Writing
Books
Grant Us Eyes: The Art of Paradox in Bloodborne (Tune & Fairweather, 2025)
Praise for Grant Us Eyes:
“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
Academic Writing (Limited Access)
“Aboutness: Death Stranding, Literality, and Labor” (Representations, forthcoming 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, Response to “Up in the Air” Question Four, 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 (manuscript under review)
Aboutness: A Critical History