Book Group: Helen DeWitt's "The Last Samurai" - Discussion Thread

Promising anything "extra" in one of these is a great way to get bogged down in commitments that may cost more than they bring in and distract one from one's actual objective. (Cf. any number of examples.) On the other hand there's maybe not much of an audience if you promise nothing at all. I think better than the "buy me a coffee" model for Helen DeWitt would be a more explicit "let's raise $35,000/yr for Helen DeWitt" framework with progress bars and such that explicitly comes with no "backer reward" other than the assurance that HdW is continuing to work on what she wants to work on.

Though, I emailed her upon reading her author's note and what she said to me was that her biggest obstacle is really finding a publisher who's able and willing to publish her weirder work correctly, and also market the book, rather than (necessarily) get volunteers involved to like do prepress technical work for her pro bono, which is what I thought she was looking for. Even New Directions' Last Samurai had errors. I have done a lot of futzing around with TeX and desktop publishing but I've never Made A Book and I'm probably no better at selling than Helen DeWitt.

right, totally agree. it does strike me she has a rather fractious relationship with publishers (this much could be deduced alone from her writing tbh). and of course having a good relationship with your publishers is usually a good thing.

I don't think she necessarily knows what would be most helpful, and possibly she's thinking there may be solutions that are in fact not really very viable, the actual solutions just having the problem that they're not very desirable.

I'd say the ideal solution is Full Communism but some people will be difficult to work with even under Full Communism

it can't hurt surely.

I want to get that book she cowrote and self-published as a PDF a few years ago, and which now seems to be unavailable from her site. The fact HdW follows me on Twitter is one of my rare achievments.

she didn't seem to feel that had 'worked' apparently, and felt the collaborative aspect of it wasn't fully understood, which made her reluctant to make it available. did seem to imply it might be out again *at some point* when she'd published a few more things.

If that's Your Name Here you're referring to, anyway.

That's the one, thanks.

Your Name Here was contracted to Noemi Press for a very long time, which is why she took it off her website. I haven't seen where she said that it hadn't 'worked'. Did she make those comments while it was stuck in contract hell?

I think Noemi no longer has the rights to it but I'm not sure where it goes from here.

I haven't re-read it in a few years but loved it at the time - it seemed very much like the next step after The Last Samurai. Messier, to be certain, and even less of a traditional story, but filled with a lot of brilliance and excellent and funny and sad writing.

Most of what she's written since has been much more controlled in its voice, imo.

Anyway, I bought it back when it was self-published, and I'm not certain what the legalities are about sharing it privately, but when Last Samurai was out-of-print, HdW's position was that people who bought used copies could donate to her the equivalent of royalties that she would have gotten if it was new, etc.

your favourite wayward dilettante has begun the last samurai. so far so delirious

✔️

as the person who actually started this thread I have to say that i finished it at least six months after the schedule I'd set.

finished the book, that is. i could finish this thread in way less than six months.

Gets off at Farringdon - how like a man

this is some exquisite deep-London humour. i cackled

big takeaway from the first 100 pages: poor Sybilla being the world's best tutor before the noughties tuition boom, she'd have definitely been able to afford ice-cream

holy fuck the yamamoto chapter

i know right

trying think of a more bravura, high-art, firework-laden passage of writing I've read recently; drawing a blank

and to think there's probably more to come

Maybe I should just give up on all the books I’ve been starting lately and just read this again.

most amusingly, that chapter is based on a fictional Sunday Times interview that in reality would have had to span half the paper and been the best thing any print journal has ever contained

helen just has higher standards for everyone I guess

That’s pretty much it yeah

She doesn't lack for astonishing bravura setpieces does she?

While the HC/RD bit (which I haven't even finished yet) is obviously some sort of literary pinnacle, I do feel I should observe that the best bit of Pynchon's Mason & Dixon, which came out only a few years before, was also a long and dazzlingly fabulistic reported narrative about a couple of scholars (astronomers rather than philologists) involving impromptu flying devices in China and some complex and ambiguous moral lesson. I know I shouldn't compare everything to Pynchon but

Also of COURSE I should have anticipated L's banter with S once he turned 11. Delightful :D

ah man this gets intense

final chapter is perfect, cheers-to-the-rafters stuff. i cried a bit

when Tom Cruise presents the Emperor with Katsumoto's sword? ;_;

holy fuck the yamamoto chapter

― imago, Monday, December 3, 2018 6:40 AM (two weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

almost halfway through, pretty sure this is the best book i've ever read that's not the magic mountain

part of it is that it kind of feels like a great work of criticism on top of being a novel, so of course i'm extremely taken with it

I should reread sometime next year, especially if a certain career move comes through.

happy to hear you're enjoying the book, Brad :)

a certain career move

Samurai?

maybe!

i think i would have had more success in turning people onto this if she hadn't named it The Last Samurai

she didn't, she named it "The Seven Samurai"

should have named it Tetrakaidecapod tbah

me: you should read this book The Last Samurai
them: lol like the Tom Cruise movie
me: no it's this really cool book about a child prodigy and his mo-
them: yeah yeah sure i'll check it out *never reads it*

of all the child prodigies born in london in early 1987, ludo is probably my favourite. he didn't end up wasting his life chatting shit about indie on the internet. at least, so we hope

actually of course he didn't, he wasn't coddled and then ruined by private school

imago :( it's ok, Ludo's fictional and anyway the default trajectory for a gifted kid is to grow up into an average adult.

that said even if you aren't a child prodigy I think one of the things I took away from reading this is that it's always possible to just sit down and do something hard that you want to do, even if nobody gives a shit. Like, not for nothing did you upload your novel to createspace. The challenge is finding the time when you have to survive under capitalism but you can still make gestures at the ineffable yknow

:)

the novel definitely gave me strength more than it made me wonder what could have been!

This is a bit of a basic bitch question about this book, BUT, I loved the introduction (10 pages or so) then immediately struggled with the first chapter and the new narrator, and gave up. Does it stay that full-on for the whole book?

nearly every other chapter is a dramatic shift in tone/style but it never returns to the style of the prologue

had maybe 1 or 2 stylistic misgivings over the first ~70 pages but they all resolve with extreme suddenness and the rest of the book is nothing short of gripping

silby otm

one of the great things about this book is that it makes "genius" a completely unintimidating inconvenient mundane thing like everything else in life

This is a bit of a basic bitch question about this book, BUT, I loved the introduction (10 pages or so) then immediately struggled with the first chapter and the new narrator, and gave up. Does it stay that full-on for the whole book?

― Chuck_Tatum, Tuesday, December 18, 2018 3:34 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sibylla's narrating the prologue, so i don't understand your question

nearly every other chapter is a dramatic shift in tone/style but it never returns to the style of the prologue

― flopson, Tuesday, December 18, 2018 3:57 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i also disagree with this, sibylla's whole thing with liberace is as much of a yarn as the prologue

agree to disagree. i got like, mythical vibes from the prologue

don't know what a yarn means, but there are many parts of the book i would describe as 'yarns' yet not similar

i guess i don’t get it when the vibe of the prologue continues in the first chapter when sybilla picks up the thread with her father and her mother, it’s basically the same style

i am really good at spelling sibylla wrong on the first try every time

i don’t necessarily even know what i mean but a yarn but i guess i mean when whenever this novel really slides into a mostly unbroken story. yamamoto part has that fuckin incredible power too

this just in: i unconsciously stole “yarn” from the time blurb on the back cover