Summer 2020: What Are You Reading as the Sun Bakes the Arctic Ocean?

Now reading a bit of Wodehouse insanity, Uncle Fred in the Springtime, with a plot so convoluted it could not be summarized in fewer than 20 closely-spaced pages.

Lurev it, rec'd it a couple times on prev WAYRs: Uncle Fred is truly to the manor born, but/and truly means to help---something like a funhouse Jeeves...

Lurv it, that is.

I publish my list at the end of every year. Here's my 2019: https://tedreeswords.com/2020/01/01/books-read-2019/

But keep in mind that I was on a light teaching load and never went out.

There's also an ILB thread for year-end reading lists every year. Here's last year's: What did you read in 2019?

Thanks Aimless! Tbh I only started looking at this board upon my most recent return to ILX.

It's a fine little corner of ILX. Very soothing compared to the other boards. Opinions abound here but any controversies are served unheated.

Agreed.

I've really struggled with picking up something that sticks with me recently. Had a failed run at Murnane's The Plains, which felt like one big joke that went on too long, with not a lot grounding it in actual humanity. Was initially thrilled with, but quickly bored by, Gombrowicz' Diaries. Saw Drifts by Kate Zambreno getting discussed a bit, and thought it sounded interesting. Was definitely a nice balm, very readable, and has helped me get out of the rut I was in. I enjoy most of the stuff marketed as autofiction, and I think this one nicely captures a sense of the distractedness of modern life, of the struggle to pay attention and get something done, but still finding moments of joy within it all: from art, relationships, animals (Especially animals. She really loves her dog to a degree that is alien to me as a non-pet lover). Contains meditations on some of my own favourite writers like Walser, Sebald, Kafka, but she is mainly preoccupied by the life of Rilke, a writer I've always found it hard to connect with. Introduced me to the work of Durer. Takes digs at Knausgaard and Lerner for the way they approach their work, but is trying to do basically the same thing as they do. Is she as successful as them? For me, less than Knausgaard, about the same as Lerner.

I reread John Gross's JAMES JOYCE (1970), the first book on Joyce I ever read and, I realise, probably a crucial book in setting my literary interests for life - even though the book is no hagiography.

A brief skim of life and work, it's superbly readable - a model of how to 'introduce' something in prose so smooth that the reader hardly notices it's there. The life is narrated with terrific succinctness, and accuracy. Many of the judgments are fair, and I found literally no errors of fact that I can recall.

It does make more of Ulysses being a maze of allusions and myths than I would, or many might do now - this seems to me rather a false problem. Most of what's in Ulysses can be deciphered quite straightforwardly, when 'decipher' is even the word. It's also unusually harsh on the character of Molly Bloom. (There were 18 of these Modern Masters volumes at the time, all about male figures, and all by male authors.)

The oddest thing about the book is that it almost never quotes Joyce's actual work at all. I wonder if this was for copyright reasons, or Gross just thought he could paraphrase it all more briskly. He does it very well, but with this of all authors it might be relevant to see the actual words on the page.

Triggercut, I'd try the plains again when or if yr ever in the mood for a book about what it means to be an artist. In the end, it is a book that is one long, weird allegory, that has some really interesting bits in it...

But then again, we could just have differing taste, as I find Zambreno totally unreadable! Lol

I want to like Murnane so badly because a) I find him a really interesting figure, and b) as an Australian I have massive cultural cringe when it comes to literature. He's one of the few prominent Australian writers who seems to owe a lot to Modernism, and feels totally seperate from the bland Winton-core peddled by most Australian writers. So I appreciate him for that, but have found it difficult to connect with his work.

I got a fair way through his Collected Stories about a year or so ago, and liked it okay, but I didn't feel much, besides being a little alienated. For The Plains, I found the bits about the rival artistic movements amusing, and enjoyed the idea the scenes involving the artists clamouring for patronage from the completely pissed landowners. I got up to the part where the filmmaker gets to the landowner's estate and that's where it lost me. I get that it's allegorical, but I couldn't really feel much, or connect the world or people he was talking about to any reality. But that's on me, I guess. This has been a weird year, so I notice that I'm frustrated by the stuff that actually challenges me, and am enjoying the stuff that soothes me. I'm sure I'll give it another go eventually.

Aus is a blind spot for me too, tbh. Other than Murnane and some Aboriginal poets like Lionel Fogarty, I'm at a loss!

(Then again, I'm from the US and live here still, so that I know anything about Australian lit at all is somewhat of an achievement, I guess!)

Also, tho, I do think that one has to sort of be in a very specific mindset to really dive into Murnane. I just happened to approach him at the right time of my life!

Yall have me trying to think of---somebody---whose life work, as described in contextualizing of a collection, I inferred as ummmmm---maybe like Alice Munro, that kind of discipline, but also with more of a sense of personal experience, what she and/or other women have come to at this point, and what they make of it, in her view. Does that ring a bell---? Damn I can almost see her name.

I am now reading Picture a long form journalistic piece by Lillian Ross profiling John Huston as he attempts to film a script of The Red Badge of Courage. It was originally published as a serial in the New Yorker in 1952. This is a NYRB reprint edition I checked out of the local public library.

Sorry, I can't help with the author name, dow.

Should have specified that I was trying to think of an Australian short story specialist's name (though she may have also written a novel or two). Somebody still active, at least 'til recently.

Somebody well into middle age, or older.

Helen Garner?

Listening: Just started John Crowley's AEgypt. I struggle with Crowley. I've started both Little, Big and Engine Summer. The first was impenetrable, the second maybe a little easier on the brain.

I love all three of those, will reread them someday, but you inspired me to read Beasts which was also great, and basically takes Wittengtstein quote "If a lion could speak we could not understand him" as its starting point. Now to get hold of his book about intelligent crows. We have a John Crowley thread btw: Tell Me About John Crowley

Maria Gabriela Llansol - The Geography of Rebels
Janet Malcolm - The Silent Woman

Probably this year's most challenging read, not that it was difficult to read, more around getting hold of a writer's voice and where its coming from. The book seems to involve a series of tableaux involving a cast of characters drawn from the medieval all the way up to Nietzsche. They share a space in a commune-like manner, and all that comes with it - mostly thoughts, some around the practice of writing, in her obituary you get some of her own personal history.

An interesting writer except it will need more translations and multiple reads.

No problems as such with Malcolm's book on Plath. Like the poems, read Bell Jar and love Letters Home. It was good to live with this material and knowing the (boring, like so much of the literary scene) controversy before reading this book. Its a biography within a biography as Malcolm details the culture industry surrounding Plath and Hughes, where she goes after the biographers. She says she comes down on the side of Hughes (I think this is more out of the sense of the way he has been treated by biographers), but she details enough of all sides, for the most part. I think it lacks is a bit more detail on Assia Wevill (the woman Hughes left Plath for), as a counter balance to the detail on Plath's main boyfriend before Hughes came along. Plath disparages the previous boyfriend as not enough of a hunk; otoh Wevill was a beauty in the way Plath was not (Malcolm says this in one line but leaves it)). There is tabloidy level stuff that Malcolm often gets at but doesn't go on with, which you can be also thankful for. The story is as balanced as its going to get, but I can see how it could never be the final word. Although it is for me. What makes the book are the asides on the nature of writing, biography, journalism, stories and memory, so you learn things too, rather than just interviews with mostly terrible people.

Count me as someone who loves Murnane. Like tiggercut, some of the set pieces in The Plains left something to be desired, but the writing is so so good I ended up not caring. He is probably the only (maybe Anne Carson) writer in English that I'd like to win the Nobel (I get the sense Australians would be trolled by this, but its mostly because he is one of the few writers writing in English that aren't embarrassing). Really look forward to picking up a couple more books that have been published/re-issued over here in the last year or so.

I enjoy most of the stuff marketed as autofiction, and I think this one nicely captures a sense of the distractedness of modern life, of the struggle to pay attention and get something done, but still finding moments of joy within it all: from art, relationships, animals (Especially animals. She really loves her dog to a degree that is alien to me as a non-pet lover). Contains meditations on some of my own favourite writers like Walser, Sebald, Kafka, but she is mainly preoccupied by the life of Rilke, a writer I've always found it hard to connect with. Introduced me to the work of Durer.

I like this but I am really trying to avoid writers talking about other writers. Seems lazy, plus I think I am getting to a stage where I've read as much as the writer so any thoughts on it might rub me up the wrong way too (I've read a ton of Rilke, and all of those other people).

I've finally started on a book I've owned for years and never read: C.P. Curran, JAMES JOYCE REMEMBERED (1968). Despite having read a lot about Joyce over the years, I've been curiously neglectful of the genre of 'the Joyce I knew'. Well, I know Budgen, Gilbert (x2), Power - but I never read Curran, Colum or even, in truth, the brother.

It's fascinating, actually, to get this almost first-hand account. The detail of what Joyce really read at university, the way he talked, etc. Glad to be on this book now.

Helen Garner?
Sounds right, thanks triggercut! Think this is what I read:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/12/12/helen-garners-savage-self-scrutiny

one of the few writers writing in English that aren't embarrassing Helluva blurb!

I read The Silent Woman when The New Yorker published a long excerpt in the summer of '93; it haunted me. I love her Chekhov and Stein studies, but this one might be her best.

The meeting between Malcolm and Jacqueline Rose in The Silent Woman is p electrifying!

The Silent Woman is really great. In my memory it's a huge book: it fits so much into what is a pretty slim volume. Her book on psychoanalysis is fantastic.

oh wow -- she's in trouble today!

Re: Murnane, I read The Plains when I had a couple hours to kill in a library, and found it quite hypnotic and oddly funny, but I don’t really know what I took away from it. His story “Finger Web” still gives me chills, though - his weird stylistic tics, refusal to name characters, etc, have this kind of distancing effect even as the sense builds that something bad is going on, and then the last few paragraphs reveal the full horror of what he’s writing about. Very insidiously disturbing story, I recommend it!

I just finished reading Chaos, by Tom O’Neill, his unnerving book from last year on the Manson case, the various possible conspiracies surrounding it, and the author’s own tendency to get lost in this labyrinth of contradictions and impossible-to-prove theories. Inevitably frustrating but still worth reading. Vincent Bugliosi sure seems to be a terrible person!

I find Zambreno totally unreadable!

let it be known that table and i are the same person, i am a table sock, etc.

i am the table

Lol Brad.

I am to finish Mark Francis Johnson's Sham Refugia today, and then will spend the rest of the day preparing for the workshop I facilitate tonight...which means reading excerpts from a number of poets, plus poems from three workshop participants. Tuesdays are packed!

Virtual, flesh, both?

(None of the above?)(like a message board, then?)

It's a Virtual thing. I started running them this past summer. Participants from all over the country! I'm running two this fall and both are already full.

i reread (with a 15 year interval) room temperature by nicholson baker. it lands differently now i'm a father, but it has not aged well objectively. i remember liking mezzanine more, so i'm going to reread that at some point this month too.

i'm now reading the unconsoled by kazuo ishiguro. about 1/4 the way through. it captures the maddening logic of a dream well. there's a bit with a piano performance that reminded me very strongly of the coffee tasting scene in mulholland drive. not sure if it's going to be interesting after 300 more pages.

but i'm not sure that interesting enough to sustain 500 pages. i guess we'll see.

The meeting between Malcolm and Jacqueline Rose in The Silent Woman is p electrifying!

― Ward Fowler, Tuesday, 8 September 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Yes but I also love how, a mere 20 pages later, she is sitting in with Thomas.

Started Joyelle McSweeney's 'Toxicon & Arachne' this morning since I'm on a poetry jag. My feeling toward the book is pretty neutral, at this point-- like many poets with tenured jobs, the sociopolitical commentary in the work is a little too obvious and overdone to really make much of an impact on anyone whose read Language, KSW, or other associated movements. In other words, where it wants to be strident, it feels tame.

But seeing as how the second part of the book was written in the immediate aftermath of the death of her newborn and is supposed to be shockingly bracing, I'm going to stick with it.

As is often the case, I was sent this as a bonus with a book that the publisher thought I'd like to review...and that latter book turns out to be wholly unimpressive, imho, and this one more interesting.

I finished Curran's JAMES JOYCE REMEMBERED. Tremendous details in this book. I have Herbert Gorman's biography here, really ought to read that.

i'm now reading the unconsoled by kazuo ishiguro. about 1/4 the way through. it captures the maddening logic of a dream well. there's a bit with a piano performance that reminded me very strongly of the coffee tasting scene in mulholland drive. not sure if it's going to be interesting after 300 more pages.

i could almost wish it were twice as long. what sustains it imo is the use it puts this dream logic to - dissecting in agonising detail the quotidian agonies, anxieties, frustrations, and heartbreaks of human life (sounds amazing, sign me up!), leavened with a surreal humour that wouldn't be available in a more conventional narrative.

That McSweeney book I mentioned above doesn't get much better, sadly.

It makes me wonder sometimes how such mediocre talents get these fancy jobs, but alas, I guess I will be wondering such for the rest of my life. Or until I, a mediocre talent, get a fancy job.

10 years late to the party but I read A Visit from the Goon Squad last week. I think I would have enjoyed it a lot less if I had tried to read it before the pandemic: even when I didn't sympathize with the characters (which was often, because they're all pathological New Yorkers) I was willing to keep reading and allow the interesting things happening around them to distract me from the four walls closing in around my cat and me.

I then moved on to Nell Zink's The Wallcreeper, which I'm already nearly done with. Not sure there's enough plot and character development to keep the novel from dragging in places, but DANG! she can write. I can't remember the last book I read with such a high laughs-per-page ratio -- and the pages are small, so that's saying something!

Started Gravity’s Rainbow. Made it through 80 pages in college, then 300 pages in law school. This time I’m going all the way.

― Mazzy Tsar (PBKR), Thursday, March 28, 2019 11:24 AM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

Just this morning I finally finished after about 18 months of reading. Good god. So many questions; can someone explain it all to me? Why does Slothrop fade away in the last quarter of the book? Why the digressions to 1970 (is this to show a post-Rocket world living under fear of annihilation?)?

The Pökler chapter might be the most moving passage. The writing near the end is also very beautiful. More thoughts to come.

My mother gave me two copies of Going Squad in back to back years. One was signed. Both were put on the curb without being read, though that's probably for the Authors You Will Never Read thread.

Xpost I enjoyed some of GR too, and could see how it was an (over-) extension of prev. perceived agenda in earlier stuff, which I preferred. Don't try too hard with it, like he did (yeah, I'm that one guy). Some people say none of his subsequent works are as Great, so maybe I'll try some of those too.

I did subject Tremor of Intent to the totally unfair Random Read Test, and the words seemed to squirm with self-consciousness, but maybe I'll try again---the movie, at least: can see how he and Paul Thomas Anderson and Joaquin Phoenix might be kindred spirits, in a good way).

Other Zink books are such a disappointment after Wallcreeper, sadly.

Ciaran Carson - The Star Factory

Poet's prose. Full of words (you feel their materiality), a pile of digressions, reflections and experience. I'll check but I think Mandelstam does something similar in Journey to Armenia, except Belfast is where Carson has grown-up and lived. I think quotes about Belfast from other sources Carson picks up do at times detract a bit, just cutting him off when he is at his (and our) best. But that's a minor complaint in a great, great find.

just started Too Much & Never Enough the Mary Trump book and am a couple of chapters in.
Hadn't realised she was a clinical psychologist, just knew she was a niece.
She's going over the childhood influences on why he may be behaving the way he does.
NOt very long so will finish this before long i hope.
Seemed to be one of the books on the subject that might be better tahn others and add some insight.
I have soem o the others elsewhere that never moved down the to be read list