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

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.

I read plenty of stuff that is disturbing in different ways, it's mostly just a weird strong reaction I have when I'm not well. I'll probably keep going with it, or put it aside until I feel better.

(As context, 2666 might be my favorite novel of the century so far, and I like a lot of art that is in various ways painful or concerned with forms of abjection, but I think people should be able to make their own decisions about what artworks they continue to engage with. (For example, "In a Year with 13 Moons" is a brilliant film in many ways, and it's stuck with me more vividly than almost any other Fassbinder film, but for personal reasons, I don't know if I'd ever choose to watch it again.) I think Maggie Nelson's take on this in The Art of Cruelty is fairly nuanced.
Xp

I read plenty of stuff that is disturbing in different ways, it's mostly just a weird strong reaction I have when I'm not well. I'll probably keep going with it, or put it aside until I feel better.

Yeah, either choice is totally valid.

I mean, Clive Barker is maybe my favourite 'pop' author, but the violence and gore is kept at arms length by the fantasy. Then again, I've read books about operation condor, Pinochet etc., so I'm not sure the later part will bother me (though I should probably investigate why it feels different). I just want to go back to the part about the boring professors/critics...

I mean, I feel like gradually removing the layers of relative protection from historical violence the critics enjoy is part of Bolaño's strategy, but I definitely find "The Part about the Crimes" to be both crucial to the novel's project and extremely viscerally upsetting to read.

I can appreciate what he's doing, this repetitive style of description, the eroding of distinction between the killers and the police etc. I certainly don't think it's gratuitous or sadistic, I just find it hard.

Yeah, it is hard, and that's a understandable reaction.

FWIW I read large portions of 2666 on break at my night job, or in the morning when I got off and couldn't sleep... I'm not sure if this helped me to read 'The Part About the Crimes' (bc reading disinterestedly, 'to pass the time'), or helped me to misread it (bc cynically detached, like a train commuter with a newspaper) -- the strongest impression I retain of that section is of an otherworldly temporal rhythm that quickly settles over both book & reader, alongside a paucity (but not a total absence) of narrative development, giving the whole thing this weird sense of frenzied exhaustion. But then again, that could just be the insomnia talking ;)

I think there is narrative development in that section along various strands; it just doesn't lead toward clarity. My own reading method was one of horrified immersion, but you're right that the narrative rhythm of that section is distinctly unsettling.

2666 might be my favorite novel of the century so far

Seconded.

For me 'The Part About the Crimes' sets into motion a kind of enhanced dissociation. The brain stops appropriately processing the horror of each individual case after the first few, and all of that rhythmic, forensic facelessness just loses you in the claustrophobic, abyssal desert of futility. Frenzied exhaustion is exactly what I felt too. A kind of appalled ambivalence that sees its efforts fade like mirages in the heat. I think it's got a lot to do with cracking open the body and mind of the detective and putting us directly inside and that being central to unlocking more of the self, potential versions of which we are fielded later in the section. On a different level of engagement, one you can carry away from the trance of reading and into daylight reason and discourse, Bolaño is forcing a crucial wider recognition of these whitewashed atrocities.

there seemed to be another pair of eyes behind his eyes

I was trying to remember this ^ quote from Distant Star, which I'm lifting totally out of context, but it nevertheless encapsulates both the dream-like encasement of oneself, and the inducement of something like a psychopathic removal of affect when the fabric of reality is so threatened by the impossibility of the crimes. A long-winded way of saying I agree with what's been said... Naturally, if it's stirring up anything too negative, then there's plenty to recommend some of his less death-intensive novels.

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

― dow, Wednesday, March 23, 2016 3:34 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh, I missed this - sorry. It's Ozell's Revision of the Translation of Peter Motteux, published in 1967, chosen because...it's what we had in the house. I couldn't find much about it during a brief search online, so I can't imagine it'll be the one you end up with, but it definitely seems to read smoothly compared with my experience of 'bad' translations.

Enjoying very much so far, if a bit daunted by my slow progress in comparison with its immediate and rapid acceleration. Also, it is laugh out loud funny.

Journey by Moonlight is wonderful, I've been recommending it to people constantly since reading it a few months back.

Got kind of bogged down in the middle of Acceptance, last book in the Southern Reach trilogy. Found a relatively cheap copy of Strange Doings by R. A. Lafferty last night and have been enjoying the hell out of it. The bookstore also had 900 Grandmothers but it would have cost $70.

I saw 900 Grandmothers is now an ebook for about $4, was thinking of grabbing it since Lafferty is one of those writers I keep hearing about and have never tried.

Really, where?

Think there are a few other contenders alongside 2666 for novel of the 21st century etc yadda yadda. Certainly DeWitt's Last Samurai. Saer's La Grande (2005) Hilbig's Sleep of the Righteous are two recent translations that were so good. Ferrante's The Days of Abandonment (2005) too.

Of the untranslated maybe Solstad's Telemark book.

Fuck a Knausgaard.

re: Part about the Crimes. Reading De Sade last year and there was something there in the accumulation of horrific detail. Their projects were very different (I'll just state that here just in case there was any doubt), but Bolano is so much flatter as a writer - and very comfortable with that. The horrors described in that section keep passing you by. Weirdly breezy yet horrific at the same time. But isn't that so much like life today?

Except there is that high level of immersion.

DeWitt is 2000 and Hilbig was 2002. Solstad is 2013.

Ferrante's The Days of Abandonment (2005) too.

my man B-)

enjoyed this Easter afternoon reading Gotthelf's The Black Spider. There is much to be said for novels that can be read in a couple of hours. I'm wondering now what Gotthelf meant by all of the people who came from foreign lands, though.

I just finished Richard Ford's The Sportswriter. I thought I hated it at first, but circumstances have dictated that I read it over the space of six weeks and at that speed - the speed of life or something - it's made absolute sense. I've found the pace comforting, the (relatively) low-key nature of the events comforting, and there's something to be said for Ford's refusal of the numinous, and his relative refusal of manifest destiny. I think it's still probably in Rabbit's shadow, but I need to chew it over a bit more.

james, http://www.amazon.com/Nine-Hundred-Grandmothers-R-Lafferty-ebook/dp/B01A5TIIMM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1459117056&sr=1-1&keywords=Lafferty+grandmothers

Though the price may be more/less depending on what country you're in

Ah, doesn't seem to work in US.

Frederick Philip Grove, Over Prairie Trails
Jane Urquhart, Sanctuary Line

Thanks for getting back to me about the translation, tangenttangent. Re the 2666 (and other) experience, the Bolano thread is worth checking. It changes after "The Part About The Crimes": some of the characters from previous sections reappear, engaged in their usual pursuits, obsessions, etc,, but nothing is ever the same, because the sense of something monstrous and clinical and ultra(?)-obsessive is under the surface/between the walls, exerting pressure but never surfacing, in subsequent sections; and some of the characters rail against, it but there's no release. Reminds me of a version of "All Along The Watchtower" I saw Dylan and the boys doing one time, back in the 90s. In the book and the performance, there were fluctuations on the exertion of pressure, but that just increased the tension.
I took it that this is Bolano's version of The Way We Live Now, or anyway the way we live now, and the feeling of pressure he had while writing, and knowing (at some point during this project) that he was mortally ill.

And I think it's the afterword where someone states that Bolano wanted the sections to be published separately, hoping to maximize his children's inherited royalties.

I've been reading Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History by John Patrick Diggins.

I've started in on The Big Short. Lewis sure knows how to construct a narrative that propels your interest. The arrogance, ignorance and general sleaze of most Wall Street traders is no surprise and therefore after you're done getting angry at them they are essentially uninteresting, so Lewis focuses on a few traders who are atypical, surprising and capable of holding your interest.

polished off "my lunches with orson" in two days, now onto "class" by paul fussell

I've been reading Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History by John Patrick Diggins.

― o. nate, Monday, March 28, 2016 9:31 PM

This is the one by the purported liberal, right?