Winter 2021: ...and you're reading WHAT?!

yes they all are. the first one is a chekhov which he's analyzing a page at a time.

is it in the cart? that's the only one i've read!

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, February 8, 2021 10:38 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

yep. the second story is turgenev, "the singers". saunders goes on about how his students always grouse about the heavily descriptive style, how the action keeps getting interrupted by it, which .. i loved that and thought it was funny. sort of tired of the super streamlined modernist hemmingway approach tbh so i found that aspect refreshing - give me all your beautiful words! it's definitely my favorite story so far.

I have finally read 'The Nose' thanks to this book, but I have mixed feelings about Saunders' commentaries, which I will mull upon before sharing...

What did you think of the Ali Smith, Alfred?

I tried some of Wallace Shawn's essays recently and found them kinda vacuous - to the point that I assumed I was missing something.

I like teaching a few Saunders stories, but also find his whole public intellectual persona deeply annoying, for some reason. Was obsessed with him when I was in high school.

I am reading Jackie Wang's 'The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us From the Void,' which has some positives going for it: Jackie and I have existed in the same worlds of rad-left politics, punk rock, and academia for many years. In addition, my roommate from junior year of college— when I started posting on ILX, actually!— did illustrations for the book.

That said, while the content is relatable and hits notes that I agree with, the poetry is formally uninteresting— mostly end-stopped lines and long prose blocks. The older I get, the more conservative I get about this point— one of the basic units of verse is the line, and to eschew its use without good reason is to throw away one of the main tools available to a poet.

What did you think of the Ali Smith, Alfred?

My third novel. It took a bit through Autumn to get that discursiveness is her method, which means some of her arias work better than others.

Saunders just seems to do the same thing over and over these days.

great post

the same thing over and over

who doesn't

civilwarland is amazing but his work gets worse as it goes on imo, gets cloudy with sentiment

i still liked lincoln in the bardo anyway

Lincoln in the Bardo was so good! I loved it

Well, as a more specific example, he just had a story in the New Yorker about a disaffected confused guy working in some sort of weird amusement park. It's possible to suggest this is evidence he is going over the same ground repeatedly, but apparently this is not allowed.

I finished Peter Wollen's SIGNS & MEANING IN THE CINEMA (1969).

Chapter One: Eisenstein. A quite vivid account of the origins of the 'montage of attractions' etc, but mostly a chronological account of SME's career. Unusual perhaps in being critical of him while still supportive.

Chapter Two: The Auteur Theory. This I wanted to read Wollen on. Mainly he talks about Ford and Hawks, in a 'structuralist' sort of way, ie: their films are structured around repeated oppositions. Perhaps, but it seemed limited. The idea of style hardly comes up. Then PW goes into an interesting long section on text vs performance throughout the history of art.

Chapter Three: Semiology of the Cinema. Basically a case for C.S. Pierce and his tripartite theory of signs as the best way to describe film. Subtle points here on how film signs can be indexical, iconic and symbolic all at once.

Conclusion (1972): This is odd. Wollen is in a totally different mood, talks about auteurism in a very different way, no longer has the subtle interest in types of sign. It's as if French Theory and a certain Dziga-Vertov-Group avant-garde have taken him over and made him a different thinker, in 3 years. He makes a big argument for 'modernism' as the model of textual communication, but seems to be making straw men of the opposing concepts. Godard is even more central here than he was at the very end of the 1969 edition.

sp: C.S. Peirce.

It's as if French Theory and a certain Dziga-Vertov-Group avant-garde have taken him over and made him a different thinker, in 3 years.

This isn't so surprising or unusual tho, in terms of film theory/practice in the post-68 period - things were moving fast! I think the basic text of Signs and Meaning is even older than 69 so pretty early in terms of semiotics/structuralism being applied to film; by 72, Wollen was far from alone in film theory or wider critical theory in revisiting and overhauling their thought - Robin Wood being perhaps the most notable example (Leavisite close reader to psychoanalytic Marxist-Feminist).

JUst finished Angela Saini's INferior her book o Gender inequality. Qui8te like her work, Superior the one on Race Science is a must read.
Hope there's more coming, have a couple of webinars by her on this to look forward to over next few weeks.
NOw just wish I hadn't missed teh 2nd part of her BBC thing on Eugenics cos I can't find a d/ld that works.

Still working away at David Olusoga;s The World's War but have had another couple oif things I was working away at at the same time. Good book though. THink I could do with a book on a similar subject concerning WWII too though since this is all WWI.

want to read some Kehinde Andrews since I've been catching webinars by him.

Next up is probably going to be 1491 which I've been meaning to read for ages. 1491 picked I think to illustrate teh fact taht there were people who existed in teh world taht Columbus stumbled on for who that was just an incident in a continual timeline. THough 1491 is of course a Eurocentric timeline. I think his sequel 1493 explores the imapct of the discovery of teh New World on that of Europe.
I started it a couple of months ago but then bought Inferior so read that first and then had a great delay in finisghing it. Xmas and teh like.

Read a bit of the Sword In The Stone last night where Wart meets Merlyn. That's another thing I've been meaning to read for years. Saw the Disney cartoon as a kid so decades. Not sure if it was all that time but has been a lot of it. Now have had teh omnibus copy I have for a year plus. Not spending enough time reading probably.

Well, as a more specific example, he just had a story in the New Yorker about a disaffected confused guy working in some sort of weird amusement park. It's possible to suggest this is evidence he is going over the same ground repeatedly, but apparently this is not allowed. Yeah, aside from so-far uncollected New Yorker stories, the ones I've read wound up in Tenth of December, which gets predictable fast, esp. the overwrought (in detail as well as emotion) arias of pathos, and the disaffected etc. would fit right in. Some of the simpler ones are better, but even/especially among those, one is from the POV of a hyper kid and an old man with dementia, setting out from different points into undeveloped terrain, and you just know they're going to somehow bump into each other and have A Saunders Moment, looking at the sunrise and/or sunset, and that's what happens.
Did like the one about the Middle Eastern Wars vet back in the States, wandering around, who gets into a brief conversation with some convenience store workers, and they're commenting on how marginalized, how forgettable such warriors have become for most civilians (and the media), over the years and years and years---later, seems like he might flip out, but gets re-absorbed into his family dynamic, at least for now, in a plausible way.
Saunders as social realist! Wish he would do more like this, since it suits his talents/interests, and seems like, from the reviews, that he doesn't fuck around w historical basis of Lincoln At The Bardo, while still drawing on his imaginative powers, so will check that out.

And I do like some of his more risky ventures, but mainly, so far, having not read his novel, for socio-historical concerns/beefs/burns x contemporary literary rocket juice (descendants of Ralph Ellison etc.) I prefer Kelly Link, ZZ Packer, Karen Russell.

I like Saunders, especially the novel, but the mode where all protagonists are sincere, wide-eyed dumb dumbs gets old. The sci-fi dystopias as on-the-nose social commentary are still fun to read though, idk.

I'm finally reading Lorrie Moore (the one you think), and it's great.

I finished the Maigret novel last night. They're all quite short. I think Cather's Song of the Lark is at the head of the queue right now and it will get auditioned this evening, but I have a fistful of interesting books available and if the Cather doesn't grab me quickly she has some very strong competition lurking in the pile.

I read Donald Davie's ESSEX POEMS: 1963-1967 (1969). A nice object, a book with line-drawing illustrations. The tone is bleak. Some moments in the poems hit home, but a lot of is rather oblique and obscure to me. It's curious to recall that Davie was grouped with the Movement, as these poems are much less directly communicative and obviously coherent than Larkin's. He draws on Pasternak (whom I don't know). He was also a Poundian, and I think I can see a Poundian touch somewhere here, for instance in the tendency to repetition that Larkin wouldn't have done.

I'm finally reading Lorrie Moore (the one you think), and it's great.

― change display name (Jordan),

Which?

It seems to me that Moore peaked in the 1990s, with FROG HOSPITAL and BIRDS OF AMERICA; that before that, she was a bit brittle (SELF HELP), and after it, a bit unfocused (GATE) - but also that her talent is great enough and consistent enough that even the lesser Lorrie is better than the best of most other people.

I've read HOMER'S ODYSSEY (2006) by Simon Armitage. This version of the epic takes less than a day to read. It's brisk, communicative - in fact it's basically the script of a radio play. It doesn't contain that much obvious poetry, nor Homeric epithets. But it conveys a story well, makes certain things clearer to me, and delivers the encounters with the Cyclops and Sirens especially vividly (the Cyclops' dumb voice; the Sirens' circling song).

My sense is that the things that seem most exciting about the Odyssey (the encounters with particular monsters and threats) are things that Homer, or most versions, said very little about; and that most of the text is generally about relations between people - Odyssey, the suitors and other less interesting characters. If I'm right, it's odd that someone invented such vivid monsters and adventures and then made relatively little of them.

But the business with Eumaeus, the suitors, the scar, the bow, are all clearer to me now than they were before.

It seems to me that Moore peaked in the 1990s, with FROG HOSPITAL and BIRDS OF AMERICA; that before that, she was a bit brittle (SELF HELP), and after it, a bit unfocused (GATE) - but also that her talent is great enough and consistent enough that even the lesser Lorrie is better than the best of most other people.

― the pinefox, Saturday, February 13, 2021 4:17 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i disagree with the latter half of this, i found bark mostly very bad, but otherwise yeah this is the progression. frog hospital still so great

Bark has "Wings," one of her very best.

Finished the Wang book, which got better as it went on and I got into the rhythms of it.

Read a journal with some friends' writing in it this morning, and going to read another issue in a little bit.

I've been reading Beddoes' "Death's Jest-Book" before falling asleep every night, and it's been having a funny effect on my dreams, which is kind of neat! I am enjoying myself immensely whilst reading it, tho I am usually a little stoned on good indica as I rest my head, so maybe that's it.

Late this afternoon, I'm picking up a package from a friend whose become a distributor for UK-based Face Press— it's the SEVEN chapbooks by JH Prynne that they released during 2020. Cost me a pretty penny, but Prynne stuff is so scarce in the US that even if I don't like something, I can easily just keep it and sell it for an absurd amount of money in a few years. But I adore Prynne, so think I'll be okay with all of it :-)

halfway through Magda Szabo's Abigail. after the very emotional start, it's been in a bit of a rut, taking too long to go through the motions to bridge the major plot points.

gave up on The Hate U Give, everything was predictable. guess i'm not a young adult any more.

My sense is that the things that seem most exciting about the Odyssey (the encounters with particular monsters and threats) are things that Homer, or most versions, said very little about; and that most of the text is generally about relations between people - Odyssey, the suitors and other less interesting characters. If I'm right, it's odd that someone invented such vivid monsters and adventures and then made relatively little of them.

― the pinefox, Saturday, February 13, 2021 3:54 PM (yesterday)

i read emily wilson's translation of the odyssey recently. it was highly acclaimed when it came out and i can see why: it reads really well. even the bits that i had remembered being a little dull are easy to get through in this version. odysseus does emerge as a more interesting character (and more of a bastard, honestly) here than in other versions i've read. but this readability may have come at a bit of a cost. after reading it i went to look at reviews and found one by a classics scholar who complained that, by writing in shorter lines than homer (lines of about 10 syllables, as opposed to lines of 15 syllables in the greek), wilson had shortened the entire poem by a third! so, probably not the only translation anyone should read, but i wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone.

something that stood out to me in this version is that almost all of the famous fantastical adventures -- the cyclops, sirens, circe -- are told in flashback by odysseus, who is described by homer in terms that wilson chooses to translate as (for example) "the lord of lies" and "the master of deceit." in other words, it's at least possible that he's making it all up!

J.D.: yes on your last point - they're told to the court of the Phaeacians. There's a tale-within-tale structure here. I hadn't quite picked up on your thought, that it was invented. I did read a big LRB review of Wilson.

As a Joycean, I observe that this tale within tale structure doesn't really get transferred to ULYSSES, where we see most things first-hand.

something that stood out to me in this version is that almost all of the famous fantastical adventures -- the cyclops, sirens, circe -- are told in flashback by odysseus, who is described by homer in terms that wilson chooses to translate as (for example) "the lord of lies" and "the master of deceit." in other words, it's at least possible that he's making it all up!

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.),

Daniel Mendelsohn's book touches exactly this point.

Donald Davie: PURITY OF DICTION IN ENGLISH VERSE (1952).

I think 'diction' here means something like: the vocabulary that a poet allows himself or herself to use, as appropriately poetic. I don't feel that DD defines it terrifically clearly, though as critical writers go he is quite clear.

I am not certain that I get the argument yet. I might only read the first half of the book. It's in an edition that also contains its follow-up, ARTICULATE ENERGY.

The main thing that one would notice about DD, like Empson, is his tremendous intimacy with the English poetic canon. Wordsworth, Pope, but also Gray, Goldsmith and a lot of poets now never mentioned. He knows them all and can summon them at will, like notes on his piano.

yeah, it is interesting that the monster part of the Odyssey is so short; agree that it's mostly a story about relations between people, but that's why I like it so much. There's such nuance and delicacy to his interactions with Nausikaa and to the way he and Penelope carefully re-establish contact after twenty years. That moment when Odysseus finally gets to Ithaka, and it's completely unchanged but he doesn't recognize it and everything looks strange to him, sticks in my mind more than any of the monsters.

Really enjoyed the let's Talk About Myths Baby retelling of teh Odyssey. NOt getting as into the Aeneid but I think I have more webinars I'm watching at the moment.

Got further into the Sword iN the Stone. Wondered this morning where camelot was sourced from then foun dout thsi afternoon that it was from this The once & Future King source too.
Surprised to see TH White was English or Rajish or whatever. I thought the tone indicated he was American. Quite enjoying it though or at least when I'm not wondering how much shorter an owl is than a hat because of description in it.

Today I've read 3/4 of Seamus Heaney's WINTERING OUT (1972).

Not getting as into the Aeneid

The Odyssey is more of an organic foundational myth establishing what it means to be culturally Greek, while the Aeneid is far more synthetic and derivative and the identity being established is political, imperial and hegemonic.

pinefox, I thought of you the other day because I read this interesting article in LitHub about Ciaran Carson, a review of Heaney's North, and literary culture in the internet age. https://lithub.com/when-talking-about-poetry-online-goes-very-wrong/

I'm finally reading Lorrie Moore (the one you think), and it's great.

― change display name (Jordan),

Which?

― meticulously crafted, socially responsible, morally upsta (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, February 13, 2021 4:48 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Birds of America. I don't know why I waited to so long to read her (aside from the odd NYer story), given that she teachers here and I have a number of friends who have been students or worked with her.

yay! that book is perfect.

I read two books this weekend that I'd attempted before and failed to stick with, The Left Hand of Darkness and Nightwood. Both, of course, turned out to be incredible. Nightwood was a fun Valentine's Day read.

Table: I know of Carson's review way back, but not this latest discussion - thanks; sounds interesting.

Reading the Saunders Russians book too. It's good! I suppose it's a testament his enthusiasm that I increasingly want to skip the Saunders bits to read the stories instead. It reminds me a little of the Hal Hartley short that made me want to read "Notes from the Underground" as a teenager.

I finished WINTERING OUT last night. A lot of it is familiar but I'd never read the collection straight through. It's in two Parts, though the nature of the parts isn't made explicit. Is the second more about family?

My overall feeling, repeatedly, was the feeling I have registered before about Heaney. Namely that what his poems are actually getting it is often surprisingly obscure, and, in particular, the poems often tend to end on a mysterious, unresolved note. They're not even 'ambiguous' as that would seem to suggest hesitating between clear possibilities. Here, I often don't know what the point was and often can't be sure that a poem has ended till I turn the page and see that a new poem is starting. If asked for an example of all this, I'd say ... most of the poems. The exceptions are the ones that are clear and communicative.

If Heaney shows a consistent strength amid this, I suppose it's just texture: that line by line, he often has a sense of sound, of natural substances like earth, water, plants; a semantic or at least material richness. I'm not sure that he is often putting that in the service of any larger meaning, or if he is, I'm often not getting it.

A fact about Heaney, especially early Heaney, remains: the absence of 'modern' materials in the poetry - like, say, cars, radio, TV. What his poetry live with is, again, earth, roots, streams; things that might be hundreds of years old. There are exceptions to this, probably more so in later work, but consider the contrast with Auden & Spender as 'Pylon Poets' of the 1930s.

A few poems standing out:

* I love 'A New Song', where he seems to be occupying a gallant ballad form and filling it with beautiful words, names, sentiments, and a hint of insurgency.

* 'Gifts of Rain' I suspect is the most accomplished, major work in this book. It might seem to nod to larger things like 'history', but maybe it's more just about ... rain. Just a modern epic poem rendering the element: water, flood, soaking, in the fields and hills. I was in a seminar many years ago where the tutor got us to unpack how this poem worked, and it was a revelation. But I can't now remember what was said, or what I learned that day.

'The Tollund Man': here, at last, he seems to be saying something, pointing us somewhere, and the famous last stanza still stands as strong.

Not to forget the italicized poem on the dedication page, later adapted into 'Whatever You Say, Say Nothing', and quite standing out from the rest of this book in its bleak, sardonic ... modernity!

I then started Simon Armitage's translation (2007) of SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT.

I like this, and I appreciate Armitage's work in making these old stories and poems accessible to us now. As far as I can tell, this book is much closer in length and dimensions to the original than his ODYSSEY was. It also picks up on what he says is an alliterative mode in the original, very thoroughly - that is, literally every line has 3 or more alliterations. A piece of formalism, if you like. He also brings out things like the richness of the feast and of Gawain's armour. I think this book is really good. I'm glad to have the chance to learn from it more about literary history.

I'm about 2/3rds through Bleak House now. I was losing the plot a bit in the middle when 2 new characters seemed to be added every chapter - but its getting good now. Also: there was a spontaneous combustion which was pretty funny.

Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier. First page: ok this is going to be heartbreaking. Tenth page: wow you incredible shits.

(another one, like age of innocence, that i've read and can't remember a thing about)

I finished the Symbols, Signals and Noise by JR Pierce. I liked the chapters on information theory itself better than the later chapters where he draws connections to other fields like physics, cybernetics, art and psychology. I feel satisfied that it did give me a better sense of some of them foundational work in the field. I'm always somewhat in awe of mathematicians who come up with novel and non-obvious proofs. Now on a much lighter note, I'm reading Code of the Woosters by Wodehouse.

Finished The Return of the Soldier, one of the incredible shits managed to turn herself around and gain some considerable compassion and the story was very moving; at the same time it's a brazen document of extreme classism, literally viewing the poor as "insect things", "repulsively furred with neglect and poverty", and not mere victims of circumstance but sour and squalid and ugly to their very marrow.

I finish SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT. Basically very good, helped by its seasonal, wintry flavour and its uncanny atmosphere. If anything the jovial last conversation between the two title characters, revealing the true identity of the lady in the castle etc, maybe undermines this and makes it less mysterious than it ought to be. The sense of sexual tension between Gawain and that lady, remarkable in such an old story, is also undermined by the assertion here that it was all a test cooked up by her and her husband, and that she's Gawain's aunt anyway (so maybe she was using magic to look young, as she was to make the Green Knight look green?).

As far as I know, Simon Armitage kept to a line by line translation so every line of his is a version of the original line. He keeps the alliteration extremely well. He sometimes uses anachronisms, which might sound a good idea, but might come out as pointlessly bathetic - 'just the job' (line 1856), 'mega-blow' (2343). But those are few. The translator also keeps stuff that a modern adaptation might get rid of, like the lament about women's tricks (page 110) and the ending, which culminates in 'AMEN' and 'HONY SOYT QUI MAL PENCE'; which I note means 'Shame on anyone who thinks bad of it', but has been left untranslated from whatever form of Middle French it was.

I recommend this book.