Now Is The Winter Of Our Dusty-dusty 2015/2016, What Are You Reading Now?

I've got her journals and letters lined up next, but itching to read the next novel.

xposts: thanks for the roussel recommendations, emil.y... the little i know about his work comes via robbe-grillet's short essay and reading somewhere or other about the surrealists' early appreciation of him.

― no lime tangier, Monday, February 29, 2016 10:55 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If that's the guy I think it is I have a biography of him somewhere I bought a few years ago that I never read.
Isn't he the mega rich guy who supposedly travelled the world on a cruise ship but never left his cabin.

Made me think of l ron hubbard rather than roussel!

reading some good stuff

updike - of the farm
rupinder gill - on the outside looking indian
greg Jackson - prodigals

i always argue with a specific friend of mine about patents/ip law even though none of us know anything about is aside from intuition and folk anecdata (someone patented the peanut butter sandwich, etc) so i bought 3 books on patents/innovation policy and we're gonna cycle read them. i'm starting with the first

james bessen and michael j meurer - patent failure
- pro patents in theory but critical of practice especially since 90s when patent litigation has exploded. very empirical focus

michele boldrin and daniel k levine - against intellectual monopoly
true to their thesis this book is available for free download on their website http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/against.htm

mariana mazzucato - the entrepreneurial state
less directly related to patents but more generally about the positive role of the state in innovation (internet, us gov actually made a profit off solyndra, etc etc)

Currently reading the lovely pocket-sized Pushkin Press translation of Un beau ténébreux by Julien Gracq, a writer with whom I was not previously familiar. Very lyrical & beautifully written novels set at beach resorts are not typically my thing, but this one is scratching an itch for me...

When we read Evelina in my 18th century lit course twenty years ago the class liked it more than any Austen.

xp (I say "not typically my thing" because the opening chapters of one of my very favorite novels, Thomas l'obscur, could almost be read as a parody of the tendency observed in Gracq & others)

February was so dismal for reading. I couldn't concentrate on anything. This was after getting through about seven books in January. In the last couple days I've read some Edgar Allen Poe and Georges Simenon and this seems to be working.

In a "Ask Greil" response on greilmarcus.net, GM mentions some novels:

02/15/16
...Jonathan Lethem’s You Don’t Love Me Yet, the best rock-band novel, even though in the course of the book they barely perform. Dana Spiotta’s Eat the Document, about the sixties as a teenage boy’s blessing or curse decades after the fact. People swooned over Lauren Groff’s ginned-up, unbelievable-from-either-side Fates and Furies—or felt they had to, as the incandescent, uncanny Arcadia was ignored. It’s one of the great excavations of hidden American history in fictional form and a story where absolutely nothing is predictable.

GM OMT--You Don't Love Me Yet is underrated.

Sounds interesting.

Review of the latest Dan Spiotta book led me to the link i posted here: Luna

Recently:

 Johnson, Alaya Dawn: A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’I (Novella) - award-nominated SF vampire/human power relationships exploration; not bad
 Bertino, Marie-Helene: Safe as Houses {Stories) - really good short stories, with a lot of surreal elements
 Rosenkrantz, Linda: My Life as a List (Memoir) - from the woman who did 'Talk', as recently NYRB-resurrected; brief, charming memoir of being a Jewish kid in the Bronx in WW2, occasionally suspecting her mother was a spy for Hitler
 Joseph, Paterson: Sancho: An Act of Remembrance (Play) - really good monologue about the life of the slave-born multi-talented composer/writer/actor who was friends with/championed by, among others, Laurence Sterne and Samuel Johnson, among others
 Scholz, Carter: Radiance (Novel) - sole solo novel by new ILB favourite, really good and grim, office politics in the nuclear war industry during the time of Reagan/Bush 1's SDI frolic

Please forgive wanky formatting, have c&p-ed from a list I'm trying to keep to remember what I've read at the end of the year

it's frustrating to me that they look like tickboxes

Just finished October in 1966 by Jon Savage. Pretty interesting really.

Just had Sid get arrested for the Death of Nancy in Inside the Dream Palace.

& Ivo has sold 4AD in Facing The Other Way

There's not much point in making brief commendatory comments on a Jane Austen novel, but I finished Northanger Abbey and, of course, it is chock full of small perfections and excellences.

I did find it a shame that Austen put her normally level-headed heroine through several pages of acting like a ninny, merely to score some editorial points against Gothic romances. It would have been a better novel if she'd omitted that minor piece of it, as it was superfluous to the plot and pulled her main character out of character.

JUst found taht my local remainder/2nd hand bookshop has got a range of Michael Moorcok books from 2 years back in these include anthologies of several of his characters including a Jerry Cornelius short fiction thing which I'll go back for. But I just bought a copy of THe Nomad of Time.
THink i'll be back for several others,
Maybe this should have gone more in the recent purchases thread cos it might takle me a while to actually read these.

After I finish the 4AD history I'll probably get back into the copy of Stoned2 by Andrew Loog Oldham I started before Xmas. BUt I have been meaning to read more Moorcock for a while. Though do wish I had got through more of him in my teens or 20s.

rupinder gill - on the outside looking indian

This title is catnip to my poor undiscriminating pun-loving heart, how does the book measure up?

I don't know, Catherine Morland is pretty naive and silly throughout the book. Are you referring to her morbid suspicions at the Abbey? Because for someone ignorant about the motivations of more or less everyone she meets I wouldn't say it's all that out of character. And it does drive home the point of the novel.

xp its really cute. have only read abt half so far. its a memoir abt sortof having a second adolescence after feeling stifled in her youth by her traditional indian parents

Catherine Morland's innocence and naivety is obvious on every page of Northanger Abbey, but these do not equate with empty-headed silliness. Her strange fantasies about General Tilney's faking his wife's death and burying a weighted coffin, then secretly keeping his wife in a dungeon and feeding her at midnight after the servants and his children were in bed, so that no one would know she was still alive - these do not reflect her normal trusting outlook and goodness of heart. Instead, she's briefly transformed into an over-excitable silly goose, which she has shown no propensity toward beforehand.

People get the strangest ideas in the dark! It's not the most believable turn of event, but I just thought it funny. And I do think there's a point to it, and to having a climax of sort to her reading induced fantasies.

I moved on from Burney's Evelina to her journals and letters:

Mr. Stephen Fuller, the sensible, but deaf old gentleman I have formerly mentioned, dined here also; as did Mr. Rose, whose trite, settled, tonish emptiness of discourse is a never-failing source of laughter and diversion.

"Well, I say, what, Miss Burney, so you had a very good party last Tuesday?—what we call the family party—in that sort of way? Pray who had you?"
"Mr. Chamier."
"Mr. Chamier, ay? Give me leave to tell you, Miss Burney, that Mr. Chamier is what we call a very sensible man!"
"Certainly. And Mr. Pepys."
"Mr. Pepys? Ay, very good— very good in that sort of way. I am quite sorry I could not be here; but I was so much indisposed—quite what we call the nursing party."
"I'm very sorry; but I hope little Sharp is well?
"Ma'am, your most humble! you're a very good lady, indeed!—quite what we call a good lady! Little Sharp is perfectly well: that sort of attention, and things of that sort,—-the bow-wow system is very well. But pray, Miss Burney, give me leave to ask, in that sort of way, had you anybody else?"
"Yes, Lady Ladd and Mr. Seward."
"So, so!—quite the family system! Give me leave to tell you, Miss Burney, this commands attention!—what we call a respectable invitation! I am sorry I could not come, indeed; for we young men, Miss Burney, we make it what we call a sort of rule to take notice of this sort of attention. But I was extremely indisposed, indeed—what we call the walnut system had quite—-Pray what's the news, Miss Burney?—in that sort of way, is there any news?"
"None, that I have heard. Have you heard any?"
"Why, very bad! very bad, indeed!—quite what we call poor old England! I was told, in town,—fact—fact, I assure you— that these Dons intend us an invasion this very month, they and the Monsieurs intend us the respectable salute this very month;—the powder system, in that sort of way! Give me leave to tell you, Miss Burney, this is what we call a disagreeable visit, in that sort of way."
I think, if possible, his language looks more absurd upon paper even than it sounds in conversation, from the perpetual recurrence of the same words and expressions—

Margerite Duras - Summer Rain
Cesare Pavese - Told in Confidence and Other Stories
Ann Quin - Passages

The Duras has her main theme (a love ravaged) in among an immigrant family on welfare in a 'sink estate' and that aspect doesn't quite come off (although I'll have to reflect on this a bit more - maybe I am not used to Duras really depicting this in her fiction). The scenes between the family and teacher had its comic moments. The Pavese is a bunch of short stories - 'Nudism' has his masterful descriptions of nature and those windows into an eroticism I hadn't quite seen as clearly. Ann Quin had a renewal theme - from a love that is frustrated and never quite comes through - that could be fruitful to read alongside someone like Jean Rhys, Duras or Pavese - except the former is so much more elliptical. They all talk about what is essential.

I'm really curious about that Ann Quin novel; I've only read Three, which was troubling, and vivid in a claustrophobic way.

I think Three might be my favourite, but Passages is possibly her most accomplished. (Lots of qualifiers there, ha.)

Read Three such a long time ago, can't remember a thing about it

I am now reading Fathers and Sons, Turgenev, in the Rosemary Edmonds translation published by Penguin Classics in 1965. Very readable so far. I will be interested to see how Turgenev describes his main "nihilist" character, compared to how Dostoevsky would frame such a character: as a craven, fiery-eyed monster.

I finished The First Bad Man by Miranda July. It was pretty consistently enjoyable, often quite funny and ended up packing an emotional punch (especially applicable to any parents out there). Probably the best part was the relationship between Clee and Cheryl, though I don't want to ruin it with spoilers. I think July's fearlessness as a writer is both a blessing and a curse, but more often a blessing. Some of the overtly wacky California stuff, like the color therapist, seemed kind of superfluous to me.

Started reading London the Biography by Peter Ackroyd. Been meaning to for years, probably decades. Bought it for a nominal price plus p+p last year and it's been sitting there.
But will be interesting I think.

Also gone back to Stoned2 after finishing the 4AD bio.

When we read Evelina in my 18th century lit course twenty years ago the class liked it more than any Austen.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, March 4, 2016 1:40 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

shaking my fist

rereading Pride and Prejudice bc i'm teaching it. it's pretty dece.

i've never taught Austen before. try to imagine how annoyed by me my students are lately.

Richard Wright, Black Boy
Dionne Brand, What We All Long For
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis
Thomas King, Truth and Bright Water

i got new(ish) penguin classics eds of:

clark ashton smith
algernon blackwood
arthur machen

and i have to say, the opening of the story s.t. joshi chose to open the smith with does not fill me with excitement about descending this particular rabbit hole:

"I, Satampra Zeiros of Uzuldaroum, shall write with my left hand, since I have no longer any other, the tale of everything that befell Tirouv Ompallios and myself in the shrine of the god Tsathoggua ..."

That Machen anthology is a bit odd too, in that it doesn't include The Great God Pan

Is that Penguin Classics the White people and other Weird stories one?

if you find a good opium dealer you will be all set with those books.

how do you think one pronounces the name 'tirouv'. 'terry'?

stevolende, yes it is. aw fuck they're ALL s t joshi. gughghghgh

AMEN to o. nate's take on Miranda July's The First Bad Man.

Really liked this Rivka Galchen essay The Only Thing I Envy Men in the New Yorker, part of a longer essay Little Labors coming out later this year.

When I discovered how brilliant Muriel Spark’s novels were—they also were mostly out of print when I found them—I did feel a bit of fury, an emotion I nearly always deny myself, but that was that. (My daughter’s middle name is Spark.) And yet I had never envied men their literary place, and I still don’t, and I had never envied men much of anything, ever … until very recently. I now envy men, but for just one thing.

I found this over on Twitter. I RTed off Helen Dewitt who seemed chuffed by the mention of The Last Samurai

When on earth was Muriel Spark out of print? the mind boggles.

aw fuck they're ALL s t joshi. gughghghgh

Do all the introductions say how (x) is pretty good but not quite up to the level of lovecraft?

xp
I think quite a lot of her stuff was oop till quite recently - like The Bachelors has just come back out, but I can't remember seeing it in bookshops ever (outside those odd 90s omnibus volumes), ditto The Public Image. Don't know if I've ever seen a new copy of Robinson on shelves. Usually, Girls/Prime/Ballad and a changing cast of three or four others were all I'd see new (2nd hand totally different, obviously).

rivka galchen is great

reading the Penguin edition of Thomas Ligotti stories -- I started last night with "The Last Feast of the Harlequin", which was gripping (if ultimately disappointing)

Perhaps my experience is slightly skewed by living in Scotland, but I see quite a lot of secondhand Spark out and about (tho' yes, Public Image and Robinson are nowhere near as common as her best-known trio - Prime in partic is everywhere)

i bought a lot of new trade paperback spark editions in the late 80's. they had a bunch with similar covers/designs back then. had to dig in 2nd hand stores for some of the more oddball 70's ones.

in the u.s. obviously.