A Model TrILBY; or, What Are You Reading Now, Winter 2016/17

Reading film related stuff. Shusako Endo's Silence, William Carlos Williams' Paterson. And Roberto Bolaño's Nazi Literature in the Americas, which isn't really film related, though I'm finally reading Bolaño because he got compared to Pablo Larrain. Everything's good.

judging by James Wood's comments and quotes here, Helen Gardner's books can be pretty strenuous, incl. for her, but worth it. Would esp. like to check what he says is her best (of the fiction, anyway): The Spare Room, an autobiographical novel about taking care of a dying friend, which turns out to be even more emotionally complex than expected. Anybody read her?
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/12/12/helen-garners-savage-self-scrutiny

Helen Garner, that is.

Her non-fiction is especially good--she's a big deal here in Australia. Another very good one of hers is Joe Cinque's Consolation, a true crime story about a group of friends/housemates who decided to murder one of their number with poison.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/26/Book_joe_cinques_consolation.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Cinque's_Consolation
It was just made into a poorly received film.

Her fiction is mostly from the 1970s/80s, and there is some good stuff there too. With that I'd start with 'The Children's Bach' or the two novellas 'Honour & Other People's Children'.
https://cdn.penguin.com.au/covers/original/9780143180043.jpg
https://cdn.penguin.com.au/covers/1440/9780143180050.jpg

shit, sorry for huge cover images

The bigger the cover image the better. Was in the Old Country Store side of a Cracker Barrel yesterday, unready for the LP versions of album covers familiar on CDs. wau

Thanks for Garner tips too, don't think Wood mentioned those.

Halfway through "The Master And The Margarita"; whats strikes me most is how much it's a novel about the elites, with ordinary workers (tram drivers, cabbies, maids) getting a few lines at most and clearly inhabiting a different universe. Not that I was naive about the Soviet Union's pretenses of a classless society, but it is striking how much this book would be seen as a critique of the bourgeoisie if it had been written in the wets.

Started Go Set a Watchman (it was a gift), I feel like I'm being amiably hectored by the Mark Twain character from that star trek episode.

"Blue Boy" is fantastic. Whenever I start a Giono I seem to think it's not as good as other Gionos I've read, and by the time I've finished it I think it's the best Giono I've read.

Now I'm reading "The Evenings" by Gerard Reve, (just) post-war Amsterdam business in a handsome new Pushkin Press edition whose cover is a clear nod to my beloved Amsterdam School architecture:

http://www.pushkinpress.com/wp-content/uploads/Evenings-.jpg

That's lovely - who drew it? (Got a bit of a Darwyn Cooke vibe about it, tho unlikely to be his work)

Oh, and reading The Jinx by Theophile Gautier

I'm not sure (and I've left the dust jacket at home for safe keeping) - will check later.

Would like to hear what you think Tim. It's odd to see this book finally getting an English release after all these years. I doubt there are many people over 40 in Holland who haven't read it, it's top ten canon stuff.

i picked that up in foyles yesterday cos of the beautiful cover.

I couldn't really hack Don Quixote tbh. I've started reading Knausgard's, "My Struggle Vol.1" instead and I'm enjoying it. It's like the best boring book I've ever read. Kind of amazing how he's able to remember such inconsequential childhood details so vividly.

What's up with that title though

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the_Quixote

I finished the 'official' portion of The Man Without Qualities and have decided against plunging onward into the posthumous papers atm. I toyed with the idea of Reading a quick Penelope Fitzgerald, either Blue Flower or else Gate of Angels, but I am in need of a non-fiction break and therefore picked up The Thirty Years War, C.V. Wedgewood last night.

Blue Flower is denser than some of her other stuff and might not have gone so quick anyway

Just blazed through Tana French's first two novels. I can see why she's a cult

and there's only six! I'm sitting on my hands re: the second one until I finish some other stuff

The person responsible for that Reve cover is apparently called Bill Bragg.

I couldn't really hack Don Quixote tbh. I've started reading Knausgard's, "My Struggle Vol.1" instead and I'm enjoying it. It's like the best boring book I've ever read. Kind of amazing how he's able to remember such inconsequential childhood details so vividly.

What's up with that title though

― An Alan Bennett Joint (Michael B), Tuesday, January 17, 2017 9:00 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the title is a reference to mein kampf (in norwegian the title is min kamp) and the 6th book in the series has a long section regarding adolf hitler

ilx discussion here

oh and also he admits he doesn't remember all the details vividly which is what makes it a novel rather than a memoir

At the moment I'm reading "A Month in the Country" by JL Carr, because of the enthusiasm shown on ILB and by Penelope Fitzgerald, its very good so far.

Recently finished:

Bird in a Cage by Frederick Dard
Moderato Cantabile by Marguerite Duras
What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell

In Sunlight or in Shadow: Stories inspired by the Paintings of Edward Hopper

So far the standard quality mix of antholgies, but includes some really good ones. And also, sadly, Stephen king.

I've started reading Knausgard's, "My Struggle Vol.1" instead and I'm enjoying it. It's like the best boring book I've ever read.

yeah it's like a mix of trashy airport book memoir and deep melodic tedium - it's extremely unbalanced between these but i still enjoyed it. i thought it was a great holiday book, like easy fairly brainless reading. a lot of it felt like diet musil. there are plenty of stupid bits in it too tho, think i commented on those in the dedicated thread. i'll prob read the others at some point.

I've stayed away from Knausgard, mostly for a vague sense of the stuff described above. Then I heard him read from VS Naipaul's The Enigma of Arrival, (a novel wretched with torpidity, and a book I really struggled with, but keep revisiting for some reason) and thought he explained (embodied?) the structural depression at the heart of it. It's made me think I should try the 'Struggle' books.

I loved that reading so much!

Intrigued by that, is this it?

yep. i listened in the bath one evening, it was like a bedtime story for adults, his voice is soporific and comforting, even discussing death and the power of the mundane.

Aye, that's the one Bateau. It's properly hypnotic (and really gets to the heart of what Naipaul was trying to do with parts of Engima. I think).

Thanks guys, definitely saving that one for tonight!

Eileen

Come on, Tracer.

:D

Thanks Tim, at first I was like 'Bill Bragg' must be a pseudonym, but apparently not, he has his own website and everything (must admit, the cover you posted looks to be amongst his most appealing work)

Pleasure! Havign looked at his site, I'd say I quite like his work in general but (like you) really enjoy this particular cover.

Eileen was a disappointing book

her new collection of shorts sounds interesting.

Yeah, I think I might get that from the library--she's obv. a talented writer, it's just that Eileen was not strong enough a novel to justify itself at its length. Would have been a better story or novella.

Now I'm reading "The Evenings" by Gerard Reve, (just) post-war Amsterdam business in a handsome new Pushkin Press edition whose cover is a clear nod to my beloved Amsterdam School architecture:

http://www.pushkinpress.com/wp-content/uploads/Evenings-.jpg

― Tim, Tuesday, 17 January 2017 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Love that cover. Almost never buy books on Hardback but certainly considering it.

Let us know your thoughts - saw Lydia Davis saying v nice things about it, and it seems totally up my alley.

Eileen is a little repetitive - it loses the forward propulsion that it needs, and falls prey to the same "literary thriller" problem Richard Ford had with Canada, i.e. it keeps hinting at some earth-shattering thing that is going to happen but then it keeps not happening and you're like wtf I'm 2/3 of the way through this book now man. But I like the style of it, and living in this person's mind.

Robert Scholes, STRUCTURAL FABULATION: AN ESSAY ON FICTION OF THE FUTURE

Been reading some pieces from a collection of D.H. Lawrence's travel writing on Italy. I like the one about the trip he took from Sicily to Sardinia. Sardinia in the 1920s sounds remarkably un-modern. His account of the "inn" they stayed at there is guaranteed to raise shivers from even the most seasoned traveler.

I struggle with Lawrence as a novelist, but love his poetry and travel writing. I think Sea and Sardinia is my favourite of his travel books. I've been, but didn't make it up into the mountains. Next time I'll go see the mamuthones: https://mysardinianlife.com/2013/11/05/mystical-mamuthones-from-mamoiada/

Finished the Derek Raymond and oh god the sadness of it all. It made me go back to Sinclair (there's a Cook/Raymomd segment in Lights Out...) and I picked up Rodinsky's Room again, which has hooked me straight in.

Started Kazantzakis' Last Temptation of Christ last night.

Kazantzakis is an author with very idiosyncratic obsessions. In the west, we're more used to authors who struggle with and against the doctrines and traditions of the Catholic church, rather than the Greek Orthodox. This makes him feel exotic.

Go Set a Watchman left a sour taste. A long slow build of childhood reminiscence and you can never step into the same river twice, all with a particularly southern flavour, none of which lit up the page; some well intended but questionable politics, and finally a confrontation between scout and atticus in which he is painted as wrong and reasonable, she as right and unreasonable and literally in need of a good slap.

A Month in the Country, just finished, thank you whoever was talking about it last year. And thanks again for the P-Fitzgerald recommendation, too. I am genuinely excited there are so many more books of hers to read.