The Double Dream of Spring 2019: what are we reading?

soory, hueg

Getting to the end of The Year Of Reading Dangerously and would heartily recommend it, though I did skip the chapter on Houellebecq (life's too short) and Miller severely misinterprets Forster for his "writers hate the suburbs cos they hate the middle classes" pet theory. But it's a really great read.

Got a collection of Father Brown stories up next.

Strindberg, "Son of a Servant". Whingy, self-pitying proto-Emo, though if you're interested in politics and religion in Sweden in the 1860s this could be the book for you... any takers?

I read a political essay of his which was all "yes, the working man is oppressed by the ruling class, and when you think about it, isn't that a lot like how men are oppressed by women?". State of this guy.

Marooned : The Next Generation of Desert Island Discs ed by Phil Freeman
a collection of essays on desert island discs. Has some interesting choices. More alternative focus tahn the BBC show that had the concept way before it.

Theatre of teh oppressed Augusto Boal
brazilian writer's take on theatre.

christine schutt - a day, a night, another day, summer (some amazing sentences, it's short fiction on the edge of poetry but doesn't lose the plot entirely)
david means - instructions for a funeral (pretty good overall, hadn't read his other collections, a bit determinedly masculine or macho in places)

Finally finished Before the Storm. The only thing I would add to my earlier remarks would be the surprising degree to which Goldwater's campaign was solely the product of a few extremely sharp conservative operatives who seized on Goldwater's popularity to use him as a convenient front for their own agenda, without his consent or participation.

As I read the narrative Perlstein put together, it appears Goldwater knew he was being used and pushed into a campaign he didn't really want, so he sabotaged his own campaign by seizing it away from those operatives, who might have succeeded in electing him, and running it strictly according to his principles, which he seems to have known would result in his losing. Thus, he kept his self-esteem intact and punished his would-be puppet masters for pushing him into a campaign he hated. Right after Goldwater lost, those same puppet-masters tossed Goldwater back, took the electoral machine they'd built, and seized on Ronald Reagan, who was happy to oblige.

Marooned : The Next Generation of Desert Island Discs ed by Phil Freeman
a collection of essays on desert island discs. Has some interesting choices. More alternative focus tahn the BBC show that had the concept way before it.

enjoy Early '00s ILM: The Book. scott's and j0hn's pieces are still really incredible, i go back to them all the time

plus douglas wolk on stereolab

Am just about to start reading Mega City Zero by said Douglas Wolk

Mega City Two, sorry. Have just finished Mega City Zero...

Cool, looked like it would be interesting when I saw Marooned on shelf.
Have lookedat a couple of things so far not a lot. Have picked it up when I'm falling asleep which hasn't helped but has some interesting choices anyway.

Got some books from the London Library for a weekend trip: Red Shift, Beginning of Spring, Heavy Weather, and Outline. Outline is a bit like a book written by a very observant 15 year old, the sort of thing that gets published in a high school magazine. I like it though.

Re Strindberg, wasn't his big mad thing that he couldn't ever get over the idea that only a woman could know for sure her children were hers, whereas a man never could?

Strindberg, "Son of a Servant". Whingy, self-pitying proto-Emo, though if you're interested in politics and religion in Sweden in the 1860s this could be the book for you... any takers?

I read a political essay of his which was all "yes, the working man is oppressed by the ruling class, and when you think about it, isn't that a lot like how men are oppressed by women?". State of this guy.

― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 30 May 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Wait till the Tory party leadership contest gets going.

After all that Goldwater I needed a palate cleanser, so I'm reading My Friend Maigret, Georges Simenon.

I finished Richard Lloyd Parry's Ghosts of the Tsunami. His essay of the same title was brilliant (in the LRB) and this is a longer study of the same event. His framing device is the horror story of a particular primary school and from there he explores the cult of the ancestors and how the pathological passivity and deference of certain areas of Japanese society (arguably) led to an avoidable tragedy. It's a pretty shattering read.

I also read Jane Gardam's Old Filth. She's so good - brilliant at editing her characters just enough so they have a life beyond the page and are never suffocating, and she always stays just the right side of folksy and emotionally manipulative (albeit I could have done without the Queen Mum stuff). I will have to read everything.

As we get into summer I am going trhough a few short things:

Juan Goytisolo - The Blind Reader
Su Tong - Raise the Red Lantern
William Faulkner - As I Lay Dying

Faulkner has some really striking passages -- and its not only becaise a parent dying just has a more powerful effect on me than it would've done a few years ago now -- and it overcomes what I tend to find difficult in Faulkner, as the South as a place is somewhat alien to me, but I think I have found my way into him and will be attempting his books again. There is a power to his writing.

John Ashbery - self portrait in a convex mirror

I finished James Salter's All That Is. It was pretty good, but maybe not as good as Light Years. I think it helped that the overall story was a bit more focused in that one. This one's still good though. Salter rarely comes out and tells you what his characters are feeling, instead he lets their feelings emerge from the story through careful choices of language, unshowy diction, and a kind of Greatest Generation laconic manly stoicism. The stories tend to wander with little rhyme or reason, sometimes detouring for a while to a minor character, yet they flow quite naturally, like a conversation one could imagine between close friends over drinks and dinner sharing confidences about mutual acquaintances (excepting of course the hot sex parts, which perhaps would be read to an even closer friend in more intimate circumstances). His choices of detail are painterly and preternaturally controlled.

Now I'm reading Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia 1941-1945 by Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, recommended by someone on ILB, if I'm not mistaken.

Faulkner has some really striking passages -- and its not only becaise a parent dying just has a more powerful effect on me than it would've done a few years ago now -- and it overcomes what I tend to find difficult in Faulkner, as the South as a place is somewhat alien to me, but I think I have found my way into him and will be attempting his books again. There is a power to his writing.

― xyzzzz__

Wow! I'm reading Go Down, Moses.

Yeah, Faulkner is much more accessible and enjoyable than one might think, given the celebrated challenges of his style.

In addition there may be an off-putting element of his fan base to get past.

are there a thing? Like Berniebros?

I dunno. I just was driving around with some slackers decades ago and one said "I like Southern writers. What about you guys?" I responded first with "I like Flannery O'Connor" which was met with a pained silence which was rescued by "I like Faulkner." "Me too!"

I told one of those people another time, "I just watched a Luis Buñuel film" and got "Cool! Was it surreal?" I seemed to detect some sort of pattern.

Perhaps this is just anecdotal evidence.

"I love Bresson."

"Awesome! Did you notice overacting?"

That reminds of a different but probably related issue, more relevant to the original board perhaps, described by a good friend of mine by “You know you’re in trouble when someone says ‘I love the blues!’”

I'd that Eric Clapton, Robert Cray or who's the contemporary? Nick Cave?

Now I'm reading Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia 1941-1945 by Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, recommended by someone on ILB, if I'm not mistaken.

― o. nate, 3. juni 2019 03:45 (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I recommended it! Then I kinda got lost in it, needed to know about Singapore for a piece I was writing, read only about Singapore, then put it down for a while. Have just begun reading it again. Still good.

Also, I'm finishing the Book of Ezekiel today. I've been singing at a lot of confirmations lately, and at my church, the kids choose their bible words themselves. Wonder what happens if somebody chooses something from Ezekiel. 'And your words are from Ezekiel, chapter 16: “Therefore, you prostitute, hear the word of the Lord!"

Interesting vacillation in those Father Brown stories - first one gives a pretty sympathetic account of a militant atheist being bested by Brown's intelligence and taking it in a spirit of fair play; second story turns super reactionary and the amiability disappears.

On a tangent, am I right in thinking that most notable British x-ian writers are Catholic? Chesterton, Greene, Waugh. I guess CoE kinda has "don't think too much about it" built into it.

CS Lewis probably the biggest exception? but yes, disproportionate number of Catholic converts (Muriel Spark, too)

(for c20th fiction - things different in poetry - there's a strong Anglican line, basically because of Eliot I suspect)

Some non-converts: Anthony Burgess and David Lodge.

Last night I started my third-ever book by Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed. Already I notice the distinctive marks of her style, her preferred themes, character types, sentence structures. While these are all good in their way, I can tell I will need to space out her books, so they do not quickly merge into a kind of Le Guin porridge.

picked up house of leaves today

xp Charlotte Brontë's Anti-Catholic Burns

xp I really enjoyed House of leaves when i chanced on it in the college library in the summer of 2003. I assume it must have been taught on one of the English courses in the year before since there were multiple copies of it there.
very odd.
I listened to a podcast on it recently. Not read anything else by the writer Danielewski. Is there anything else as good?

picked up house of leaves today

and boy are my arms tired!

What's the House of Leaves podcast? I love the damn book; I think about it most days without really being able to say why.

I started John Banville's The Untouchable. I'm frequently dazzled by Banville but, god, it's so full up. I get that the narrator is a SPY and the web of his noticing would be preternatural, but some of the sentences are almost parodically overstuffed.

That's the only Banville novel whose otiose sentences don't sink it.

I'm reading:

Fiona MacCarthy - Byron: Life and Legend
Alejo Carpentier - Reasons of State

xp

I can see the moment: the thin October sunlight on the parquet, a curl of steam from the teapot's spout, the somehow evil glitter of the marmalade in its cut-glass dish, and my father and Hettie waiting like frightened children to hear what London thought.

Evil glitter!

p down with evil glitter

House of Leaves Podcast was an episode of Overdue. #265 I think

I enjoyed Danielewski’s subsequent novel, Only Revolutions, I like things that play with the format of the novel to some effect, and you have to keep turning this one over and around. I haven’t read House of Leaves so I can’t compare.

I read a few of W.B. Yeats's plays: THE POT OF BROTH; AT THE HAWK'S WELL; THE CAT & THE MOON - in THE COLLECTED PLAYS OF W.B. YEATS.

I return yet again to Empson's SEVEN TYPES OF AMBIGUITY. I don't think I am a quarter through it. It is very dense.

That's the only Banville novel whose otiose sentences don't sink it.

It's the only Banville novel i haven't finished - the main character was a huge dick and i didn't want to deal with him. I'm fine with his sentences, it's the endless parade of sad post middle aged men that started to grate.

I think of Banville as my least favourite writer - though clearly there is much competition.

Finished Red Shift at a suitably spooky Midlands cottage this weekend. Wow. I’ve never read any Garner before but I was pretty blown away - even though it’s a hard, austere book and not much fun to read! - and it keeps getting bigger in my head since I finished it. I guess I was expecting some sort of angsty, proto-YA adventure novel, but instead I got this astonishing, weird, idea-stacked modernist masterpiece - I’ve never read anything like it. Plus it’s SUPER SAD. Good little book.

red shift fuckin rules