Bright Remarks and Throwing Shade: What Are You Reading, Summer 2022?

The Picture of Dorian Gray was a formative novel. I read it for the third time in March 2020, and while I found much of the dialogue between the rich nimrods tedious (Wilde admitted he had to pad the novel for the sake of serialization), he perfected that kind of banter just a couple years later in his plays. A more fun read than A Rebours, which iirc boasts pages and pages of catalogues this or that bric-a-brac -- in its way a Balzac novel given a Decadent gloss.

I think I agree with Mark S in his suggestion that c.1890, the idea of being definitely and exclusively homosexual was not something that people were so keen to promote - not just because it was dangerous (it certainly was), but maybe because the idea of this exclusive identity had not caught on so much (eg, as Mark says, in an activist way). So Dorian Gray has hints of homosexuality but also repeatedly 'corrupts' or 'disgraces' women - in fact, it's oddly accurate to say that the book provides far, far more evidence of his heterosexual career than any alternative sexuality. Even about 20 pages from the end a Duchess is still thinking about whether to have an affair with him.

I think I agree with poster Alfred that DORIAN GRAY is more readable than A REBOURS, which is indeed, as I recall, much more of a catalogue and less of a story. I also note now that I shouldn't have said that Gray definitely reads A REBOURS: it's left implicit and ambiguous, and, more surprisingly, in the first edition it was apparently named as a fictional French book invented by Wilde.

Poster Gyac earlier mentioned censored and uncensored versions; I now know that what I've been reading is the 'censored' version of 1891, as against the first magazine version of 1890. The main difference seems to be that in the first version Basil Hallward is more open about his adoration of Gray, and in the second this theme is sublimated into talk of art.

I've finished the novel, which maybe leaves a bad taste in the mouth - which you could say is intentional. One aspect that kept coming to mind was the idea that this whole novel also has a, let's say, 'confessional' role for its author. Wilde was scandalous, was whispered about, led a double life with two sexual identities, was feted in some houses and shunned in others - etc. All of that also applies to Gray. To a degree, then, Wilde seems to be projecting an exaggerated version of his own situation into this character's. One complication here might be that Gray may actually resemble Wilde's lover Alfred Douglas more than he does Wilde himself (and Wilde would be closer to Lord Henry Wotton, but also to Basil Hallward, who more pathetically loves Gray and is later killed by him for no good reason). But another complication is that Gray is clearly ashamed of his life, knows that it's sinful (and this shows in his painting). Did Wilde think the same about his own experiences? I don't think he thought the same as Dorian Gray, but it's plausible to say that, like many people, he had mixed feelings, including guilt, shame and so on, which were naturally influenced by society and ideology around him, and that he partly projects these to the character. The whole thing could in these terms be considered an extrapolation, an experiment with Wilde's own feelings about himself.

Then again Wilde would I suppose have denied this, and he more often talks (in the Preface to this novel and numerous other places) of books as works of art separate from life.

On the dialogue, again, the late exchanges between Lord Henry and the Duchess are quite appealing -- virtually the only time in the book that a woman gets to talk on a level with the men. I suppose that somewhat more equal scenario is then played out again in the plays.

I think I read Wilde writing once that Basil what he wanted to be, Lord Henry whom the public thought he was, and Dorian whom he really was.

Cid Corman - Livingdying
Marie Darrieussecq - Pig Tales
Renee Gladman - The Activist
Martine Syms - Shame Space
Charlotte Salomon - Life? or Theater?: A Song-play

Currently reading Georges Perec's W or the Memory of Childhood and Norma Cole's Where Shadows Will

Norma!

A couple of aesthetics books:

Noël Carroll - The Philosophy of Horror: Paradoxes of the Heart (1990)
C. Thi Nguyen - Games: Agency as Art (2020)

Both very accessible, nicely written, on interesting topics.

speaking of the invisible man... the well regarded 2020 film is on itv tonight, 22:45

I finished "The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge". It's definitely a good thing that my Vintage edition of the book comes with endnotes to explain the copious references to obscure late Medieval and Renaissance figures. Here's a random sampling of personages mentioned by Rilke with confidence the reader will get the allusion: Deodatus of Gozon, Teresa of Avila, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Louise Labe, the Countess of Die, Clara of Anduze, Julie de Lespinasse, Aisse, Pope John XXII, Christine de Pisan, Heloise and Abelard, Bettina von Arnim, Grishka Otrepyov, and so on. The book is not an easy one to read, partly because of the references, and partly because it switches gears rapidly as the narrator's thoughts roam over the centuries, and then to memories of his youth and childhood in an ancien regime noble household, and then to his current straitened circumstances as an anonymous poet in a Parisian garret apartment. Its hard to explain what makes the book so memorable, but if you're the kind of person who thinks reading and writing alone in a garret can be a thrilling and romantic existence, then this book may be for you.

poll those personages!

i know heloise and abelard (once-famous tragic love story) and christine de pisan (i think i have a book by her that i never read) and also i read mechthild of magdeburg as METH-CHILD of magdeburg (maybe they're related to the unicorn)

plus googling tells me that teresa of avila is in fact st teresa: "Teresa, who became a celebrity in her town dispensing wisdom from behind the convent grille, was also known for her raptures, which sometimes involved levitation" (same) "Examination of her [miraculously preserved medical record] has led to the speculative conclusion that she may have suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy.[20][21]"

I love that Rilke novel, found the switching (the speed of it) quite a thrill at the time. I probably would get more of the refs now as I've read Labe, Heloise, the Troubadours..

Do look up Labe's poetry from NYRB classics, who put out an edition of them.

I've started H.G. Wells' THE ISLAND OF DR MOREAU (1896). Like that other island novel ROBINSON CRUSOE it poses as a 'found document', a true history of life on an island with a foreword by someone else. My impression is that some of Defoe's readers might have believed this, Wells's wouldn't.

The first few chapters are all in seafaring jargon which is rather overdone. Endless mainbraces, gunwales, and less familiar words. Reminiscent of Conrad save that Conrad knew this material intimately, and I don't think Wells did.

It's standard to say 'this old book contains some dubious ideas about race', but this one really pushes the ... boat out. For instance:

From him my eyes travelled to his three men; and a strange crew they were. I saw only their faces, yet there was something in their faces — I knew not what — that gave me a queer spasm of disgust. I looked steadily at them, and the impression did not pass, though I failed to see what had occasioned it. They seemed to me then to be brown men; but their limbs were oddly swathed in some thin, dirty, white stuff down even to the fingers and feet: I have never seen men so wrapped up before, and women so only in the East. They wore turbans too, and thereunder peered out their elfin faces at me, — faces with protruding lower-jaws and bright eyes. They had lank black hair, almost like horsehair, and seemed as they sat to exceed in stature any race of men I have seen.

More pushing the species boat out, isn't? it? Intimations ov too freaky/looks like trouble. From the time of "crime science," phrenology, tongue shapes, all of that and then some, seems to be in beholder's pre-radar. (Although race science could also be in crime science.)

Didn't mean to have extra question mark

Why the moon travels / Oein DeBhairduin ; illustrated by Leanne McDonagh.
Gay Irish Traveller author retelling a number of Traveller folktales. I've been meaning to read this since it came out.
He did a talk in the Sibin fake pub venue in a local exhibition on Saturday which reminded me that I wanted to read it. Plus he had a copy of the book with him which may be the first time I physically saw it, had thought i was going to be a larger children's picture book looking thing but it is filed under adult. I then found out taht the local library had copies which it is saying are New so recently acquired. I think this was released in 2020 during the first lockdown and I may have been at most things online.
Anyway looking forward to getting into this

A brief history of neoliberalism / David Harvey.
book I've wanted to read for a while since i wanted to further understand what neoliberalism really consisted of.
Been a bit of a chore getting hold of this through interlibrary loans since it appeared to disappear as either a lost or a long overdue book.
Well got it now. So need to read it.

The Alienist, by Caleb Carr. I realize I'm coming in on this 18 years late, but at least I haven't seen the show. It's fairly engaging, although it does have a bit of the "Oh, look! There's Franz Boas!" quality that some historical novels have. I'm more than half suspecting that I'm ultimately not going to care who the murderer is.

Eighteen? More like 28. Holy shit.

I finished THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU. Good adventure yarn with stimulating content about vivisection, genetics, humans / animals and so on. I'd recommend it. Yet one slight flaw, I feel, is that Wells doesn't make the beast-men especially vivid in their own right. By the time he's talking about a Hyena-Swine or a Rhino-Horse it's hard to picture them. I think a writer now might make more effort to describe each one.

The story is interesting in that Dr Moreau and his assistants seem like villains, but become allies, and the protagonist isn't involved in a final battle with them, as you might expect. Moreau, having discussed his ideas at length, is actually killed by a beast some way before the book finishes. And there's an unexplained mystery about the boat with two dead sailors, possibly recognised by the protagonist, in which he casts off from the island at the end.

A very late irony: on the last page the narrator says that only looking up at the lofty heavens can raise humanity from its bestial condition. Two years later THE WAR OF THE WORLDS begins in those lofty heavens, with Martians, rather than anything divine or benign, looking with interest at Earth.

I started Megan Abbott's QUEENPIN (2007). 1950s noir pastiche. To be honest the pastiche seems clumsily overdone - I'm disappointed.

I’m reading her latest, The Turnout, right now, and I’m finding it similarly overripe.

finished A Tale Of Two Cities. cobbled together a version based on the weekly episodes and not the monthly / collected version that Project Gutenberg has (probably). when i compared the two the differences were mainly hyphens, the odd word and a sentence and a half from one of the minor characters. still...

the Penguin Classics notes on this have pointed out Hugo's Ninety-Three and Dumas' Ange Pitou as similar but i can't find a copy of the full version of the latter - there's a 36 chapter version in PG but lots of scans of a wildly-different 70 chapter version on archive.org, but the OCR for the epub versions is k-rub (28% accuracy it says)

it's one of my favourite dickens novels, i think, despite being a bit atypical (historical). it's shorter than most, at least

I'm stuck between two Tanizaki titles: The Key and Some Prefer Nettles. Which?

I'm more attracted to the second title.
xxxpost

also cool:

And there's an unexplained mystery about the boat with two dead sailors, possibly recognised by the protagonist, in which he casts off from the island at the end.

A very late irony: on the last page the narrator says that only looking up at the lofty heavens can raise humanity from its bestial condition. Two years later THE WAR OF THE WORLDS begins in those lofty heavens, with Martians, rather than anything divine or benign, looking with interest at Earth.

I know I watched the film of The Key, can't remember if I also read it as part of a Japanese film & literature class.

Love love love Some Prefer Nettles.

Haven't read The Key.

I'm sampling a range of crime writers. Megan Abbott has struck out. Also trying:

Sara Paretsky, INDEMNITY ONLY (1982) - the first novel to feature woman private eye V.I. Warshawski. Set in its present day, very much in Chicago, it's much better than the Abbott novel. It's surprisingly 'sassy' in a proto-chick-lit way at moments ('I thought about the carbs and decided not to order fries'), but also pretty solid as detection so far. Has a background of radical / labour politics and business.

Ross Macdonald, THE ZEBRA-STRIPED HEARSE (1962): this is even better. I've wanted to read Macdonald for years. He doesn't disappoint. I can see how it's the successor to Chandler, but the language and tone are reined in by comparison. Best thing in it is essentially the dialogue between private eye Lew Archer and the various characters he encounters. I realise I could read this stuff for ever - I imagine the book as automatically generated, just going on and on.

I'm also going to read Patricia Highsmith, a writer who's always been quite mysterious to me.

Nick Seabrook - One Person, One Vote: A Surprising History of Gerrymandering in America

Macdonald is indeed great, with the one caveat that he pretty much wrote the same Archer book every time - family secrets, melancholy philosophy, sea and sunshine, bourgeois callousness. Best not to ready too many in one go. Highsmith is a more varied writer and in some ways more inconsistent (albeit with a pretty consistent 'moral vision'), but there's nobody else quite like her within or without crime fiction. The first Ripley novel is a good one to begin with.

"A Surprising History of Gerrymandering in America"

Is the surprise that gerrymandering hasn't happened in America?

the surprise is that it (occasionally) hasn't happened

https://www.masshist.org/database/images/985_gerrymander_trans_ref.jpg

The surprise, after a hundred pages, is who endorsed it, I suppose.

Beginning of semester reading has thrown me for a loop, of course, but in my spare time (ha!) I’ve been reading and enjoying Steve Benson’s ‘Blue Book.’ While he is associated with the Language poets, the work is not as highly abstracted and loaded with parataxis, instead moving through realms of the self, our everyday speech patterns, and the possibilities of an improvisational writing. Interesting work.

Tabes! I got Prynne's The Oval Window on Sunday -- the marvelous NYRB edition with illustrations and footnotes.

xps

I definitely prefer Paretsky to Abbott. And Highsmith to most writers.

I had to return The Man in the High Castle because the copy I checked out was too dodgy to read comfortably despite having been rebound; I checked out instead a Library of America compendium of his novels from the 1960s, which includes said novel. I plan to read the novels with Carlo Rovelli's There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness at different times of day.

I returned the novels by Anthony Marra and am curious to see what happens when he writes about film.

Tabes! I got Prynne's The Oval Window on Sunday -- the marvelous NYRB edition with illustrations and footnotes.

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, August 24, 2022 6:09 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Alfred, this is great! But do you mean the Bloodaxe edition, which is mostly annotations? Yellow cover with a photo on it?

(I have this edition as well as the first edition— it is one of my favorites of his books, tho the big expanded version I think you're speaking of has not really been cracked as of yet, as I am waiting until we get to it in my Prynne reading group!)

It comes with both: the poem + photos and the poem + annotations. A generous introduction too.

Totally— I just mentioned the sheer number of annotations because the original book is quite slim!

I didn't mean to let it blurt re xpost Tim Lawrence's Arthur Russell bio, but since I did, I'll try provide a better overall description. The title is Hold On To Your Dreams---Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-1992. Lawrence explains Downtown and Uptown, in social and musical differences, time and space (they're pretty close geographically, until NYC real estate fever and other Reagan first term financial factors push artists farther apart in several ways, as depicted more broadly and deeply via the other volumes of TL's NYC music culture trilogy, which he doesn't rehash here).
He also loops back to Russell's ever-resourceful parents, making their way through the Depression and WWII to impeccably square social standing and an impeccably hip, wide-ranging record collection, a crucial influence on little Arthur, who is otherwise quite the handful. His antsy, awkward semi-sociable demeanor somehow stands him in good stead, too consistently to be uncanny luck, though there seems to be some of that.

He leaves Iowa and high school for the Summer of Love, gets in trouble, but somehow it works out for him to be in custody of a family friend (and older kid), until his 18th birthday. Then he gets involved with a Bay Area Buddhist cult, but, although the leader is tough on Arthur, he pays for music school---and not, "You will learn to play the cello even better, and bring the money and glory back to meee"--no, just because the talent was a flower that needed watering. So he goes and learns a lot about Indian music and more about Buddhism; he and the cult ensemble play and record with Allen Ginsberg (an amazing track on one of AG's box sets). When Arthur goes to New York (to be a star, his way), Ginsberg may be the one (night stand, apparently) who introduces him to the joy of gay sex, but mainly, they record some more excellent tracks, and Gins lets him and Tom Lee run a power line upstairs to their apartment.
Arthur becomes programmer at the Kitchen, and upsets the applecart by presenting a rock band, and not the Velvets, but the oddball Modern Lovers. This precedent proves to be influential in different ways, as described by Peter Gordon and Rhys Chatham, two fairly different composers. Arthur continues to adapt what he's learned in the groovy West to New York's crackling Dark Ages, and he and the ML's Ernie Brooks have a recurring professional relationship, upsetting more applecarts, incl. rock ones; Brooks persists in bringing Arthur into situations where he must know, on some level, things will then go sideways, b-b-but Arthur really does love and make pop-rock on his own, so...
His early NYC friend and admirer Philip Glass does him a solid/hands him off to Robert Wilson for a new project, in part because Glass has a more lucrative commission already, and doesn't want to go back to driving a gypsy cab and being a handyman, as happened yet again after the critical landmark of Einstein on the Beach This new opera is a big chance for Arthur, and he's all in, as always, however...
One of the ways that Lawrence keeps this from being a highbrow ep of Behind The Music, although it is that in part (unavoidably to some extent, being a bio of a muso, times the eventual advent of AIDS) is his own deep listening to and accessible description of some challenging music, the challenge coming not only from esoterica, but its opposite, the most poptastic, hype-inspiring kind, also admixtures of both kinds. Oncen again, the academic and self-taught discipline of the historian balances the passion of the fan, as mentioned upthread.

Lawrence also deals, as well as he can in this 2009-published book, with the extent to which Russell's still-emerging recorded work has proved to be "an iceberg," in the TL-quoted take of ikx alum Jess Harvell. An iceberg somewhere between the posthumous careers of eternally prolific Coltrane and Hendrix, and those of mostly-unknown-in-their-lifetime Joseph Cornell and Henry Darger.

Re: Ross Macdonald, I agree with Ward, he’s not really built for bingeing, but the novels from Galton Case onwards are AFAIK all consistently good-to-great-to-classic. He’s one of those authors whose “flaws” are what make his interesting and idiosyncratic. The novels repeat the same formula for decades, but then the repetitions (and small variations) become wonders in themselves. His metaphors can be clunky and overheated - but that’s also what gives them power and humour. I found “The Chill” and “Galton Case” highlights; I also keep hearing great things about the book by his wife Margaret Millar.

Several of her books came back into print a few years ago, but I've only read the shorter version of "The Iron Gates" (later a 300+ page novel) in an Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthology: homefront WWII Canada, hothouse culture/situation feverish around the edges with implosions and oblique stroke social observations adding to tension, earning its iron gates.

The PKD anthology read by Youn should be quite good. I think the texts were chosen by Lethem (but they're probably unsurprising choices).

I'm most of the way through my first ever Patricia Highsmith: THE GLASS CELL (1964). It concerns a man wrongfully imprisoned, his attempts to be free, what he does when he gets out. The descriptions of prison life are grim and detailed but the convict somewhat adapts to it.

I have come to find this novel compelling. I keep reading on. I find that PH doesn't engage in anything fancy: she just tells us, in order, what the character does and sees, thinks and feels. His thoughts and feelings change, sometimes quickly, and he thinks about this. She tells us. The directness is so effective, maybe because the situation is quite unusual.

Thinking about directness, I think of Hemingway and Carver and my uncertainty about how good they are. FWIW my sense is that EH was overrated, RC probably better and more intriguing. Highsmith seems to me to outdo these writers, here, not by being any more elaborate, but just by telling a more interesting story. The novel *does* slightly resemble something Carver could have done - the gradual examination of a troubled man's moods - but I am not sure that he would have risen to tell this story, at this length.

Cather also superior to Hemingway.

I hope I'll get time in future to enjoy Ross Macdonald at length, as others have done.

But I note that his work is hard to find in the UK. This week in 3 major, large London bookshops and 2 major university libraries, I found one novel, THE UNDERGROUND MAN. I never see him in any 2nd-hand shop. To be sure, one can buy much online - my one is 2nd-hand that way - but if it's a 2nd-hand book, condition can then be uncertain. And with a writer I like, I'd still like to see them represented a little on the shelves of shops and libraries.

Highsmith on the other hand has been kept in print and colourful new covers to attract browsers. I daresay she deserves it.

I listened to the Better Read Than Dead episode on the Talented Mr Ripley a few weeks ago which was interesting and had a different perspective on a number of factors. Ripley's aspirations, Highsmith's attitude to the world which I think seemed a tad snobbish , and a few other things. The presenters are white American leftists who can be pretty obnoxious but I find them listenable.

I watched the French 60s film of the book last year Plein Soleil/Purple Noon which was quite good too. & the 90s US film of it when it came out and a couple of times since

Slightly surprised to hear about the scarcity of Macdonald in London bookshops, pinefox. Penguin reissued a number of Lew Archer books in a uniform edition not very long ago:

https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/64658/ross-macdonald

As for secondhand, you used to see the 1980 Allison & Busby paperback editions quite often, and I think they may have even been remaindered at some point. Steve Holland has a nice selection of earlier UK covers on his Bear Alley website:

https://bearalley.blogspot.com/2017/04/ross-macdonald-cover-gallery.html

Sometimes Highsmith's directness is actually serving an indirect purpose - ie the lead character's seemingly straightforward thoughts, feelings etc are slowly revealed to be delusional, even psychopathic, the narrator's perception of the world subtly askew. I haven't read The Glass Cell, so not sure if it's the case with that one. But I wouldn't be surprised if this prisoner actually turned out to be as guilty as hell. We're pretty much all as guilty as hell in Highsmith land.

You can't really go wrong with 50s/60s Highsmith, but there's a definite decline after that - the books become a bit more episodic rather than tightly plotted, and the writing not so good. The Glass Cell is good, but there are plenty better.

Would love to find all those Macdonalds on a shelf!

LRB shop for instance has zero.

What you say about Highsmith, Ward Fowler, rings true even on what I've read so far.

hemingway is like the ramones i think: an extreme expression at a hinge-moment of a collective shift in sensibility, a sweeping out of the attics of the mass literary mind

his contemporaries who were better ( or "better") were no way so evidently associated (let alone congratulated for) with the shift: they had made a different, far less stark, less embattled relationship with the past, where he was the posterboy for the swerve, which was invaluable for journalism among other things, and got a long pass as a consequence… you were just onside with him even when you weren't nodding in agreement at the stances taken (viz re the spanish civil war)

(the exception here being gertrude stein probably, and i'm not sure if anyone today considers her "better" than EH, so) (but his ear is quite like hers -- attuned to everything that chimes in with what's being left unsaid)

(analogy with ramones doesn't entirely work lol as the attics of 70s rock and pop had barely been stacking up their lumber for merely a decade, whereas the hemingway moment clears out something like 60 or 70s of approach to sentences and organisation and deciding what counts as assumed) (but the point is that anyone saying "the ramones are overrated" is alomost always misunderstanding why they meant something when they did)