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

My sis got me Melville's collective poems for Xmas. Rough going. Best to open it at random, read a few stanzas from his 6000-page epic on a white dude on a Middle Eastern pilgrimage, put it down.

On Thursday I finished Scott Eyman's just marvelous Cary Grant bio. It offers contrarian tacks, fights conventional wisdom, and does the reporting too.

Melville's poetry has its fans, but I'm not one of them. They are composed in poetic form, but the form adds nothing vital.

Finished the Elrick, read S*an D. Henry-Smith's 'Wild Peach,' and began DS Marriott's 'Hoodoo Voodoo's this afternoon before taking an unexpectedly long hike in the woods.

I finished Code of the Woosters which served as my introduction to Wodehouse. I feel like the Wodehousian(?) tone has become such a paradigm of comic writing that it's almost like I had read him before. Certainly I've read many knockoffs. It is a stylish, funny and diverting work. I have no idea how true it is to the upper-class British milieu it depicts. It is almost certainly more utopian in its utter inconsequentialness than any real society that has existed on this earthly plane. Now I'm reading Going to the City by Robert Christgau.

Kehinde Andrews The New Age of Empire
Been hearing talks by him recently that seem very articulate so plunked for the book. Though glad I got it intact, odd situation with postal delivery meaning it either got delivered on an odd day or stuck out of the letterbox overnight.

Seems really good so far.
But only read intro and part of first chapter.

Steven H Gardner Another Tuneless Racket
Vol 1 Origins.
So far got through him describing how the 4 volumes will break down. & the situation that punk came out of and some influences. Though he's also shown why he doesn't think the Stooges are as all pervasive as suggested. I've disagreed with him on some points so far. Will persevere though but have been reminded of the Ugly Things acolyte who dismissed Fugazi's right to be considered punk since they'd always been math rock which still perturbs me since I like to think of that as a worthwhile mag. Might have thought it par for the course for Shindig.
But still, interesting book so far.

Cannot imagine being someone who didn't like Bartleby, so strange

I also came to Bartleby late in the day, and though I liked it, I guess I was also a little underwhelmed, no doubt because I'd read a billion references to it before coming to the actual thing.

Yes, I very much share Zelda Zonk's feeling.

What's great about 'Bartleby'?

Have finished:

Rohan, The Architecture of Paul Rudolph
Beam, Broken Glass
Toker, Fallingwater Rising

Gist of the distillation (like urine stones collected in passway): Feels very modern almost like he’s taken internet psych advice to go “gray rock”, “I’m sorry that won’t be possible”, “no is a complete sentence”, etc. (Frequently catching up: identify inordinately with bartleby

Last night I got about halfway through Five T'ang Poets, as selected and translated by David Young. The five are: Wang Wei, Li Po, Tu Fu, Li Ho, and Li Shang-Yin. So far I wouldn't call these translations exciting, but they are usually suggestive/evocative enough to succeed as poems in English.

just finished frisk. these dennis cooper novels are fucked up

that’s for sure. read that one a few years ago and honestly kind of regretted reading it.

i loved it but i can see that. i certainly can't unread it

anyway moving right into the third novel in the george miles cycle, try

the cycle revealed more of itself to me during frisk as well, like up close it is like an anti-love story, a document of extremely unpleasant and empty people having sex that is attached their ultimate fantasies of dismembering someone during sex.... but telescope out a bit and it is about how having sex with infinite variations of the same person (george miles) is a reflection of how much the... narrator/omniscient voice/some of the individual characters/fictional dennis cooper and/or irl dennis cooper are in love with him

that is probably incomprehensible lol

i guess what i mean is it may seem to be all blood, guts, and gaping assholes, but in the margin beyond that it is almost entirely about... transcendent love. i think

^^^ You've got it

Frisk is my fave of the cycle, btw

I finished DS Marriott's Hoodoo Voodoo, then read the Primary Information/Ugly Duckling Presse reprint of NH Pritchard's The Matrix, now I'm onto Tom Mandel and Daniel Davidson's collaborative long poem, Absence Sensorium. It's really something, I think sometimes about how Davidson died much too young, age of 40, and how we would be better off if he were still alive and still writing this weird and provocative work.

Hi, I'm fairly new to the world of literary-fiction (and also, literary non-fiction) and totally new to this thread (and also, talking about books in general).

I just finished Swimming Home by Deborah Levy - it's kind of straightforward and elusive in equal measure, in a way I'm not sure I "got." It's hard to say what it was, but something about it was just less than satisfying. I welcome suggestions on her other books.
I am now reading Cleanness by Garth Greenwell. I'm 2 of 7 chapters in and there's also been blood and assholes (not gaping as much as clenched tho') and, arguably, traces of transcendent love (maybe not love but desire?).

Hi. I don't have any suggestions since I haven't read those books you mention, but welcome!

I thought Cleanness was great!

I mostly lurk but popping my head up to say if you enjoy Deborah Levy's style but found Swimming Home somehow unsatisfying (I felt similarly) then her "living memoirs", Things I Don't Want to Know and The Cost of Living, are well worth your time. They're elegant and weird and brutal, and they don't miss their mark.
They're also more moving.

I sometimes find her fiction more exciting and interesting to hear her describe than to read. Her voice is so strong it almost doesn't suit being stuffed into a story, like someone wearing clothes much too small for them.

I mostly lurk but popping my head up to say...

Bravo! Encore!

Confessions of a Fox - Jordy Rosenberg. The one littered with critical praise often with the words 'romp' and 'rollicking' in, hence it being about a year since I bought it to reading it. I'm *just about* persisting despite it being yet another example of a version of 18th century style - you know the Sort, all Capital Letters and Rhetorick with a k and an entire slang dictionary slathered onto the pages to produce Effcts both Comical and Tragicke. I only know of one decent version of this mode, and that's Pynchon's Mason and Dixon.

There's also an unreliable academic narrator who communicates mainly through footnotes, in a facetious and grating tone.

it's very much a first novel.

there are aspects which deserve longer scrutiny, trans erotica and an attempt to dramatize gender fluidity in the language of the time, but it comes across as current thought cloaked in an ersatz version of the language of the time*. After all 18th century english was how serious people communicated seriously in the 18th century. it's not a joke or cartoon.

I'm thinking of giving up persisting soon, but will keep going for the moment.

* I should add that by this i very much do not mean 'oh god woke 18th century,' - gender fluidity and frameworks of gender representation in that period are a real discipline, and the other is a real academic of them. but there's a lack of the sense of the cadence of thinking and representation of thought from the 18th century doing the work, it's more like current frameworks with 18th century argot.

Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett. Collection of short stories. Good, I think. Interior monologues in domestic spaces, with a careful awareness of the mechanics of interiority, the circling round a thing, the unusual snags of feeling and recognition by which thought progresses or insight is gained. The elliptical and non-cliched nature of thinking and feeling. Someone said that she was similar to Jen Calleja, but i don't get that at all tbh, in fact Pond reminds me more in some ways of Gerald Murnane, an understanding of how to get to the profound from the repeated mundane and quotidian, and how the unusual or genuinely strange is actually part of that fabric.

The effect to me is a little like trying to catch an elusive thought that seems to have whisked away just before the moment you were aware of it, but which you feel has insight. Sometimes you find it and can look at it, most of the time it flits away without any sense of what meaning or importance it may have had. CLB is adept at catching them.

Hello, I have never posted to this board before, but I have just started reading Sensoria Thinkers for the Twenty-first Century by McKenzie Wark as I finally finished reading the Jacques Derrida biography that came out last year.

confusing ambiguity in my post:

for 'and the other is a real academic of them' read 'and the author is a real academic of them'

Hi Oor Neechy. How are the 21st Century thinkers?

Started Chess Story, Stefan Zweig, last night. It's novella length and I should have finished it last night, too, but couldn't keep my eyes open. No reflection on the story, which was taut and beautifully constructed (as far as I got).

Hey Neechy.

Chess Story is fabulous. One of those books I know I own but which has been nabbed by the book poltergeist.

I'm reading Love's Work by Gillian Rose. Like Aimless, I should probably have finished it last night but was blinking back tears and couldn't manage it. It's propelled by onrushing death and Rose releases a torrent of wordplay and memory; it's full of wry observation and shatteringly unadorned descriptions of what happened to her people and the important relationships she's maintained and lost. What a beautiful book.

love’s work is amazing.

I think I picked it up from a recommendation on here - may well have been you Fizzles so thank you. I vaguely knew of her through Jacqueline Rose and Adam Phillips but hadn't read anything by her. Jesus, for such a short book it's got extraordinary heft.

^ I've heard enough. I just ordered a used copy for myself.

think i got the rec from xyzzzz and others itt. but yes - more the better! incredibly moving. i need to go back and revisit some passages.

Hi Oor Neechy. How are the 21st Century thinkers?

― Fizzles, Monday, 8 March 2021 17:14 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Just started it, but I think its trying to stay away from old white guys from the west

I've heard mixed reviews of the Rosenberg book, even tho a friend of mine loved it, he also has sometimes...well, our tastes align to a certain degree, but there are things he enjoys that I find awful. Like Zizek.

Chess Story is fantastic, agreed.

Just finished The Jakarta Method, by Vincent Bevins. It never rubs the reader's face in the horror, doesn't go in for graphic details of torture/murder, but manages to be emotionally overwhelming just by the loss experienced by the people he talks to and writes about, both of their friends/families/lovers and of their hopes for something better. Devastating book, highly recommended.

Nearly finished with Wolf Among Wolves by Hans Fallada. Much less stressful to read once it moves out of Berlin, still not quite sure what I think of it.

Started Log of the USS Mrs. Unguentine while outside on a really nice day, kind of waiting for another day like that to finish it.

Glad you found The Jakarta Method to be as bracing and informative as I did! One of the best books I read last year.

Just finished The Jakarta Method, by Vincent Bevins. It never rubs the reader's face in the horror, doesn't go in for graphic details of torture/murder, but manages to be emotionally overwhelming just by the loss experienced by the people he talks to and writes about, both of their friends/families/lovers and of their hopes for something better. Devastating book, highly recommended.

I read it in October at tables' rec. OTM.

is James McBride good? Seems like somebody on ilb said book x was v good, book y was shit (or vice-versa).

Another vote her for Deborah Levy's non-fiction. There's a third volume coming out this year.

https://lithub.com/50-very-bad-book-covers-for-literary-classics/

😬

Speaking of Jane Austen... I'm almost done reading Mansfield Park for the first time and jeez what a slog. All of Austen's fine observation and irrepressible irony in service of a complete nothing of a story, dragged out to interminable length and populated almost entirely by creeps, schemers, dunderheads, sluggards, harridans, and drips.

I believe James Morrison did some posts on crazy print-on-demand covers for classics ages ago?

Yes, a classic!

Finished Mansfield Park, I can see how it might be an interesting book to discuss - Lady Bertram as a reductio ad absurdum of the idea that once a woman has secured her living through marriage she need no longer even think, let alone act or speak; the whole thing a subversion of a romance, where all the action happens off-stage in the last twenty pages. And I actually liked Fanny, yes she is quiet and timid and compliant, but she is clear sighted and keeps her head and stands her ground when she ultimately needs to. Still think it was a snoozefest though.