Bonfires In The Sky: What Are You Reading, Winter 2021-22?

Read Mark Lanegan up to Roskilde and finding it a really good read.
He is pretty scathing. I know Gary Lee Conner disputed this version so wonder what the reality was.
Also wasn't aware to what extent Lanegan disliked the near authentic garape psych cloning thing of the early records. Or where he started having more control. Did enjoy what I had heard of that early stuff.

I love the pinefox's Synge biographer so much

as for me, I'm reading Radiant Terminus by Antoine Volodine, a writer with whom I am completely smitten -- this'll be my fourth of his (among two of his several heteronyms; my first was Eleven Sooty Dreams by Manuela Draeger, who is a personage within his career-long fiction of the post-exotic), and I almost never do the "just reading as much of this author's stuff as I can" thing, though in the past few years I've been more inclined to stick with a name for a few books. Radiant Terminus approaches trad-novel at points -- there's a revenge narrative that's easy to follow, but Volodine complicates it as much as he can, which is a lot, within the overarching conceit of post-exoticism -- as I understand it, all?? of his works are to be understood as texts recited by prisoners in a vast complex who have themselves invented a number of names and situations by way of memorializing themselves & their movement, which was crushed by an authoritarian state. that framing is precedent within Radiant Terminus, which references post-exoticism as a by-now-ancient phenomenon, and several of its authors and texts are, here, old names in dusty books...anyhow Volodine's whole deal is very complex and the books are WONDERFUL, even when you feel completely lost they're just an utter treat. I've even gotten to the point where, when the narrative does seem to be veering trad, I'm a little disappointed -- I've come to relish the prismatic complexity of the several states of being you have to hold as you read this stuff. Still, it's pretty clear why this is a big book -- the notion of realties-within-realities is so foregrounded here that it sets the stage for what Volodine will continue to do. (This one was written in 2014, it took three years to get to the English edition.)

ELEVEN SOOTY DREAMS sounds like a new UK children's TV series featuring famous glove-puppet bear.

Maigret In The South? He hates the South

In this one (or Liberty Bar, the first of two in the same volume), he keeps on wanting to sit drinking in bars and enjoying the sunshine instead of solving the case.

I don't really enjoy the Maigret books - I find their mysteries a little facile - but I always enjoy the "Maigret timewastes" portions of the books, where he goes home to bed instead of working on the case, or pretends to do nothing but is really waiting for the murderer to make a mistake and out themselves (although this never happens - someone new always gets murdered instead).

There's a chapter in one where he takes the train to Cannes or Nice to do some background research and has a completely miserable time.

It all adds up to the sense that "Maigret always gets his man (or woman)" but perhaps he could just be a bit fucking quicker about it

Wow---he's come a long way, baby. In the one I read, he fucken hated Southern white trash sunshine radiation and not solving the case---drinking in bars was a means to that end/at least it kept him going.

Joan, you had me at Eleven Sooty Dreams by Manuela Draeger, who is a personage within his career-long fiction of the post-exotic).

tomalin's biography is in the monthly deals this month as well, so maybe i'l grab that, find out what did for new year's eve in 1899 (her dickens biog was full of stupid details) This can be useful, for carving out your own take on the subject, and anyway appeals to me, kind of reassuring, like recent New Yorker essay on Elizabeth Hardwick mentioned, unfavorably, recent bio's mention, for instance, that Hardwick got cable to follow big tennis tournament, think it was Billie Jean King: if I'm going to read about a novelist, I like the range of activity a novel night involve, also good to know that she didn't actually spend all her mind pining for Lou I mean Lowell.
But mainly I like the totalism grab bag as raw material for my own speculations.

"December [1838] brought a great round of social activities, including the forming of the Trio Club with Forster and Ainsworth, which meant more dinners together. He dined with Elliotson on 27 December, Ainsworth on the 29th, Talfourd on the 30th and gave a dinner at home for New Year’s Eve with Forster, Ainsworth and Cruikshank."

Zzzzzzz

Thank for sharing that, Joan Crawford Lives Chachi. I will be looking into these heteronyms

as wood (for tables etc) deal is pine, so-named after a now archaic unit of measure (which the pine was traded in): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deal_(unit)

Maigret In The South? He hates the South

Absurdly, this made the end of Absalom, Absalom! jump into my head:

"Now I want you to tell me just one thing more. Why do you hate the South?"
"I dont hate it," Quentin said, quickly, at once, immediately. "I dont hate it," he said. I dont hate it, he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark: I dont. I dont! I dont hate it! I dont hate it!"

I feel like there's some kind of Columbo-meets-Maigret joke here that doesn't work at all.

I recently finished the new Sally Rooney, Beatiful World Where Are You. The story runs on two parallel tracks, mostly through letters exchanged between friends: one a writer (seemingly a stand-in for Rooney) staying at a rented house in the west of Ireland, and the other her friend who works for some artsy organization in Dublin. Both are a few years out of college but still fairly young. Not surprisingly, there are also parallel romances (or perhaps just hook-ups? we must read on to find out): the writer with a young man she just met on Tinder who works at an Amazon warehouse and is, shall we say, not a big reader, and the Dublin friend with a friend she's known since they were kids (he a few years older than she). The sex scenes alone are probably worth the price of admission: the awkward first time with someone you don't know that well, phone sex between "friends", etc. I can't think of another contemporary author who writes sex scenes as well, where the intimacy reveals and propels the characters and the dynamic of their relationship. Now I'm reading Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin, which imagines sexual relations on a distant planet, between humanoid creatures who are asexual most of the time but go through a fertile period when they can assume either sex.

I properly finished Maurice Bourgeois's biography of Synge. A marvellously old-fashioned experience. In 1913 he's still writing 'we would fain...', and 'Nay, we would even say ...'

On p.235 he states of Synge on his deathbed: 'Sometimes he was full of fun and in good spirits would converse for hours at a time, speaking on woman suffrage and other modern subjects'. The implication from context is that this is to the nurses at the nursing home.

This is a good case of the elusiveness of biographical fact. In INVENTING IRELAND (1995) Declan Kiberd wrote 'he repeatedly sought to engage the nurses on the topic of feminism' (p.175). Very interesting! But no footnote, no source for this. Years after reading that, I read W.J. McCormack's FOOL OF THE FAMILY: A LIFE OF J.M. SYNGE (2000) which repeated the claim, with a footnote citing ... citing ... Declan Kiberd, INVENTING IRELAND, p.175. Oh dear. So what was the original evidence?

Well, here's Bourgeois, giving some credence to the basic claim, in 1913 - only 4 years after Synge died. Still, he doesn't say that Synge 'repeatedly' talked on the topic, nor that it was he, not the nurses, who insisted on it.

There may well be an ur-text, another memoir behind this, from which Bourgeois has drawn the claim. After all, he probably didn't talk to the nurses himself - though his research is tremendous.

Finally, another corkingly daft and insensitive line from Bourgeois, having just written an impressive 250-page about Synge, and recorded the pathos of his death at 38:

it seems unlikely that his writings, which form such a complete, self-consistent body of work, would have admitted of such further developments as might have brought out fresh aspects of his art. Had he lived longer he might have repeated himself and wearied his admirers.

That's OK then. Probably a good thing cancer took him!

o. nate (xp): Thank you for reminding me I want to read this. (still reading Feeney; waiting for Weike Wang's new book to arrive through interlibrary loan)

Now I'm reading Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin, which imagines sexual relations on a distant planet, between humanoid creatures who are asexual most of the time but go through a fertile period when they can assume either sex.

i.e. a Sally Rooney novel.

lol

Don't dare compare St. Ursula to that awful lit-fic crap.

Poor Sally, I’m sure she’ll be devastated she’s lost the table vote.

That’s OK then. Probably a good thing cancer took him!

Genuinely loled at this btw, have enjoyed your review of this book even though I think the claim about noble suffering and the lack of theatre is a load of shit.

What I vaguely remember from Sally Rooney: (1) poverty and class in a society where these are important; (2) the weird effects of globalization, especially in the U.K. and Ireland; (3) hunger.

also, milk containers (specifically, when people used to drink from them)
baize featured prominently but distinctly in the last painting of sara de vos (highly recommended)

I read Adam Thorpe's On Silbury Hill, which is equal parts memoir, fuzzy explorations of pre-history and a meditation on time and memory - all inspired by the astonishing landscapes and neolithic artefacts around Marlborough in the UK. It was a bit ragged to be honest but Thorpe does a nice job of digging at the heart of what is so beguiling about the hill itself. Honestly, if you haven't been there, you should go.

Now, like Stevolende, I'm reading the Lanegan book. It's pretty punishingly grim, tbh.

I liked Normal People when I read it, though didn't improve when it came back through my head later, as some do--still think some of the settings and especially characters, like the bad boyfriend whose father is a financial villain, and their ho friend, were wasted opportunities, just sketched-in, also would liked to have seen more the good boyfriend's mother, and the barely mentioned backstory of her marriage (maybe some of this is better developed in the TV series). Recent story in The New Yorker, which I'm afraid was an excerpt of Beautiful World Where Are You, and seemed like most tiresome soap opera tendencies of NP all run together, only worse (sex scenes affected by context)---but I'll check this latest if I see it, ditto the debut.

Thorpe book sounds v. appealing, thanks!

xp yeah I haven’t read the new one yet but your post is a more interesting and considered tame than babyishly dismissing it as “awful litfic crap”.

I thought, and still think, this piece about the cultural context was very good: https://www.gawker.com/culture/sally-rooney-is-irish

*take not tame

If it's on the NYT Bestseller list and is "attracting crowds to events," I tend to avoid it. In literary matters, I'm an unapologetic snob, if you don't like it then mind your own business.

Oh I see, so have you actually read any of her books?

If you don’t like people commenting on your being an unapologetic snob then feel free to keep your pretentious opinions to yourself.

I read Conversations with Men just before the pandemic, and her choreography of the ambisexual roundelay was chicly effective -- as if for an HBO series.

CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS

Now reading: typescript of an unpublished science fiction novel by Jonathan Lethem.

You don’t say.

Mark Lanegan Sing Backwards And Weep
It's taken me until now to get to read this. Wish it was in more celebratory times not 2 weeks after he died. Judging by what he says in here it may be a bit surprising that he lasted as long as he did. I hadn't realised what a wretched life he was living in the 90s.
But this is a great, well written memoir and shame there won't be a second volume of it. There is a book covering him going through Covid in Killarney where he later died. Such a shame.
Also hadn't realised how little he was into the music he was making with Screaming Trees prior to Sweet Oblivion since it struck me as pretty good. Though a bit surprising how 'authentic' it sounded which appears to be something he disdained or at least the links to the mid 80s and after garage scene.
I'm glad we have what we do anyway.
I hope he did get to like himself a lot more in the last couple of decades he lived for after the end of this book. I know that he got married and i think his ex-wife was with him when he was on Other Voices in 2004. I think she was already ex but not sure about when that ended. Anyway haunting appearance.

Musical Truth Jeffrey Boakye
A children's book on the black British experience as related to 25 songs from teh late 50s to the 2010s. I hadn't realise dit wasa children's book when I ordered it as an interlibrary loan. Got it home and started reading it at which point it became clear, I'm not 100% sure what age group it is aimed at beyond that. I do like teh way it tackles the related subjects and hope this is a direction being followed on a more widespread basis.
I wound up watching a webinar with him and several other writers present because it featured Angela Saini who I really like.
I think he has some more adult orientated books o I think I will look further into his work

The Inconvenient Indian Thomas King
Book on the interelations between Native Americans and mainstream settler colonial European etc population looking at representation in media etc and how treaties have been seriously abused.
I think it is a really good book I had had it recommended several times before getting it for Xmas . So I really should have it read by now and started on the other book i got in the same package Jeffrey Ostler's Surviving Genocide. I'm not organising my reading properly probably. So been reading through books i got from teh library to the exclusion of these ones.

Toni Morrison The Bluest Eye
Short novel by black author about a young black girl who would love to become white.
I've read the first chapter and it is pretty deliciously written.

Have you read "Hold Tight", Boakye's book about Grime, Stevolende? I am no kind of grime specialist (so take this with the necessary quantity of salt) but I thought it was really good, also it's for grown-ups.

cool, will see what I can get hold of. Thanks. But no, not sure I'd come across him prior to the webinar.
Do think that book might have been on my to read mental list but had taken in the black masculinity more than the grime part of the title

Now reading: typescript of an unpublished science fiction novel by Jonathan Lethem.

― the pinefox, Friday, March 4, 2022 4:11 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

did you read the arrest? i thought that was dreadful tbqh.

I did read it.

I'd say it was uneven, enigmatic, oddly structured, though suggestive in terms of imagery. Not quite sure what JL was really getting at.

It perhaps didn't help that it seemed to have a whole narrative component that was actually in a separate short story that he had published elsewhere - as far as I am aware.

Why did you form the view that you did?

it was a while back. i think the overall impression i had was that it was carelessly written and the structure in particular (the LA stuff) was a problem. "dreadful" is much too strong though, but ... minor? i do remember major plot points and images though, which is more than i can say for most books i read a year ago.

Hazlitt - On Theatre.

This is a collection of reviews from much of Hazlitt's play-going. And it functions as his: a) his critical work on Shakespeare, with many fine passages on Othello and Lear, b) his account of the best Shakesperean actors of that time (Kean, Siddons), what they do to the lines of the text against how (in Hazlitt's view) those lines of poetry should be performed. There are moments when the thing comes right, but at others they fall short - and so it goes on many times either way during the same evening. This is crit operating as it should be.

Don't dare compare St. Ursula to that awful lit-fic crap.

― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Thursday, 3 March 2022 bookmarkflaglink

Bring proper snobs back, none of this fake shit!

I know this probably won't change your mind about Rooney, table, but her stand-in character goes off on a long dyspeptic rant about lit-fic in Beautiful World:

Have I told you I can't read contemporary novels anymore? I think it's because I know too many of the people who write them. I see them all the time at festivals, drinking red wine and talking about who's publishing who in New York. Complaining about the most boring things in the world -- not enough publicity, or bad reviews, or someone else making more money. Who cares? And then they go away and write their sensitive little novels about 'real life'. The truth is they know nothing about real life. Most of them haven't so much as glanced up against the real world in decades. These people have been sitting with white linen tablecloths laid out in front of them and complaining about bad reviews since 1983...
And they come home from their weekend in Berlin, after four newspaper interviews, three photoshoots, two sold-out events, three long leisurely dinners where everyone complained about bad reviews, and they open up the old MacBook to write a beautifully observed little novel about 'real life'. I don't say this lightly: it makes me want to be sick...

My own work is, it goes without saying, the worst culprit in this regard.

Did he ever confirm if he’d read Sally Rooney or not

I think besides "Detransition Baby" and maybe one or two others, I haven't read a book on the NYTimes Bestseller List in more than a decade. What I've read of Rooney's work— a short story here and there— makes it seem like the novels are exactly the sort of thing that would drive me up a goddamn wall. Flaccid characters who still manage to be loathsome, a liberal-progressive (yuck) political ideology, and little to nothing emergent or interesting in terms of form. At least make the sex weird or interesting!

and fwiw, I will honestly say that the avoidance of the Times thing has not been purposeful, in all actuality. I just don't find myself interested in popular literature lmfao.

xp right, so no. Thanks for your perspective. She’s more of a leftist than you are any day, fwiw.

I'm reading Lydia Davis's Essays Two at the moment. Delightful so far. All of the essays are centred around translation, and her efforts to learn other languages through the process of reading and translating. Makes me feel like a right fool for only being able to understand English, but that is no fault of hers, and merely my own insecurity. Her writing on translation glows with the joy that comes from the thrill of discovering more about other languages and cultures. There's a couple of essays on her Swann's Way translation, which I really need to read. I've read the Scott Moncrieff translation and felt a little disappointed that I couldn't quite understand the magic of Proust after reading it.

It also contains a brilliant essay on her attempt at "modernising" Bob, Son of Battle an English children's novel from 1898 which I had previously never heard of, but apparently deeply moved her as a child, alongside many others of her generation. I remember getting to the essay and thinking "uh, a 70 page essay on modernising a children's book about a dog?", but it was absolutely compelling. She mainly writes about the challenges she came across in attempting to modernise the language, but it also digresses to wonderful sections about the evolution of the English language, the idea of 'the children's novel' and how that has changed over time, and British and Scottish history amongst other things.

The only thing I've truly read by Rooney is an LRB article about abortion in Ireland, which I found very clearly, carefully reasoned and convincing.

re: poster Table's comments, something that has stayed in my own mind is "awful lit-fic crap".

We can take it that "lit-fic" is short for literary fiction. Many of us like literature, and like fiction. We might like things that are literary. Yet "lit-fic" appears to be pejorative.

The question then is: what are the criteria for identifying something as "lit-fic"?

If the answer is extraneous stuff like "this book sold a lot of copies" or "the author was invited to an event at the Metropolitan Museum", then I don't think that's a very good or reliable criterion. I think one would want internal and textual criteria.

Personally I greatly admire, for instance, Hilary Mantel's historical fiction, which has been a big UK bestseller, adapted for stage and screen, won awards. Those facts don't at all make me think that the work is bad.

I think it was the introduction to this talk on J.M. Coetzee, which was the one episode they recorded live in Galway during the Arts Festival, where the Blacklisted guys were talking about Rooney's new book . & that had me wanting to read some of her. So I picked up a couple from charity shops but haven't started them yet.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/15tTTwvepmDcR5nEzgh6Xw?si=5c075a8ea7234613
So I think somewhere in the first 10 minutes