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

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?

Sonia Shah: Pandemic -- fascinating history of cholera, using it as a springboard to look at pandemics and their effects on human biology/history/society, etc

Granddaddy of all pandemic books was Plagues and Peoples, Wm. McNeill. It launched a thousand ships, so to speak.

curious to hear what you think of Big Short, Aimes. i read it this January and really liked it.

I found it wasn't actually as good at explaining the finance stuff as some reviews claim. I think Lewis assumes the reader is bored by that stuff (what a CDS actually is) so he over-compensates with focus on the foibles and quirks of the characters' personalities. also i remain a bit unclear about each individual's contributions, a lot o people i know who read the book or saw the movie came out of it thinking the Cornwall Capital guys were somehow responsible for the crash, which is really not the case. i don't think Lewis ever explicitly says that, but i can see how it's unclear enough that someone could walk away thinking that

I'm about halfway through The Big Short. afaics, Lewis only explains as much of the financial stuff as he thinks is necessary for his readers to feel they have a bare grasp of what is going on. I am guessing there are far better 'explainer' books out there that lay it out in much greater depth and detail. All Lewis really wants you to walk away with is the unshakable belief that the global financial system is run entirely by thieves and charlatans. He succeeds in this.

This is the one by the purported liberal, right?

Diggins is hard to pigeonhole. He described himself as "to the right of the Left and to the left of the Right".

A couple of interesting pieces about him:
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/man-in-the-middle-john-patrick-diggins
https://newrepublic.com/article/71889/john-patrick-diggins-1935-2009

The book is interesting because it recasts Reagan as an Emersonian romantic and as a liberal in certain key aspects. It tries to understand the roots of his political philosophy and how he governed. Overall it's a fairly sympathetic look, but also clear-eyed about his shortcomings.

All Lewis really wants you to walk away with is the unshakable belief that the global financial system is run entirely by thieves and charlatans. He succeeds in this.

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Tuesday, 29 March 2016 17:22 (1 hour ago) Permalink

Huh, this wasn't really my impression. I got a sense more of genuine ignorance at complexity of the housing loan contracts, plus the fucked up incentives of the loan rating agencies (as well as the incentive to remain ignorant of what was in the loans in the first place), than individual malice. Which I liked because thinking of Finance as just a bunch of villains makes it hard to think about how to reform it. Shame that he left he whole agency problem of investment/shadow banking to like the last page of the afterword.

List with brief comments, some intriguing, others not(but dammit why can't I remember to get The Art of Memory?):

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/25/t-magazine/entertainment/my-10-favorite-books-simon-critchley.html?WT.mc_id=D-NYT-MKTG-MOD-30555-03-29-HD&WT.mc_ev=click&WT.mc_c=

Michael Bloch - Closet Queens
Will Cuppy - The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody

Jean Rhys - After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie. There is no heartbreak or disappointment - Rhys' amin characters get just what they expect out of people which is exactly zilch. Nada. Certainly worse. And its a world you are happy to swim in because the writing is so good. In some ways Wide Sargasso Sea might be her only bad book - although I should revisit - it made not that much of an impression. Working back from Good Morning, Midnight is really working, even if I had to start it over again I'd do so from the beginning. Looking forward to two more books of short stories and Quartet later this year.

Tanizaki - In Praise of Shadows. At first its an innocent looking short essay on Japanese aesthetics. There is a shadow of nationalism running through it, a longing for what was and can never be again.