ILB Gripped the Steps and Other Stories. What Are You Reading Now, Spring 2017

I'm reading Darian Leader's Stealing the Mona Lisa, which is a kind of avuncular take on Lacanian views of art. It's taken a while to get going, and there's a LOT of passive/subjunctive mood waffle, but it's hitting it's stride and slowly pulling me in.

Xp Long Fin Killie?

Cutler without doubt! Very close.

But I think there is a tendency for a great swathe of 'Scottish alternative artists' to get rolled together, either by themselves or by others -- so eg: I am sure that B&S will have talked about Cutler (maybe even collaborated with him somewhere), and Edwin Morgan --so it all gets implicitly connected.

For that matter I'm sure that Deacon Blue (who were not so Alternative) repeated Gray's most famous slogan re 'the early days of a better nation' on a record sleeve.

Cutler and B&S both on this record.
Will stop now and remind myself that this is ILB not ILM.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colours_Are_Brighter

Thanks for following up so diligently on my derail, the pinefox:) If you want to keep it ILB, you could talk about Gray contrasted with Muriel Spark- TS Glasgow vs. Edinburgh- although perhaps that is a too facile, classic New York Times Sunday Arts & Leisure Section-style comparison.

James Redd -- the thing there is: I get how Spark is Edinburgh / Morningside ... but I don't really get how Gray is Glasgow in a directly contrasting way. The big contrast would surely be Spark vs Kelman (or Leonard or Torrington) - the really gritty working-class-tenement writers -- rather than Gray's tendency to fancy, whimsy, Gothic, history, etc.

(this has always been a general point for me - I get that Gray and Kelman and Leonard are pals and have similar politics -- but I don't see the literary, stylistic, generic link between Gray and the others)

In fact this would lead back to the B&S idea in that eg: Kelman = gritty Govan and Gray = whimsical Hillhead -- more the B&S world / era.

Or put another way: Gray, unlike Kelman or Leonard, is the great writer of the *Glasgow School of Art* - maybe you can draw a contrast with something in Spark, but it doesn't feel like a traditional Glasgow vs Edinburgh contrast. Maybe it's a more interesting contrast.

The Art School side is partly why Gray seems to link forward to B&S, perhaps via 'The Postcard Scene' et al.

The other B&S connection (so I am now confirming your original idea) is religion -- LANARK describes, very autobiographically as I recall (cf A LIFE IN PICTURES), a long period of painting a mural in a church, which is very Stuart Murdoch.

years ago i gave a copy of "the fall of kelvin walker" to my friend bill as a bday present (glasgow born and bred, was briefly in a band w/pat kane, who he has little time for)

bill said it was MUCH TOO PROTESTANT and he was unable finish it

that is my helpful anecdotal contribution to this chat

The Art School connection also tends to make me connect Gray back to Mackintosh - but I don't know that Mackintosh was a writer.

The origin of Kelvin Walker, according to the pinefox:

https://flic.kr/p/8T1Aqy

"I wanted to read Lanark because I thought it would be about a wonderful fantasy Scotland where Belle and Sebastian don't exist."

I read Lanark well before Belle and Sebastian did exist, which makes that sentence jar a bit.

Like Pinefox I wanted to like it but didn't much. Belle and Sebastian are even more completely not my thing, but for very unrelated reasons. Not that I know much about B&S, but I do own at least one barely played album. Before reading this thread it would never have occurred to me to connect the two.

everything scottish is the same

https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2015-02/23/8/enhanced/webdr08/enhanced-32054-1424697475-5.png

B&S are my thing.

It is true that as there are only 5.3 million people in Scotland, in a relatively small space, in theory they could be more the same than other things eg: the populations of China, Russia or the US.

But I doubt that Scottish people would accept that view.

Mark is that your idea of "the B&S aesthetic" ?

there is no aesthetic it can't illustrate

http://cheapsurrealism.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/kul.jpg

I have started reading Junkie by the noted non-Scottish author William Burroughs.

http://cheapsurrealism.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/kul.jpg

All this scottish chat makes me wish the once-great Canongate Classics series, full of great scottish lit, was still a going concern

http://cheapsurrealism.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/kul.jpg

Reading Giovanni's Room, which is beautiful and heartbreaking. I'd not read any Baldwin in a while, and I'd forgotten how mannered and 'European' his sensibility is - albeit a Europe refracted through Henry James: the exaggerated, almost sacred, sense of the minutiae of communication, the precision of each paragraph (despite the savagery and chaos of what is often being described), the elegance. And I'm totally conscious of my age as I read, and how young Baldwin was when he wrote it - at times, by dint of age alone, I feel like a seedy voyeur like Jacques or Guilliame.

was on a bit of a tiresome walk round a park with my brother and his wife, but passed a second hand bookshop along the way, all paperbacks one pound. found a collection of peter reading's first three books of poetry - diplopic, C, Ukulele Music. Sitting in a pub enjoying the caustic violence and wit set in a sort of deep pastoral (in itself bloody and sexual).

"kiddies" are "(sinister dwarfs, next issue's parricides)". skinheads throw 280 million year old fossilised desert at nesting kittiwakes - that desert in itself an unpleasant compression:

Arid hot desert stretched here in the early
Permian Period - sand dune fossils
are pressed to a brownish bottom stratum.

arid hot desert - sand dune fossils - brownish bottom stratum

labouring trochees + guttural speech of birds - "'uk-uk-uk and a plaintive 'ee-e-eeh' - and teens - 'Gibbo, gerrofal getcher yaffuga'.

Junky was short, reportorial, but artful. By artful, I mean to say it is one of those books that appears utterly straightforward and gives the impression of almost guileless simplicity, while being based in decades of thoughtful observation and a fully developed philosophy of life.

I am now reading Sagas of the Warrior-Poets, an anthology of five brief Icelandic sagas, where the main character is a skald.

I finished I Love Dick, which I really enjoyed and wish I had read a long time ago. Funnier than I'd expected and was very well executed, imo (I think it's irritating-ness, mentioned upthread, is deliberate or at least she's very self-conscious of it - whether or not that excuses it I guess depends on your taste). I do wonder, if the show indeed continues, how it would carry on. Would have been interesting to read when it was first published ('97?) and its novelty (in tone, if not form) would have been better appreciated. I'm definitely going to pick up 'Torpor', her 'prequel' of sorts to ILD, soon.

Also read a few stories by the early 20th century Chinese writer Lu Xun (from this collection https://www.amazon.com/Real-Story-Other-Tales-China/dp/0140455485) which I liked, though fear I missed quite a bit due to a lack of knowledge of Chinese history. As his "Diary of a Madman" story would suggest, he writes in a Gogol-ian (Gogol-ese?) tradition (Kafka-esque too, avant la lettre) with what seem to be heavily allegorical strands running through.

Started Paul Beatty's the Sellout which has been literally laugh out loud funny. I'm not sure if he can sustain the comic momentum and riffs over the course of the novel (am about 60 pages in, now), but I'm really enjoying it so far. Great one-liners and set-pieces. Funniest book I've read in a while.

i really liked kraus' aliens and anorexia, maybe even more than ild

Alice Munro, Lives of Girls and Women
Alice Walker, The Color Purple
Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel

The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy. According to the introduction by Rachel Cooke, "The finding of a voice for the book - and it is a remarkable voice - Dundy credited to her friend the novelist Henry Green. At their lunches together, she made is her business to make him laugh. 'I began to recognise that I was hearing a voice that was me but that wasn't me', she wrote in her 2001 memoir Life Itself! 'It was a voice Henry gave me, yet I'd heard it before. But never this clearly. It let me play the screwball again.'"

Sample sentence that made me laugh: "I said casually, 'I saw this stinking little Art film last night. All about the simple life on a barge up and down the Seine. How about that? Not a bad idea.'"

dundy wrote a good book abt elvis and his mom iirc

I thought I'd give BEE another go. I read "Glamorama" a few years ago and I remember it being annoying.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41i4iaoq%2BsL._SX328_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

I noticed once more that the authors of Icelandic sagas are generally very specific and detailed about wounds inflicted during battles, including all the particulars of the weapon used, the site of the wounds, the extent of damage, and the type of blow which inflicted the damage. Just as medieval European court poets always lavished a lot of attention on the dress of the knights and their ladies. In each case, it is an exact reflection of their audience's keenest interests.

John Darnielle - Universal Harvester
John A. Farrell - Richard Nixon: The Life
* Edmund Wilson - To the Finland Station

John Darnielle - Universal Harvester

Me too! I liked it very much. Got quite a lot of reading done in hospital; I'll maybe figure out a list at some point. Really loved 'War with the Newts' - an impressive breadth of targets, piercing and funny.

I noticed once more that the authors of Icelandic sagas are generally very specific and detailed about wounds inflicted during battles, including all the particulars of the weapon used, the site of the wounds, the extent of damage, and the type of blow which inflicted the damage.

it's like my teenaged self reading the critical injury tables from the Rolemaster RPG

Partway into Alison Moore's 'The Lighthouse', about a sad recently divorced man on a Danube hiking holiday who gets involved with an angry hotelier convinced the hiker has slept with the hotelier's wife

I should write blurbs

Surprised how big a part the war plays in the Boileau-Narcejac novel; had Hitchcock come across it earlier perhaps he would've set it in Paris and not LA? The narrator's wandering between personal and political tragedy strikes a chord right now, what with the awfulness of the coming election and having lost my cat to feline aids last Sunday. Uhm, not that those are comparable to the rather more dramatic circumstances of the book, but you know.

I finished I Love Dick, which I really enjoyed and wish I had read a long time ago. Funnier than I'd expected and was very well executed, imo (I think it's irritating-ness, mentioned upthread, is deliberate or at least she's very self-conscious of it - whether or not that excuses it I guess depends on your taste). I do wonder, if the show indeed continues, how it would carry on. Would have been interesting to read when it was first published ('97?) and its novelty (in tone, if not form) would have been better appreciated. I'm definitely going to pick up 'Torpor', her 'prequel' of sorts to ILD, soon.

I was very surprised to go on GoodReads and see a lot of people accuse Krauss of stalking and even abuse, when to me Dick's reactions never seem anything other than flattered and bemused. My frustration comes from the absurdity of investing capital l Love into a guy you barely know and who really doesn't seem either interesting or interested - which I guess the ending kinda confirms, so yeah, it might be intentional.

I noticed once more that the authors of Icelandic sagas are generally very specific and detailed about wounds inflicted during battles, including all the particulars of the weapon used, the site of the wounds, the extent of damage, and the type of blow which inflicted the damage.

Was reminiscing with my mum the other day about how much I loved Mallory as a kid - would draw and then cut out these tiny paper shields to represent different knights and re-enact the story. Tried giving it a go again recently and couldn't get anywhere with it - dude becomes much more difficult once "and then knight x unseated and bloodied knight y" no longer gives you a "oh cool, better write that down on a chart!" impulse.

I thought I'd give BEE another go.

http://www.vulture.com/2013/01/bret-easton-ellis-real-art-form-tweeting.html

The Warmth of Other Suns is a gorgeous and hugely important book but I may have to stop reading it on the train because it's almost sent me on a sobbing jag several times over. Also, I can feel any lingering patience I have for deniers of white privilege rapidly melting away, which might not be an altogether positive development.

Been reading the NYRB collection of Balzac shorter works "The Human Comedy". Venturing into murder mysteries, war stories, political commentary, and other detours, in addition to the Paris high-society-meets-low-life milieu he's best known for, they showcase his range. Currently, taking a break to re-read Unamuno's Tragic Sense of Life. A once every 10 years cycle seems about right for revisiting that great theological edifice of despair.

That reminds me of this post

If anything would cure despair it's surely that cover art.

fragments of a life story: the collected short writings of denton welch

Ooooh

yes, was glad to find a copy of that... a hell of a lot cheaper than this thing if not quite so impressive looking!

Made my way around Malcolm Bowie's appraisal of In Search of Lost Time in Proust Among the Stars. I think it says something about the quality of this work that you wouldn't give it to someone who hasn't read at least a substantial portion of Proust, despite having many excerpts of it scattered throughout -- its so highly detailed in its surgery of the book and will enrich the experience for people who love the book and go back to it. Bolano's Last Evenings on Earth is simply magisterial. Most of the stories (as so much Bolano) centre around literature, politics, love & friendship - its a skilled intertwining of these, and more. How people connect and then can simply disappear (usually because of politics, although sometimes they just do to end a story). Much of it is an affectionate portrait of a person or scene. Above all its his skill as a supreme storyteller in a kinda Arabian Nights mode that comes through.

I'm finishing Henri Michaux's account of his experiences with Mescaline and Hashish in Miserable Miracle. Having read a book on Proust that has a chapter on Time its actually nice to see an account that talks about how drugs enhance space (as well as time). I am rushing through as I don't particularly like it as writing.

I've just started Bolano's "The Savage Detectives". Pretty great so far

Finished Paul Beatty's The Sellout, which was very funny and continued to have laugh out loud moments throughout the rest of the book. Like Helen DeWitt's Lightning Rods, it's well-executed satire in the Swiftian tradition and it delivers well on its audacious premise. Unlike DeWitt's more deadpan treatment, Beatty maintains a fast-paced comic energy throughout and it's filled with great asides and one-liners.

At one point he references the book Oreo by Fran Ross (a former writer for Richard Pryor) from the 70s. Has anyone read it? I've seen it around - New Directions Press re-published it in the last few years - but I don't think I've heard much about it (apart from a few reviews). I'm curious to hear what anyone's thought and how it holds up today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oreo_(novel) and http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/an-overlooked-classic-about-the-comedy-of-race

I've been wanting to read more Bolano ever since finishing By Night in Chile and Nazi Literature in the Americas a while ago. 2666 is sitting, daunting, on my shelf and I don't think I'll bring myself to it yet. Perhaps Last Evenings on Earth is a good one to read in the meantime?

Up next for me is The Mersault Investigation by Kamel Daoud, or rather, Merseult contre enquete - which I will attempt to read, with the help of a dictionary, en francais - which is a re-telling of Camus' Stranger from the perspective of the brother of the Arab killed in the story.

take a hint from your friend Michael B and read the Savage Detectives!