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

They specialised in different trades.

re: Lessing - I talked about Southern Africa not South Africa.

I really want to read The Four-Gated City, but its part of the Children of Violence cycle? Can you read 'em in any order?

Right, she was from what was then Southern Rhodesia, sorry. I haven't read the previous volumes of Children of Violence, and don't remember that many explicit references to the heroine's life in Africa. It works pretty well as a free-standing novel, starting with her arrival in early 50s London, which is still affected in a lot of ways by WWII, also the early Cold War. Goes on 'til 1997 (published in 1969).

They specialised in different trades.

Fair comment. I just remember being intensely disappointed by 100YoS, whereas Borges got hold of me from the first sentence I read and has never let me go.

yeah it's kind of a dumb comparison no offense to anyone's mom

I think they are quite far apart in what they write/talk about. The writers I group the most w/Marquez are Juan Rulfo and Sabato, perhaps they are the ones whose writing has a similar sensibility to Borges (especially Rulfo) but were approaching what Marquez was going to expand on.

I really love Borges too - and I am disappointed (so far) by people like Bioy and then Schwob (whom people say Borges perhaps aped - well I can see what people mean but Borges improved on it). I am going to eventually get round to Arlt and Ocampo and hope they'll be better. xp

She liked Marquez, but got tired of teaching him, never ever got tired of Borges, that's all it seems to come down to. I enjoy them both, but also got hooked on JLB immediately, yes.

not read any lessing yet, but have been intending to read briefing for a descent into hell since i was, um, sixteen (also happens to be one of the two books i can identify on the cover of the first fripp & eno record)

I only have an MP3 of that so its a nice detail

She liked Marquez, but got tired of teaching him, never ever got tired of Borges, that's all it seems to come down to. I enjoy them both, but also got hooked on JLB immediately, yes.

― dow, Saturday, March 19, 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That could be an effect of Marquez being shoved in people's faces at the time to provoke a comparison between two of the most famous Latin American authors.

just bought amy hempel's collection, reasons to live, after reading her paris review interview. anyone read it?

the latest edition of Flashback! the Richard Morton jack edited British psych/prog/jazz/whatever book size magazine. Just read about Mushroom who I'm listening to now and before that Catapilla who I need to listen to again.
Also got Human Beast and Tamam Shud in this issue which I read yesterday and Koobas and Paternoster who I've yet to read.

THink it's about as good as usual and has me wanting to pick up several artists music.
Has me wondering if I should read that book on Psychedelia by Rob Chapman, which gets slagged off majorly in here, for myself to form an opinion about how naff it is (or not) since some other people seem to think it was ok. BUt since it is a pretty thick tome and some of those other critics aren't people I put much stock in I dunno.

After this I have several things potentially lined up, the book on Ponzi and his scheme ios beside the bed as is Julian Cope's 131 which I've seen mixed reviews for.

Bathroom book is currently the Peter Ackroyd biography of London which I've been meaning to read since it came out and I read reviews of it. Pretty interesting so far, think I just started into early middle ages.

& book for transport is the Andrew loog Oldham Stoned2 which is actually more of an oral history with several people's accounts quoted from interview rather than integrated into a straighter narrative. It's been years since I read the first Stoned so I can't remember if that was done in the same way

Stevo, on the Rolling Jazz thread, I posted a link to and excerpt of Richard Morton Jack's ancient interview with roving free jazz trumpet player Ric Colbeck.
Back to Iris Murdoch's The Red and the Green: as I said, it passed the Random Read Test, for whatever that's worth, but James Morrison doesn't like her, which makes me wonder. Anybody else read it? Any others worth a search?

Starting Don Quixote as of this second. :)

Tbh, ive only read 4 or 5 murdochs, and she wrote a LOT

Starting Don Quixote as of this second. :)

― tangenttangent, Sunday, March 20, 2016 3:15 PM (6 hours ago)

Yeaaaaaaaah. Hope you enjoy it.

I've been depressed and experimenting with tumblr, so I haven't really been posting much, but I've started Sarah Schulman's riff on "Cousin Bette," "Another Country," and midcentury bigotry, "The Cosmopolitans," as well as Dodie Bellamy's essays in "When the Sick Rule the World" (a few essays in, it seems more focused than "Pink Steam," the only other book of hers I've read), and Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis/Lilith's Brood trilogy with a group of friends (currently starting on "Dawn"). Out of what I've read since posting here last, I've probably been most affected by Mary Gaitskill's "Because They Wanted To" (which I picked up in part because of the discussion here), Schulman's "Stagestruck" (passages from which have been circulating on trans twitter lately because of their relevance to the obstacles trans writers currently face, it's one of the most incisive texts I've read on mainstream representations of the AIDS crisis), Jamie Berrout's formally raw but furious "Incomplete Short Stories and Essays," Ta-nahesi Coates's "Between the World and Me," and Patricia Highsmith's "The Price of Salt."

*Ta-Nahesi, I mean

*Ta-nehisi, rather!

*Ta-Nehisi, even!

Speaking of Sarah Schulman, this Hugh Ryan essay gives a useful overview of her work: https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/my-year-of-sarah-schulman

I finished the Banville, thought it was very good. I 100% see where Alfred's parody of orotund expression comes from, but I cut him a lot of slack because 1. It's different when Britishers do it, 2. It felt like an appropriate style for the character, & 3. There were enough significant variations within the style to hold my interest. -- I wasn't really holding the narrator's feet to the fire, but a judicious application of the 'hermeneutics of suspicion' turned up a few points, particularly towards the beginning of the book, where heightened eloquence seemed to be holding at bay a reality he was not yet prepared to face. (!!!! MINOR SPOILER ALERT !!!! -- The defence mechanism breaks down rather pathetically in Part II, leaving one very short paragraph addressed to the dead wife: "You cunt, you fucking cunt, how could you leave me here alone like this" etc etc -- I'm paraphrasing)

lol everytime I type "Banville", I have to doublecheck to make sure I don't mean "Bancroft" #britishppl

Banville isn't British

... So he isn't. Not sure how I got that wrong, given that the one I read was actually set *in* Ireland!

finished the butor novel (passing time): palpable sense of the grimy malevolence of the local environs with a heavy emphasis on the topology of the town it's set in, & the plot (or what there was of one) centred on a pseudonymously published green penguin which may (or may not) have been based on a local crime (that may or may not have really been a crime) and the consequences of the author's (perhaps) unintentional exposure by the (unreliable) narrator. fractured time narrative meant my perception of the characters' motivations/actions kept being altered as missing information was incrementally built-up... no real resolution at the end (which may have been the point?)

now starting on a novel from the mid-sixties by one r.c. kenedy annabel fast... seems it's his only published work except for a couple of monographs on (then) contemporary artists.

Picked up the novel that The Leftovers tv series is based on.

& Homicide by the Wire creator but may already have it. Only €1 though as was the above.

Also got Jim Goad's Redneck Manifesto which might be interesting. Answer Me was interesting.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51XGNLtS3BL._SX319_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

He's a Belgian psychoanalyst and the book is at its best when dealing in that area and his thoughts on how psychiatry's 'illness model' lets everyone off the hook are enlightening. It can be a bit 'society is in the gutter' at points but it's definitely worth a read.

tangenttangent, who's the translator of yer Don Quixote? I wanna read that too.

I know you're not asking me, but my version is the Penguin Classics edition by John Rutherford. No idea if it's well-rated or not, but it's the only version I've read and I loved the book, so it obviously works on some levels.

edith grossman translation seems to be quite well-rated

All reports welcome, thanks!

Just about done with The War in the Air, H.G. Wells. His propagandistic agenda in this book stands out a mile. It is not quite pacifist, but clearly he wants to scare the bejabbers out of his reader concerning the arms race that was taking place in 1907 (mostly naval, building the dreadnoughts) by projecting the same arms race upon an air war, at a time when powered flight was still far too crude to constitute an effective weapon.

In order to create a sufficiently popular potboiler, Wells builds his story around the adventures of a feckless Cockney lad, who nevertheless shows the necessary British pluck and luck when called upon to fight. But because that gave Wells rather too narrow a canvas on which to paint his picture of the coming apocalypse, he frequently halts the action to expatiate on how air war will lead to the destruction and collapse of civilization - if steps are not taken to create a World Government run by practical-minded (but idealistic!) technocrats. This gives the book a weird duality between his need to tell a ripping tale of derring-do and his powerful urge toward straight up pamphleteering.

It is a curious and illuminating artifact from a particular historical moment, which makes it quite interesting to read, but considered as literature it is puny stuff.

the quixote translation i have is by burton raffel, i loved it when i read it but some ppl have criticized it for being a bit too eager to modernize cervantes's style

Hideo Furukawa: Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure: A Tale That Begins with Fukushima -- alternately interesting and incredibly frustratingly solipsistic memoir/novel/road trip by a Japanese writer who was born near Fukushima and who travels into the diaster zone in the weeks after the quake/tsunami/reactor explosions

Alan Furst: A Hero of France -- snagged a pre-release ARC, not due out until 31 May, feeling very smug indeed; hits the usual effortless-seeming Furst highs--this one's about a French Resistance chap smuggling downed British airmen into Unoccupied France and over the border into Spain

ambling a bit through good friday so far. didn't get back till late last night, and a slow start to the morning. sat in the garden with a pot of tea and read some yeats, which i took off the shelf because of Easter 1916, but i ended up reading The Wild Swans at Coole Michael Robartes and the Dancer and a couple of others.

forgotten how attractive the "She" in MR&tD is - mischevious and playful.

Then wandered upstairs and collapsed temporarily on the bed, and picked up A Wreath of Roses by Elizabeth Taylor. I had a very nice plain covered second hand hardback of this but can't for the life of me find it, so had to get this copy out of the library. it has an extraordinarily memorable opening, one of the best pieces of writing I've ever read, which wd include *spoilers* if I described it, so I won't, but the perfect opening line is worth quoting:

Afternoons seem unending on branch line stations in England in summer time.

The repeated "in" is just right for the matter. I'd only read the first few pages when i had my old copy, but its exact evocation of atmosphere meant i always thought of it when I'm on an empty country station platform in summer time.

going to read through it all this time.

Finally got around to reading 2666, abou halfway through. I like it, but one of the reasons I don't watch those crime shows on TV is I find it very upsetting to think about a victims final moments, their loss etc. So this section in the middle catalog using the crimes is very disturbing, and I hadn't expected it. Got the Devils of Loudon to read next - May well be the only Huxley I didn't read as a teenager.

lots of stuff on the go at the moment

finished denis johnson's jesus' son - loved it. i had read his poetry before. kind of has everything.

still tipping away at lucia berlin's a manual for cleaning women. it's v good.

read the first chapter of horse crazy by gary indiana, for my writing class. i liked it and so i bought the book.

contemplating a start on knausgaard for a week in spain.

i'm rereading molloy!!

noticing a lot of stuff i barely recall from the past, like molloy's descriptions of like merging with the earth and the plants and the snows

it's odd to read it on kindle, the text loses some of the monumental quality that it has in the grove press edition, it seems much more now like the many european no-paragraph-single-voice-monologue novels. easier too this time around to see how it's easy to read the lines, mostly between commas, as way less deadpan than they can appear to be, but it's still a question of which attitude fits the words, which you kind of have to test out every now and then.

Pavese - Festival Night and Other Stories. Some of these stories have an almost filmic feel where the 2nd reel doesn't run, the world opens up and is suddenly cut-off. Its a tough sensibility to describe. The people are often half there. At times they fight whatever is going on (a woman the guy is seeing, or fascism, or the church), they might 'win' something and then give up anyway. The Suicides is probably one of my favourite short-stories ever. Its a car-crash with the logic ruthlessly followed through (maybe analogous to Mishima's Patrotism). Then finished Duras - Outside. Mentioned this above but I had just started. It was great to see other writing by her beyond the fucked-up sorta love triangles she usually cooly and traumatically re-uses. The piece on Bardot is great, the best interviews were with Seyrig and Francis Bacon (such a sharp and engaging conversation), a couple of fictiony pieces round it off - one of which describes this gorgeously empty meeting at a hotel (she meant to write a piece on Hotels and wrote this fiction instead). Two and a half pages where nothing is wasted. On the poetry front I got to Arun Kolatkar's Complete Poems. Jejuri which felt beat-ish (the trip to the town and its temples and sights and impressions). Kolatkar didn't publish any more collections while he was alive, only allowing more to come out by the time he was dying - and maybe I can see why. He never found that exciting framework. Lots of good-ish things and while Collected books of poetry are always a bit weird anyway my impressions is lots of scraps struggling to cohere. One of the final poems is a boatride - another trip. However his translations of other Marathi poets are fucking amazing and a book of those would be so good. He has unexpectedly opened modern and ancient Indian poetry for me so I'll always be grateful. Lots to discover.

Elena Ferrante - Days of Abandonment
My third pass at George Meredith's The Egoist.

Robert Caro - The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Passage of Power. I'm going to have to read the other volumes of this, enormously entertaining.

J. G. Ballard - The Atrocity Exhibition. Incredible on its own, but really the best thing about this is Ballard's annotations, which are so sharp and rich.

Delfin Vigil - Death of a Newspaperman. Friend of mine wrote this about a young man's experiences at the SF Chronicle during its waning years, p entertaining as a local journalistic history fantasia.

Started V.S. Naipul's Michael X and the Black Power Killings in Trinidad. It doesn't conceal Naipul's scorn for his protagonist. Also, it is brief, more like a magazine feature story's length.

I have a copy of Michael Lewis's The Big Short on hold at the library, ready to pick up, so that's the next one in line.

i feel guilty that all i do is read joyce carol oates now but im reading 'you must remember this' rn and srsly it is amazing

the quixote translation i have is by burton raffel, i loved it when i read it but some ppl have criticized it for being a bit too eager to modernize cervantes's style

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Wednesday, March 23, 2016 5:17 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i love the Edith Grossman translation of Don Quixote, which is probably even more extreme in this regard than the one JD mentions above. There's actually a fascinating defence of the translation that anticipates and counters those criticisms (in the foreword iirc). they say that spanish has not changed as radically as english has since the 16th/17th century: if someone walked up to you and started speaking the spanish of Cervantes you wouldn't bat an eye save for the odd outmoded expression. whereas if someone did the same in Victorian english every sentence would sound ridiculous and almost unrecognizable to the layman. ime the modernity of the writing seemed a bit uncanny at first but, if you believe the argument above, the assumption that old books should 'read old' is, paradoxically, anachronistic. they even claim that a lot of previous translations were written by old stuffy scholars who intentionally musted-up the writing to make it read the way old english books do

marge piercy, woman on the edge of time - only sci-fi to the extent that edward bellamy was, and an odd collision of naivete and pessimism. its feminism and depiction of capitalism's losers were pretty radical for sci-fi of any kind at the time and maybe now too

antal szerb, journey by moonlight - hungarians wander inter-war europe being dramatic and dryly funny and sometimes insightful

I loved Woman On the Edge of Time when I was younger, really want to give it a re-read now (particularly in light of having read a fair amount of female-authored sci-fi recently) but don't have a copy.

i feel guilty that all i do is read joyce carol oates now but im reading 'you must remember this' rn and srsly it is amazing

― johnny crunch, Friday, March 25, 2016

you'll be reading her through 2041

antal szerb, journey by moonlight - hungarians wander inter-war europe being dramatic and dryly funny and sometimes insightful

I love this book, found it really charming

me too!

Bits of The Sound & The Fury A Rock Backpages Reader which is a collection of music writing from the early 60s to late 90s edited by Barney Hoskyns. It has introductions by the authors from the time of the book's publication giving context.
Great find for 25c.

So, given my squeamishness about that murdery stuff, do people recommend that I carry on with 2666? I was going to say hat I have plenty else to read, but I don't know what's happened to my books or records - they may well have been binned, which is what happened the last time something like this happened. Like a personal burning of he library of Alexandria.

It's yr decision, but "The Part about the Crimes" doesn't really become less upsetting, and "The Part about Archimboldi" is less explicitly violent but still concerns itself with vast historical traumas, since it focuses on German fascism and its aftermath. I think it's worth finishing the novel on its own merits, but it's ok to move on if you're finding it too disturbing to continue.