Words! Words! Words!: Autumn 2012 'What do you read, my lord?' thread

do you think? i think there was a legitimate demand for it and he wanted it published in some state or another

by comparison

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/2e/Although_Of_Course.jpg/250px-Although_Of_Course.jpg

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/archive/2010/12/1_123125_123050_2240796_2277115_101220_cb_fatetimeandlanguage_tn.jpg

http://www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/thisiswater.jpg

i'm not sure what the idea that 'he wanted it published' is based on, but if he did, then so be it. there it is.

i believe he arranged some of it into a preliminary order with a note giving his family dispensation to arrange for its publication. i guess that's not quite the same as "he wanted it published."

just dudes looking for clues and kicking ass. aging jazz fans. clint types.

there is of course a crime-solving jazzbo series:

http://www.billmoodyjazz.com/books.html

x-posting back to junot diaz, last week some co-workers were discussing oscar wao so i chimed in w/"read feast of the goat." they never heard of vargas llosa, of course. diaz is GREAT at capturing contemporary voices and attitudes, to my anglo ears at least, but in a way i think he would be a better non-fiction writer a nuevo journalist if you will.

man "this is water" was gross

it'd be OK as an 'inspirational' tumblr piece that all my friends linked to on fb but i am genuinely baffled by ppl who look up to DFW as some kind of lovable saint who had deep wisdom to impart. this is a guy who was thoughtful enough to organize his last manuscript for posthumous publication but not thoughtful enough to commit suicide in a place where his wife wouldn't be the first to stumble on his body.

I've enjoyed some Wallace but never understood the reverence. The philosophical po-mo bullshit cluttering up much of his non-fiction, the bandana, the self-help book obsession...

the bandana is kind of a deal breaker. i have already talked about him enough on this thread! and i never talk about him. i think it was this thread. none of the guys i lump together with him (in my head) thrill me. lethem, dfw, moody, franzen. that whole crowd. at least chabon wrote the mysteries of pittsburgh (haven't read it since it came out but i really liked it. and a short story collection of his. and the movie of wonder boys.)

October issue of Smithsonian sports a rich chunk of Henry Wiencek's new Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves. First part of the title is shared with an erotic fiction, yep appropriately so. The mountain is Monticello, the mansion, garden and some of the farm topping a small town of enterprises, with some white craftsmen and whip-smart overseers, but basically dependent on the labor of slaves, mostly related to each other, many to the master. Some of then are meant to be upwardly mobile in this little world, so not to be "degraded in their own regard" by the whip, but any case, as J.confides, "It is not their labor, but their increase" which generates the most profit (incl.collateral), so keep those babies coming. Suppressed, played down, recently unearthed docs all help to paint quite the vivid picture, but no bog of details. Jefferson was "the pioneer of monetizing slaves, just as he pioneered the industrialization and diversification of slavery."

in fairness to DFW (who i love), nothing he wrote or did offends me as much as the book review franzen did where he contended that male writers who wrote from the POV of female characters did so because they felt 'smallened' and less than fully male.

i can't think of any great living american lit fic writers who aren't ancient. i love lorrie moore (even though her last book sucked and i try not to think about it cuz it makes me wince when i do) but she's just really good and i find her entertaining. don't know if she's a "great" fiction writer. however you would define that. she has written some great short stories. anne beatty in her prime was probably better? i should re-read anne's old books (i gave up on her later stuff).

(i don't read a ton of new fiction though. there might be lots of people 50 and younger in this country who are great. the people who are the most acclaimed though never seem to do much for me.)

I spent most of early 2011 and this summer going through Ann Beattie's story collection. Of course they blur together. But her use of lacuna and timing of dialogue always leave me drawing breaths.

as for Chabon, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is kinda all time for me.

You know who's underrated? David Leavitt. I read the flawed but moving The Lost Language of Cranes two weeks ago and wondered if young gay fiction has lost his interest in plumbing familial relations (esp mother-son).

oh i didn't mean the commencement speech was gross; the commencement speech was fine, and had been fine for all the many years it had been freely available online. rushing it out as a little gift book w each sentence ludicrously isolated on a single page to maximize post-death profits was gross.

ended up buying The Feast of the Goat, I'm like halfway thru and enjoying it, but haven't really gotten 'hooked' yet... WE SHALL SEE

"The Princes: A Reconstruction" - essay in a recent Paris Review by John Jeremiah Sullivan. Fine work there.

And The Three Musketeers (300-some pages in) just barrels along heedlessly. Fun stuff.

the book review franzen did where he contended that male writers who wrote from the POV of female characters did so because they felt 'smallened' and less than fully male

haha, what?

i think 'this is water' is a pretty good commencement address because they requested famous author DFW and got member-of-alcoholics-anonymous DFW, sort of; the book form is gross as fuck. rivka galchen reviewing the bio in the nyt was pretty good re the desire to regard him as a moral teacher or whatever.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/books/review/d-t-maxs-biography-of-david-foster-wallace.html

finished Feast of the Goat—a tough one to get thru, that. favorite bit was the chapter following the one general through the hours immediately after the assassination, but it had many highlights.

I found the pairing with Oscar Wao (which I will probably reread now, at least in part) mutually illuminating, because they have such different focuses—every protagonist in Wao is some sort of alienated outcast loner, just reacting to the external machinery of 'society' and trying not to get crushed. Feast takes the broader/more distant view of 'society' as a totality with no outside, shot thru with class divisions, conflicts of interests, and decisions—it's also a lot drier and none of the characters are very interesting or likable; but I found myself getting invested nonetheless. I think it just might come down to the way that the narrative structure separating past and present starts to break down in the last 1/2 of the book—extended flashbacks taking over the present-day sequences, the harrowing final chapter, etc etc

have also started in on Joseph Brodsky's Watermark, which is basically just "witty writer reflects on his annual vacations to Venice", v.beautiful and calmative

Goat is one of the few novels that made me shut it after absorbing some of the villainy. I knew a little about the Trujillo dictatorship but NO IDEA he was this savage.

I've discovered Armistead Maupin! The serial form and reliance on coincidences dilutes the impact of many sequences, but dialogue and pace are impeccable This is as good as popular fiction gets.

rushing it out as a little gift book w each sentence ludicrously isolated on a single page to maximize post-death profits was gross.

FYI this is what happens when the book isn't long enough to prevent having to hand-carton at the bindery. NB I do not believe we published that thing.

Just now spotted Rebecca West's The New Meaning of Treason at the thrift store. Quickly skimmed, premise looks dubious: she says Pound and Lord Haw-Haw etc. are new cos ideological, not just sell-outs. But seems like anybody branded traitor has rationalizations: a higher loyalty; the money's just for expenses. Still, random grafs look pretty good, and I'm a fan of Mailer's journalism. Should I get this?

What other books of hers should I read?

Her Yugoslavia travel book Black Lamb Grey Falcon: as rich as anything by Mann or Musil.

about halfway through Wolf Flow: it's decent pulp. Obviously the title was intriguing, and there was something about the reviews that made me think it might be the literary equivalent of some of the batshit stuff that made the ILE horror movie rollout a few months ago (along with a lot of stuff that just missed out), but besides the premise--man beat almost to death is cured by evil water--it's fairly standard, like somewhere between Te Shining and a Jim Thompson thriller...

Her Yugoslavia travel book Black Lamb Grey Falcon: as rich as anything by Mann or Musil.

― the ones that I'm near most: fellow outcasts and ilxors (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 29 October 2012 00:34 (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha that's the first thing that's made me actually want to attempt rebecca west you know

lol, well, this actually confuses me because Mann and Musil aren't that much alike.

Mann is not that good, for a start (some of the short stories aside).

well, they're part of the twentieth century tradition of the European Novel of Ideas; I'd have to develop the comparison. West's book depicts how English intellectuals responded to an alien culture in the years between the wars.

If you find Mann ponderous, Felix Krull is the cure. It's actually funny!

Walt Whitman, and CK Williams' short book On Whitman. Just kicking against my longstanding Whitman aversion; Williams is helping - very enthused but very attentive - exciting, rushing-at-it poetry crit!

i haven't read t. mann in a few years but the right translations are vital -- i tried reading h.t. lowe-porter's translation of "royal highness" and it was interminable, though it could just be the novel.

Lowe-Porter's aren't seen in a favourable light (and I recall a few posts in these parts that say this).

I would probably try Mann as translated by John E.Woods

^^^^ yes. It makes a difference.

doktor faustus, the magic mountain, buddenbrooks — all some of the greatest novels of the 20th century, if not of all time

mann and musil are pretty alike!!

i mean okay as far as german-language authors who wrote about their own personal microcosms at great length as a way to tackle from one remove the sweep of central european history, and whose main claim to modernism is in their degree of ironic remove from the structures of the 19th century realist novel, go they're pretty separate

that sentence was translated from the german

Mein Deutsche cousin Krystal just seconded that: "Jah, Woods ist gut mit der Raabe, Rabe, Grass, Archimboldi, Durrenmatt und Mann." Who knocked 'em dead at Woodstock too.

An impression from reading MwQ vs MM, say, is that Musil seems much less concerned about being state of the nation, although I know Musil had a massive ego and probably wanted to be seen that way, but he seems smarter about it?

I'd have to revisit The Magic Mountain. I do find its set up a fucking slog,. Bunch of cardboard cutouts pouring their philosophical POVs as puppetmaster Mann goes on to collect his prizes. I don't think a translator can save this. otoh, I like Death in Venice, and would always give his shorter form stuff the time of day.

xyz&c, how do you feel about thomas love peacock

i found the magic mountain a pretty rewarding slog but gave up when the ten pages in french at about the halfway point were left untranslated

yeah, that was funny; don't do French, eh H.T.? But I kept going past it, enjoyed the rest. Does Woods pull the same thing? Back to The New Meaning of Treason: revised and extended '64 edition, now incl. Philby etc., posted in its entirety here, if I ever wanna scroll that much (a few typos already) http://www.archive.org/stream/newmeaningoftrae000249mbp/newmeaningoftrae000249mbp_djvu.txt

The untranslated French was a very amusing assumption to make about its readers.

re: Peacock, must investigate.

I might even make it to reading Cancer Ward one of these days.

I knew enough schoolboy French to maneuver through it but I relied at that point on a couple critical guides.

i got pissed off and threw the book in the recycling.

I'm not calling anyone a barbarian for being unable to read some fairly simple french, let's make that clear

in that case i'm definitely not calling you a tendentious snob.

all i'm saying is that you can't expect translators to translate everything for you