2019 Autumn: What Are You Reading as the Light Drifts Southward?

I got the James Baldwin collected essays from Library of America a while ago and started it this week, beginning with Notes of a Native Son. James Baldwin is all he’s cracked up to be it turns out: sad, beautiful, wry, relevant.

I finished Eichmann in Jerusalem a couple of nights ago. It was very informative regarding all the main elements of the trial and Eichmann's crimes. Arendt's command of the facts and her powers of observation and penetration were quite impressive. Apparently her reportage on the trial and the resulting book were attacked in a variety of ways, but those attacks and subsequent controversy have faded away, leaving the book to speak for itself. It does so with great clarity and persuasiveness.

I would say her central point was that Eichmann was not so much a monster of hateful criminal depravity, but a very small man who earned his position in the Nazi hierarchy through his hard work, his petty ambition for advancement, his bland self-absorption, a remarkable capacity for self-delusion, a fondness for adopting slogans in place of thoughts, and a grotesque lack of compassion. He had so little human definition that he easily warped himself into the required shape to fit into the Nazi's genocidal enterprise.

Been reading William Vollmann’s Last Stories and Other Stories, which a friend gifted me recently. I’ve read a lot of his stuff over the years but haven’t touched any of his books in abt a decade. I was worried I wouldn’t have the patience anymore for his style and affectations, but I’ve been enjoying it so far. All the baroquely-told tales of death and decay are kind of perfect for these grey mid-October afternoons.

... how much simpler a writer (Conrad) is than James. I had vaguely imagined them as stylistically a bit closer together.

Conrad is stylistically simpler, but thematically the reverse might be true. I don't think James attempted anything on the scale of Nostromo.

The Princess Casamassima vs. The Secret Agent would be a good apples-to-apples comparison.

I'm contemplating whether or not to make another run at reading The Divine Comedy - I've faltered in the past midway through the Purgatorio. I picked up Mandelbaum's translation last night and read the first three cantos of the Inferno, but if I am going to succeed, I think I had better start in the Purgatorio and move on from there. Or I might just bag it and go another direction. I may not be up to the mark for 500 pages of dense allegorical theological poetry right now.

Apparently her reportage on the trial and the resulting book were attacked in a variety of ways, but those attacks and subsequent controversy have faded away, leaving the book to speak for itself. It does so with great clarity and persuasiveness.

agree that in hindsight the "controversy" seems sorta ridiculous, essentially her getting taken to task for maintaining a critical eye rather than just parroting emerging orthodoxy.

to me one of the other really striking things was realizing just how convoluted and dysfunctional the Nazi hierarchy was. As a kid I only heard the more notorious names - Hitler, Goerring, Goebbels, Eichmann, Himmler, Mengele - and had this picture of them all being at the top of a tightly controlled pyramid, when in reality there were layers and layers of both more powerful and less famous functionaries really running the machine.

xp

Another book I read earlier this year, Stalingrad by Antony Beevor, also exposed the essential dysfunction of the Nazi regime. It seems like they managed OK when all they had to do was control Germany, but as soon as the war started and they had to manage two-thirds of Europe and multiple battle fronts, the whole jury-rigged apparatus became increasingly chaotic.

Her collected stories doesn't feel bulky, but her latest book Your Duck Is My Duck is the way to go.

I picked this up recently and thought it improved with each story. I wasn't convinced at the start (the politics felt a bit forced), but the stories built on each other in a way that gave new meaning to the earlier ones. Ultimately it felt deeply personal and was a captivating introduction to Eisenberg.

Brad C, yes I entirely agree. That's part of what I was saying on the Henry James thread: that the immensity of his novel was in excess of its content. And yes, Conrad can deal in plots of greater scale and more obvious import.

I agree that that particular comparison of novels would be worth making.

I finished 'Karain: A Memory' and think Cedric Watts correct to find it Kipling-esque -- even though I don't know much Kipling. Tone of irony around the white men's persuasion of the native to accept their fake magic, based on Queen Victoria.

Then 'Youth: A Narrative': the first appearance of Marlow. This entire story is about things going wrong with a ship: weather, leaks, fire, explosion. It's like a cartoon, WACKY RACES or ROAD RUNNER or the like. It is also packed to the gunwales with unexplained nautical terms and slang.

Two thirds into The Sandcastle : an almost stereotypical English Novel, domesticity and repression and headmasters. It's the story of an affair, usually something that bores and/or exasperates me (baggage from being a child of divorce, probably), but I have to say that the moment where the cheating couple gets caught really HIT me in an almost horror-novel kind of way, despite not being particularly sympathetic to them in the first place (the wronged party is also such a one dimensional shrew that...probably not my place to accuse Murdoch of internalized misogyny...). Very strange that this is by the same author who wrote the knockabout, bohemian, almost Wodehousian at times Under The Net

I couldn't face the immensity of The Divine Comedy and set it aside. To save face with myself I'm reading Plato's Theatatus in a Penguin edition that has an attached, lengthy essay upon the niceties of the arguments that I shall also read. Then it's back to lighter, more entertaining fare, which means 'almost anything but Dante and Plato'.

If one wanted to read a book by JEAN RHYS, what would be the best choice?

Still reading GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES in odd moments - is it supposed to be hilarious? It's lightly droll but given its lack of substance otherwise, the lack of real comic heft is a bit disappointing.

I finished Conrad's 'Youth' and as an insomniac returned to Chris Baldick's THE MODERN MOVEMENT. Ingenious how he puts WOMEN IN LOVE into the (useful, a good idea) category of 'romance / fantasy' and hardly conceals his disdain for it (refreshing: what a dreadful, horrible book). Then he describes Powys's GLASTONBURY book and makes it sound absolutely nuts.

For Rhys I can vouch for Voyage In The Dark. That’s the only one I’ve read so far. Cold eyed and gripping.

I'd say Good Morning, Midnight for Rhys. Wide Sargasso Sea is remarkable but I'm not sure I'd suggest it as emblematic.

Voyage In The Dark is indeed a stunner.

Next up for me: Riding For Deliveroo: Resistance In The New Economy by Callum Cant. I've a friend who used to work for them - participated in trying to get Deliveroo unionized - so it'll be interesting to see how experiences match up.

Should I give Patrick White's Voss a go? If so, why?

This was an ok piece even if it doesn't make read Patrick White

https://lithub.com/on-patrick-white-australias-great-unread-novelist/

I finished GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES. I suppose it was only ever supposed to be slight. It's quite good on the curious blend of cynicism and innocence in the narrator: she's an utter diamond-digger but doesn't see anything wrong with that; a kind of amoral ingenue.

Anita Loos, I will say if I haven't before, must be simply the best-looking writer in history.

I took GOOD MORNING, MIDNIGHT from the library and started it. Coincidentally I think Jean Rhys must be one of the 5 or so best-looking writers of the expanded modernist pantheon. But I mostly won't judge the book on that basis.

Nearing the home straight of the 1910-1940 survey by Chris Baldick, very much not a good-looking writer.

I'm reading Martin Gayford's Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud. There's a story at the heart of Keiron Pim's book about David Litvinoff, wherein Litvinoff is badly beaten up, strapped into a chair and suspended, upside down, from the railings on his balcony. It was always considered to be a 'warning' from the Krays - whom Litvinoff was close to but of whom he would say far too much in public - but Pim's research seemed to lead to Freud. After reading that book I went to see a Freud painting in the Tate Britain (it had been taken down literally the day before) and for a walk around Litvinoff's old haunts in Chelsea. Man with a Blue Scarf was in the Tate shop.

It's great so far: Gayford has a huge amount of time as he sits for Freud, so it becomes a slowly uncoiling meditation on Freud's method and history, his position in the canon and something more existential as he grapples with the sense of being a subject.

Bill Bryson - Body. I know practically nothing about biology so enjoyed it in my duncey way.
George Eliot - Silas Marner. Was okay.

JD Bernal: The World, the Flesh and the Devil - An Enquiry into the Future of the Three Enemies of the Rational Soul
Interesting to see so many still-central ideas of science-fiction, like asteroid habitats, genetic engineering, generation starships, etc etc, in this nearly century-old bit of elegantly written Marxist futurology.

I don't know why I'm doing this but I am forcing myself to finish The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I hate it so much. 100 pages to go!

Anyone read "Milkman" by Anna Burns? Im 70 pages in and its excellent so far. Slightly absurd; the opening line is “The day Somebody McSomebody put a gun to my breast and called me a cat and threatened to shoot me was the same day the milkman died.” Its unique in the way it gets at the odd rituals and learned behaviours of Troubles-era Norn Iron. Surprisingly decent (and readable) for a Booker Prize winner too!

Whenever I see that Anna Burns novel I immediately start singing the Aphex Twin song to myself.

THE SECRET HISTORY I am ambivalent about - I like the idea of Tartt but I am unsure how good she really is. People have pointed out that she is an oddly trashy / thriller-ish writer packaged as more upmarket, or something of that kind - though, to be a good thriller writer is a great skill. THE SECRET HISTORY specifically, anyway, I think is mainly just too long. It's about 600pp and could be 250pp.

People here I am sure have discussed MILKMAN before. I read it in July. The best recent novel I have read in a long time. Outstanding, a minor (?) masterpiece. A great book about the Troubles, a great parade in language or exercise of voice, full of ironies, black comedy, remarkable additional touches and minor characters. Probably the best novel I have read this year.

I started rereading Nella Larsen's PASSING.

I also reread Hope Mirrlees' long modernist poem PARIS.

THE SECRET HISTORY I am ambivalent about - I like the idea of Tartt but I am unsure how good she really is. People have pointed out that she is an oddly trashy / thriller-ish writer packaged as more upmarket, or something of that kind - though, to be a good thriller writer is a great skill. THE SECRET HISTORY specifically, anyway, I think is mainly just too long. It's about 600pp and could be 250pp.

― the pinefox, Thursday, October 24, 2019 5:42 AM (

All her novels are too damn long.

I started rereading Nella Larsen's PASSING.

Love this book, very twisted (not in an 2edgy4u way).

I have begun one of R. K. Narayan's rather gentle novels, Swami and Friends, featuring schoolchildren as the main characters.

cosine pinefox on MILKMAN. Brought me entirely, movingly into a time and place I know very little about, with a deep and humane sympathy for its people

THE SECRET HISTORY I am ambivalent about - I like the idea of Tartt but I am unsure how good she really is. People have pointed out that she is an oddly trashy / thriller-ish writer packaged as more upmarket, or something of that kind - though, to be a good thriller writer is a great skill. THE SECRET HISTORY specifically, anyway, I think is mainly just too long. It's about 600pp and could be 250pp.

― the pinefox, Thursday, October 24, 2019 5:42 AM (

All her novels are too damn long.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, October 24, 2019 6:06 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

OTM. When I got to the "Part II" page halfway through I was astounded that the book hadn't ended ~75 pages ago.

I have begun one of R. K. Narayan's rather gentle novels, Swami and Friends, featuring schoolchildren as the main characters.

Narayan is the best

Love Narayan.

Donna Tartt is rubbish. And The Secret Histroy looks like a masterpiece next to the extended bullshit of The Goldfinch.

Haven’t read Tartt, would rather read Gone Girl, and I haven’t got all that much interest in that either.

Gone Girl also cack

The Secret History is a great young adult novel where young = 19/20ish, ideally first read when at university.

THE GOLDFINCH is a remarkably awful film! So that's not a good sign.

Where should I start with Narayan? The Guide? Swami and Friends?

Of those I've read, I can't say any are bad, but two that stick out in my memory are The Guide and The Painter of Signs.

I finally finished Rick Perlstein's epic tome Nixonland. I'm not sure I needed to read 700+ long pages about this, but I'll give him credit that it does pick up pace in the second half and manages to feel fresh while covering increasingly familiar material. The main context of the second half is how the American body politic slowly and haltingly comes to awareness that it is thoroughly bogged down in a world-historic shit show in Vietnam. There are lots of cautionary tales in the fact that the Democrats nominated a staunch no-nonsense antiwar candidate to face the notoriously slippery and dishonest Nixon, and despite the increasingly pervasive unpopularity of the war, still get their ass handed to them in '72.

It's familiar now because so many op-ed writers have ripped Perlstein fof.

*off

I just meant that it covers the more familiar '60s historical events like Vietnam, Watergate (though that remains one of many subplots in this book), the '72 election, etc. True that Perlsteins' take has become nearly conventional wisdom now.

The current Republican party has no idea how to address the place of Nixon in their history other than to vigorously deny that he has any relevance to the present, while hinting that he wasn't as bad as all that.

Remember that convention where Schwarzenegger talked about watching a JFK vs Nixon debate as a child in Austria, asking his dad who Nixon was, him answering "he's a republican" and Arnie going "THEN I'M A REPUBLICAN TOO"? Crowd went wild.