. How did it turn out for them?