Daniel Jenkin-Smith

Postdoctoral researcher - 19th-century 'office literature' - co-host of @smfms_podcast

Il faut, comme disait Balzac, offrir une surface commerciale.

[Daniel Jenkin-Smith @DCJenkinSmith]

Publication day: 'The Rise of Office Literature' is out now! Every time I look inside I find something new to quibble with.

Thanks to the team at @BloomsburyAcad for all their hard work!

Here it is in its natural element:

[Daniel Jenkin-Smith @DCJenkinSmith]

'Deliver me from calamity; from muddy boots and whirlpools; deliver me lunch.'

Another album from my dear old dad: a retelling/reimagining/detournement of 'Dark Side of the Moon'. Feat. yours truly on heavily distorted concertina in the final track: https://t.co/DYtNqpRUtf

[Critical Inquiry @CriticalInquiry]

"Jenkin-Smith brings to his readers’ attention authors and periodicals that literary histories have meanwhile discarded or longtime ignored."

New in review, Alexandra Irimia on Daniel Jenkin-Smith's The Rise of Office Literature, from @BloomsburyPub: https://t.co/Y121o7hqwf

[Daniel Jenkin-Smith @DCJenkinSmith]

'Hildegard? It's Marvin -- your cousin: Marvin of Bingen. You know that new sound you're looking for? Listen to this!'

[Daniel Jenkin-Smith @DCJenkinSmith]

Just overheard an English language purist ordering a 'cheese burgess'.

[Daniel Jenkin-Smith @DCJenkinSmith]

Ketchup of course speaks to the 'sanguine mythology' underlying US cinema, but it is only a highly commercial and domesticated proxy - speaking to the New Hollywood's social realism and its formalism. Ketchup is also highly gendered - emasculating for men and cathartic for women.

[Daniel Jenkin-Smith @DCJenkinSmith]

1969-74: The Age of Ketchup Accidents in US Cinema.

Spilling ketchup is an everyday hazard, but the directors of the 'New Hollywood' raised this instance of trivial frustration to a symbolic level:

[Daniel Jenkin-Smith @DCJenkinSmith]

'Where's Vera?' 'She went to shit and the hogs ate her!' - This verbal and 'ketchup-al' explosion from Alice's colleague, Flo, creates solidarity between waitresses,
- the sauce becomes a proxy for menstruation, cementing a moment of female expression in a patriarchal workplace

[Daniel Jenkin-Smith @DCJenkinSmith]

'Who hit my car at McDonalds? -- You fucked up my mirror.'

Another dose of quotidian ennui set to music by enigmatic singer-songwriter, H.R. Smoke.

Listen now!: https://t.co/dMZgSwcjTM

[Daniel Jenkin-Smith @DCJenkinSmith]

@FuriousDShow Carthage lost its edge when their winning song formula washed up on the coast of Italy.

[Daniel Jenkin-Smith @DCJenkinSmith]

How would history be different if the Carthaginians had won Eurovision?

[Daniel Jenkin-Smith @DCJenkinSmith]

@moya_costello @BloomsburyAcad Thanks - I'll give it a look!

[Daniel Jenkin-Smith @DCJenkinSmith]

1. It's got to be the desk itself - can't have bureaucracy without a bureau (although, now I think about it, you sort of can these days...)

Back to Flaubert's Bouvard and Pécuchet, and their very sweet, custom-made, 'love-desk' (here envisaged by artist, Gareth Long:

[Daniel Jenkin-Smith @DCJenkinSmith]

Publication day: 'The Rise of Office Literature' is out now! Every time I look inside I find something new to quibble with.

Thanks to the team at @BloomsburyAcad for all their hard work!

Here it is in its natural element:

[Daniel Jenkin-Smith @DCJenkinSmith]

2. Pens (and pen-holders): (a very French-heavy listicle, this) enter Huysmans' M. Bougran: an office fetishist whose obsessive cataloguing of his pens (including by taste) gets me hot under the detachable collar.

Time for another saucy trip to @thepenmuseum!