Books
Grant Us Eyes: The Art of Paradox in Bloodborne | Tune & Fairweather | 2025
“Grant Us Eyes shows us new dimensions of art, and new modes of experience, in FromSoftware’s masterpiece Bloodborne. The sophistication, clarity, and intensity of Wainstein’s book sets a new standard for writing about games.” – Michael W. Clune, author of Gamelife
“Mustering thinkers like Theodor W. Adorno, Roland Barthes and Michael Fried to support his arguments, Wainstein describes Bloodborne as a continuation of the modernist impulse to push art forward by challenging the expectations, and sometimes the patience, of its audience.” – Ethan Davison, The New York Times
Academic Writing
Aboutness: Death Stranding, Literality, and Labor | Representations | 2025
Mere Light (co-written with Bryan Counter) | Textual Practice | 2024
Photomimesis and the Anti-Aesthetic | Textual Practice | 2024
Faulkner’s Glitches | Novel: A Forum on Fiction | 2023
Unformed Art: Bad Writing in the Modernist Novel (Dissertation) | Stanford University | 2020
Public Writing
The Paradox of the Second Person (on The Last of Us Part II) | Los Angeles Review of Books | 2025
Postlapsarian Homesick Alien (on Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye) | American Book Review | 2025
15 Kills: Solid Perry, The Phantom Pain, Performance (on Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain) | Cartridge Lit | 2023
Game Wonder: On FromSoftware’s “Bloodborne” and H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Haunter of the Dark” | Los Angeles Review of Books | 2023
Wind and Atmosphere in Bloodborne | Venti Journal & Collective | 2023
Repetition, with a Difference: On “Deathloop” | Los Angeles Review of Books | 2021
Bugs and Features: On Video Game Glitches and Interpretation | Los Angeles Review of Books | 2021
Can a Video Game Express Modernist Values? | Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020
Book Manuscripts in Progress
Bad Writing in the Modernist Novel (under contract with Johns Hopkins University Press)
Aboutness: A Critical History