Please use the receptacle provided: What are you reading as 2023 begins?

The copy that is on my "get rid" pile is yours if you want it.

Thanks Tim!

re chuck_tatum's recoil from jeremy brett as sherlock

my sister and i *loved* brett in the 80s when these shows were first going out, absolutely chattering fandom stuff, so i was interested in this abreaction and last night tried to log in to re-watch "the golden pince-nez" (a plot i can't call to mind). i notice the ep is from the fourth season -- when i think the overall style of the show had become somewhat mannered and gimmicky -- but to recap what it was that we loved at the time (in earlier eps), was just a kind of expressive animality full of surprise grunts and wolfman tics, just very unlike the acting template of the time. he was fun to watch, and silly not bland! we were very sad when he died (younger than i am now i see).

i even wrote a piece about the show but it never ran bcz i quit the magazine for unrelated reasons… but the long-and-short of my thesis was i believe that brett was good bcz he took it as read that holmes was literally the monster in the narrative

anyway we have probably passed through three or four fashions in TV thesp templates since then? i often find myself watching 90s tv and thinking "why did i not notice how bad everyone's acting is?" when the reason is mostly that the degree zero mode has changed a lot. i do recall reading that he specifically aimed for a "theatrical" (presumably meaning somewhat over-amped?) approach to the role.

despite it being on ITV streaming my TV wasn't having it for some reason so i had to give up :(

I liked Jeremy Brett.

https://i.imgur.com/59BkUbu.gif

^He looks a bit like current Aston Villa manager Unai 'Dracula' Emery in that gif. Definitely a touch of the vampire there, which seems a not overly wayward interpretation of the character, really.

I don't really know the Brett TV series, but the Sherlockians I see on the interweb seem to think he was v v good in the early series and v v bad in the later ones.

Ppl here are underestimating the Rathbone/Bruce Hound of the Baskervilles, imho. Again, visually it's very close to a classic American horror film of the 1930s/40s, made possible by an A picture budget and the full technical resources of a major Hollywood studio.

I’ll give Brett another try then, maybe one of the earlier ones. They can’t fuck up Bruce-Partington Plans or Blue Carbuncle, surely. Perhaps it’s a case of readjusting my “this is what acting is supposed to be” preconceptions a bit. I will say, I enjoyed the general vibe of the show - excellent production values and direction - maybe a late example of the classic “expressionism in grey and brown” house style of 70s/80s BBC dramas like Tinker, EoD, etc

the brett version is also much more respectful of dr watson as a character -- via two successive actors (david burke then edward hardwicke) he's an intelligent foil, a long way from nigel bruce (of rathbone/bruce)'s bumbling nincompoop

Also true of Martin Freeman in Sherlock, Lucy Liu in Elementary.

xp

deem to think he was v v good in the early series and v v bad in the later ones.

seem not deem, sorry.

https://www.missionlogpodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/06.jpg

the unicorn dog

oops

plz ignore 😩

Yas well getting back to Literature, we could say that the sidekick-foil-counterbalance--initially-seemingly-more-normcore-yarnspinner goes back to Sancho Panza---and before him---?

Read two very short books back to back to break up some other stuff:

Edouard Louis - Who Killed my Father
Paul Auster - Bloodbath Nation

Having loved the two previous Louis books I was a bit disappointed by this, largely because it really is very, very short and I think the bulk of it had already been extracted in the New York Times just before it came out. I definitely remember reading it somewhere online, anyway.

The Auster is...fine, just a sort of state of the gun-obssessed nation essay that doesn't really tell you anything new about gun culture in the US.

Finished Purdy’s The Nephew, a strangely moving little volume about a young man killed in war and the aftermath of this loss in his midwestern hometown. In truth, though, it ends up being more about our inability to know one another fully and truly, but to find some comfort in care and kindness. Given the brazen intensity of his later novels, particularly the gay southern Gothic sadomasochism of Narrow Rooms, it felt a little odd to be reading about a sort of befuddled old lady mourning her nephew and judging her smalltown neighbors, but in the end, it was very Purdy. One of my favorite novelists, I now feel comfortable declaring, and there’s so much more of him to read!

I'm about 250 pages into Vol 1 of William James's Principles of Psychology, which I was led to via Peter Naur's Anti-philosophical Dictionary, a self-published rant by the noted Danish computer scientist.

I finished Life and Fate last night. The final 250 pages narrows its focus somewhat and concentrates more on a smaller group of characters, but if anything this diluted some of the interest that had carried me forward through the book. If you aren't already deeply conversant with the Soviet state under Stalin and the social, military and political conditions there during WWII, this book provides a kind of compendium of that period, centered primarily on the lives of commissioned officers, and the managerial and intellectual classes rather than on the mass of plain soldiers and workers. The word that quickly comes to mind in that regard is 'exhaustive'.

I'm having a similar experience listening to Shehan Karunatilaka's The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida as I did with Marlon James' A Brief History of Seven Killings.

It is so dense and foreign to me that between listens I have to research Sri Lanka's geography and history and have to keep going back in the audiobook to listen again

The presence of a state of purgatory and of ghosts reciting a litany of grief reminds me of another Booker Prize winner, Lincoln in the Bardo

c. trungpa, "cutting through spiritual materialism" - loved this.
a.c. doyle, "the hound of the baskervilles" - loved this, too.

currently continuing to make dents in chateaubriand's "memoirs from beyond the grave" and also reading james crumley's "the mexican tree duck" (on a bit of a detective kick and might finally read chester himes next).

The book of fabulous beasts : a treasury of writings from ancient times to the present Joe Nigg
not got beyond teh introduction in this so far but it looked good when I took it off the library shelf. I was looking around in there yesterday, thinking I might have another bash at Gramsci's excerpts from the Prison Notebooks and looked around teh literature/non fiction sections and saw this. I had just returned Margery Blount's Animal land a few days ago which semi ties in with this though I think this is far more what people did semi believe existed in marginal places whereas that was about animals in children's books that had abilities taht real ones don't.
THis looks at the fantastic/fabulous since the beginning of written work and recorded exploration. Hoping to get into this but probably grabbing too many books right now if i should be concentrating on getting th bike course passed.
Interesting anyway.

Langston Hughes Not Without Laughter.
Harlem Renaissance connected poet ventures into prose and writes a novel about a family struggling by in early 20th century Lawrence, Kansas having to deal with poverty, racism and other daily problems.
Has some nice turns of phrase in it. I have a set of his short stories, the Ways of White Folks that I need to read too. This is quite good.

Histories of the Hanged David Anderson
Book on the mau Mau in Kenya in the mid 50s. I think I'm semi struggling to get through this one, not sure if its the writing style which seems really heavy and seems to have some racist comments buried in it. Not sure how consciously, don't like the line about the Kikuyu realising they were not as good as the white man, think it could have been phrased better in its presentation. Anyway wanted to get through this and seem to just get sidetracked elsewhere to things i would much rather read. I do want to read up on this subject though.

West of teh Revolution
Events elsewhere around what would become the United States at the time of the War of Independence. I just read a chapter on the Lakota discovery of the Black Hills which this has contemporary to Washington fighting the British though the Black Hills had been sacred to Native American groups dating back several thousand years.
INteresting book but it does make me want to go further into Native American History elsewhere. To see what else is said there about movement of various tribes over time. I think this was in a few bibliographies of things i read last year, I need to check what.

The kaiser's holocaust: Germany's forgotten genocide and the colonial roots of Nazism David Olusoga
British historian looks into the setting up of a German colony in Namibia which became a hell on earth for the tribes already living there.
He has already mentioned that the Germans had traded heavily using sub standard alcohol as a main trading tool which is already a bad sign. BUt like European colonialism in general isn't great and this starts off on a very cynical footing.
I really enjoyed Olusoga's The World's War about colonial troops in the First World War and have meant to read more ever since. This is in 2 parts first of which is the history of the colonisation and 2nd looks into the birth of the national Socialist party. Book is a collaboration with another author. I'm not sure how it breaks down as to who wrote what.

Sweet Dreams: From Club Culture to Style Culture, the Story of the New Romantics Dylan Jones, (Editor)
Oral History of the early 80s scene. It's started in the pre punk era where future punks are talking about going to see Roxy Music, Bowie etc.
I've just read into 1977 and the more arty types are already feeling that what started as an explosion of creativity has already become way too formulaised/codified. Especially in the wake of the publicity from the Grundy show appearance with the Sex Pistols and the bromley Contingent. THis meant that people across the UK had a prescribed image for what punk was supposed to look like and behave like instead of it being a really amorphous form of self expression. I have wondered how wide the catchment area for Grundy was if he was a Thames TV presenter and how many people actually saw the show as opposed to how many read the headlines in the tabloids. Pistols were a last minute substitute for Queen anyway. Wonder if that would have got some level of reaction if it had gone ahead as planned anyway.
But does seem to have stopped punk or whatever it was called by those involved in teh arty side wanted to call it from going in one direction. Still does seem to have lead to some interesting results anyway.
Pretty thick book and quite good so far. I've had it out since Xmas and probably should be further into it.

Thriving on a riff : Jazz & blues influences in African American literature and film Graham Lock
A set of essays on the subject edited by Lock whose Blutopia i read last year.
Quite interesting. I'm enjoying it when i get to it. Think I may be overtstretching myself a little so taking me longer to read things than I should. Well will hopefully get through all of these.
Did get through 3 or 4 over the last couple of weeks.

Have you read Jeff Nuttall's Bomb Culture? That's Bomb as in The Bomb, A-Bomb, and its effect on culture, also trying for social change via arts, his experiences and others: published in 1968, so still in the thick of it while looking back and forward (or forth).

Sean O'Casey, BLASTS & BENEDICTIONS. A collection of essays and letters to the press. Often terrific.

Finished a few things, including Peter Culley’s first book of poems and some chaps, have now been flipping around Barry MacSweeney’s selected— some of the poems are electric but many are a bit too fragmentary in their referentiality for me to care much about them. Think I will read his final book instead of trying to make headway with the other poems here.

Started reading Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu. A novel written in the form of a screenplay, and a mordant commentary on the options available to Asians in film. Very readable so far.

The narrator's highest aspiration is to be "Kung Fu Guy."

Yu is a good writer

This is my first encounter with his work, but so far I agree.

Have you read Jeff Nuttall's Bomb Culture? That's Bomb as in The Bomb, A-Bomb, and its effect on culture, also trying for social change via arts, his experiences and others: published in 1968, so still in the thick of it while looking back and forward (or forth).

― dow, Monday, February 27, 2023 2:06 AM (sixteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Not read it, no. I'm pretty sure the name came up elsewhere recently though. May have been in a bibliography . Will put it on my to read list but not sure when that will mean I get to it. Sounds like something I would be intereste4d in though.

Reading through O'Casey's PLOUGH & THE STARS once again, I'm inclined to agree with poster Gyac's previous statement that The Covey is a self-parody by the author. The description of the character when he appears probably fits this, for one thing - though O'Casey was over 10 years older than The Covey by the time of the Rising.

I am coming round to the sense that O'Casey does actually agree with what the character says, even though he presents it as a parody. In a letter to the press about the play, he says that he had personally heard 'Jim Connolly' say the same thing as The Covey.

"She complains of the Covey calling sentences of The Voice dope. Does she not understand that the Covey is a character part, and that he couldn’t possibly say anything else without making the character ridiculous? Even the Greeks wouldn't do this. And it doesn’t follow that an author agrees with everything his characters say. I happen to agree with this, however; but of these very words Jim Connolly himself said almost the same thing as the Covey."

Sean O'Casey, letter to the Irish Independent, 26th February 1926.

Vita Sackville-West - All Passion Spent
Rereading Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem.

Eichmann in Jerusalem is a towering work.

O'Casey is a brave, big-hearted writer, with 'generous anger' as Orwell said of Dickens. Or just generosity, much of the time - as in his tributes to Yeats, despite his clash with Yeats over THE SILVER TASSIE; his judgment of Joyce as the greatest of all; his appreciation of Shaw, Synge and so on.

He is more learned than one might think: he has a remarkable range of knowledge of history and literature, internationally. He knows the Irish language and the Gaelic Ireland before the Normans, better than I had thought. He is a stirring, enjoyable, wry writer, a 'fighter' as he says of others like Yeats; especially against ecclesiastical power.

The question mark over O'Casey, for some at least, would be his support for the Stalinist USSR after others had renounced it. He wouldn't have been alone in that - Harriet Shaw Weaver, GBS?, Eric Hobsbawm. I don't yet know enough about this aspect of O'Casey to judge.

I'm now halfway through As She Climbed Across the Table, Jonathan Lethem. It's short. It's clever. It's silly. The effect is rather like a cross between sci-fi and a late 1980s rom-com.

ok i finished the thomas harris hannibal novels (i'm not reading hannibal rising bc hannibal was godawful)

amazing they were able to stripmine that horrible novel for two different visually astonishing and textually intricate adaptations (first half of the third season of the tv show and the largely disliked ridley scott movie (which i loooove))

As She Climbed Across the Table

a definition of "mild enthusiasm": this is the only book i've ever read entirely in a bookstore

My brother gave me Fortress of Solitude more than a year ago, I have yet to open it.

xxpost Brad I cosign w your previous favorable comments on Silence of The Lambs because it's centered by Clarice, whose relating to the girl victims, living and dead, is crucial to the case's resolution and the book's readability: her empathy can't be mine, or the author's, because we're too far from being like her or those girls, but it fuels a tracking device, a throughline of anxious concern, for lack of a better phrase---also, the reader can get attuned. as the veteran crime reporter->novelist is, by her own focus, as a professional as well as a young female from such a background (Hannibal zooms in on this too, taunting this little hick cop, but focused on her and the case, the puzzle, the ever-blurry perp
's traces of acting out; he [H.] of no interest otherwise).
That scene in the girl's house by the water, where Clarice is looking around her room, picking up the costume jewelry box, knowing where the secret button is on such a box, pushing it and finding the photos---

That scene is well-shot in the film. Demme's good.

aside from ratner's red dragon the adaptations are all superior to the original material. silence was def the best book, despite knowing what would happen i found it gripping and stressful

I took a long time to read AS SHE CLIMBED ACROSS THE TABLE (1997) for the first time, even though it's practically Lethem's shortest novel. I can hardly explain that. I certainly couldn't have read it in a bookshop (unless I'd bought it and the bookshop had a café that was open all day).

I have read it probably 3 times. I think it's excellent. Aimless's description is sound, though he doesn't mention that it's also a 'campus novel', and has a few other rogue elements.

Finished Hardwick's essays last night. Her field really comes across as the 19th century, for sure (she berates the young in '69 for not giving Zola and Trollope a go). How that strand goes into the 20th century (Thomas Wolfe, West), basically the American fiction that isn't that kind of encyclopedic stuff that is loved on ilx (the line on Pynchon, where she concedes the ambition but hey who could possibly love this more than "Dead Souls"...could've gone trolly when this was put to the reader in '76, but by and large she stays in her lane.) Or Faulkner. You know she has read it all but the essays that got to me were the ones on Melville and the appreciation of Jude the Obscure, specifically the women in it. Her passion for Henry James. She doesn't do foreign fiction but oddly there is a piece on Brazil, (her essay on the country are reviews of both "Rebellion in the Backlands" and "Tristes Tropiques"). Her piece on prose as written by poets (in a review of Bishop's collection of prose) is different from Sontag's take and yet has its own distinct character.

And she loves her friends. Mary McCarthy gets two write-ups. She kinda has a distaste for the practice of almost all biography (bar Boswell, which I have a copy of and will read later in the year). So the review of another acquaintance's (Edmund Wilson) biog writes itself.

Lots of little things like this throughout. Raced through it.

Another dimension here is that for a short time she covered some politics (Watts, King, Chicago in '68). It sorta goes into the 70s but she then stops, pretty much. This also goes into a piece on film (covering Kramer's Ice and Warhol's Trash, what a pairing lol) (tell me you don't watch filmin the weirdest of ways and this is the kind of thing that comes out top). She is hitting on something where she talks about the reluctance of promising (in italics in the text) young people to have children. And that's pretty much the last we hear on matters other than fiction. In the end this stuff feels a bit out of place but it's good to see it all here.

Picked up Aug 9 - Fog by Kathryn Scanlan for a pound in my local Oxfam yesterday. It's a very short selection of edited sections from an 86 year old's diary she bought in an estate auction. A quiet, charming, sad little book that I spent a very nice half hour with. Not as good as Kick the Latch which is her recent – and very, very good – sort-of-novel about horse riding/training, but still glad I bought it.

Inspired by this thread I borrowed Interior Chinatown from the library and am 100 pages in and thoroughly enjoying it. m

Hardwick's short critical bio of Melville I also recommend.

In Thomas Wolfe, West, who's West?

Nathanael West?