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

I seem to recall he talked about the process of contemplating one’s object of desire through something that he called “crystallization” iirc (in English translation at least), some kind of idea of focusing on a flaw à la a diamond or a grain of sand in an oyster forming a pearl.

I've started reading "The Western Lands" by William S. Burroughs. The other Burroughs I've read are "Naked Lunch" and "Junkie". This seems closer to the "Naked Lunch" end of the scale.

Poster Dow, I own the Bowen COLLECTED STORIES and have never read it, somehow perpetually putting it off. I imagine it's about as good as people say it is.

I'm rereading Kate O'Brien's THE LAND OF SPICES (1941), a novel about a senior Roman Catholic nun running a convent school in Limerick in the 1900s.

Said nun, Helen Archer, is English, and grew up in Brussels. She represents a 'continental European' idea of the church: sophisticated and detached. Meanwhile, the Irish branch is pressured to be closer to Irish nationalism. 'Mother' Helen has various relations with the other nuns beneath her, and with a range of schoolgirls, some of whom could be in an old schoolgirl story (squabbling over a game of rounders, snobbish about their backgrounds, etc). One younger girl, Anna Murphy, is the other main protagonist: a bit of a prodigy and also virtuous.

The novel is elegantly and precisely written, rather than beautiful. It doesn't really seek aesthetic or poetic quality. It has more of the 'functional elegance' of the Catholic world and discourse it depicts. But like 'Mother' Helen it has a sort of generous heart hidden beneath its austere appearance. I'm quite fond of it, though its slowness and subject matter are quite far from current trends.

have you read J.F. Powers?

balzac's deputy of arcis; left unfinished at death, late style perhaps? piling intrigues on top of intrigues, old figures coming out of the wood work all over the place, never really anchoring on any character for much of the book. having a great time

Poster Alfred: I have not read that writer.

I would like to read Balzac. A task I must get to.

"I seem to recall he talked about the process of contemplating one’s object of desire through something that he called “crystallization” iirc"

Yes. I took it as trying to write about love as process, to strip the stuff that can't be written out of it. I can see what Proust (or Barthes) might have taken out from this.

it's a marvellous project to dive into, that only gets richer. little other fiction i find as satisfying at this point. black sheep would be my pick of the longer novels; the vicar of tours of the shorter.

xp that is

Lost Illusions or Pere Goriot are good places to start.

The recent film of Lost Illusions was very good, made me want to read the book.

Can't resist saying "la crystallisa-tion..." like Jean Claude Brialy on this Serge number

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSUvZ372Vm8

🇫🇷 🇫🇷 🇫🇷

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0cAWxZzF4E

I finish THE LAND OF SPICES, again. You could say that the formality and austerity of this novel makes its repressed emotion the more poignant.

I read half a chapter of Bono's SURRENDER in which he outlines certain political views. On Northern Ireland, relatively consensual. But saying that he hung out at 10 Downing Street drinking wine with Tony Blair (who drank little) *after* the Iraq War isn't a great look, to my mind. He reports Larry Mullen Jr's uncompromising view that Blair is a war criminal. That rather increases my respect for the drummer.

I'm reading Nick Tosches' biography of Jerry Lee Lewis, *Hellfire*. As ever, Tosches romanticises the idea of the artist as some kind of voyager, bringing back the 'work' from the foul soup of the collective cultural Id (a process in which he is very much entwined, naturally, and why he comes across as over-identifying with the, uh, seedier elements of his subjects' lives). It totally comes at you running off the page though; and his register - Faulknerian, broadly; southern Gothic, more precisely - is perfect for telling Lewis' tale.

Pere Goriot is a book very much worth reading, although it takes old Goriot a comically long time to die.

The Western Lands is probably as close as Burroughs got to autumnal; the Western Lands themselves are the world of the dead. He wrote a few things after that but it's really the closer to his writing career.

That sounds quite good, Chinaski.

I have started reading Dermot Healy's novel SUDDEN TIMES (1999). So far it is, I believe, narrated by a drifting labourer from Sligo.

I started my first Kenzaburō Ōe novel.

The Western Lands is probably as close as Burroughs got to autumnal

That's an interesting take. Trying to think of novels that I would characterize as "autumnal". I guess you mean anticipating one's mortality, striking a valedictory note, something like that? It does seem to have a lot about death in it, but Burroughs as a writer seems to have always been somewhat obsessed with death. Certainly there is still plenty in it that is provocatively juvenile - gross-out jokes in deliberate bad taste, fascination with all things creepy and gory - and it doesn't feel like Burroughs has mellowed much. The book is not very coherent - it's hard to say why all of this material was chosen as the basis of this particular book - other than these are themes that strike a chord with the author. Burrough's antecedents seem to be writers like H.P. Lovecraft who followed the muse of their own creepy fascinations, which fortunately for them, turned out to be, if not universal, at least prevalent enough in the wider world to gain them a devoted following.

Sweet Dreams Dylan Jones
Oral history of the New Romantics. Took this out thinking I would kill some time over Xmas. Only now getting half way through it. It's pretty long but pretty interesting since it covers way more than the Blitz scene. Gives a lot of background, traces things back to the mid 70s and also looks into magazines etc of the time.
So quite enjoying it.

Not Without Laughter Langston Hughes
Harlem Renaissance connected writer better known for his poetry also wrote some prose which is quite good.
This is about a family just getting by in recently integrated America in the early years of the 20th century. Still pretty far from egalitarian this is focusing on a black family led by women because the men are elsewhere.
I'm getting towards teh end of the book and Sandy the boy who is one of the central characters has just received a letter saying his dad is off to Europe to fight in the war.
Enjoying it . Need to read The Ways of Whitefolks the collection of short stories I picked up a few weeks ago.

Walter Rodney Decolonial Marxism
Been waiting for this fort a while . So need to get it read . Cos it is the only copy in the Irish library system which is really bad.
Set of essays by the Guyanan writer.

I finished Out of the Flames. It starts as a biography of a sixteenth century intellectual and scholar, who began life in Spain as Miguel Seves, but is best known as Michael Severtus. From there it becomes more and more discursive, ranging around in the history of printing, the Reformation, John Calvin's reign in Geneva, medicine, Unitarianism and rare book collecting.

Somehow or other it manages to weave all these threads together and keep the narrative generally fresh and interesting through most of the book. It bogs down a bit toward the end as it moves further from the figure of Servetus and loses some of its depth and focus. Still, it was engaging and informative, which is what it set out to accomplish. Recommended, if the subject matter sounds like something you might be curious about.

Some xposts, but I don’t really think that Burroughs was going for coherence, seems a weird metric to hold him to— he was, despite his renown in the popular press, an experimental writer looking to critique a puritanical and morally bankrupt society, partly by reveling in that very abjection.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s much to admire in Burroughs despite the occasional sense of disorientation. Sometimes the disorientation may contribute to the effect. I don’t necessarily consider him a moral guide though he does take some strong stands in the book. For example: Christianity bad; no-kill animal shelters good.

Burroughs' best assets was his voice.

*asset

Intensely dry, unfolding its wrinkles without losing a one: Doc B giving you the news, cut-up and straight ahead, over and out. He made a lot of good records. Also, he got to read on Saturday Night Live, uniquely enough (?)

I’m old enough to remember when he was riding high as an avatar of ‘90s alterna-authenticity. I don’t think his literary output ever quite lived up to the iconicity of his brand. There are some moments of pellucid clarity and dream logic in Western Lands but they’re scattered amongst many pages of turgid b.s. There’s a bit of Stockholm Syndrome going on, in that the book seems more interesting in retrospect, because one’s brain otherwise couldn’t explain to itself why it kept going through the repetition and obscurantism.

after putting myself through those thomas harris novels i decided to read a book that would probably be actually good and that book is cloud atlas and guess what it is very fun

One can read only so many descriptions of young men ejaculating as they are hanged.

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

o.nate, Martin Amis wrote a review about Burroughs in about 1980 that could interest you.

Brad Nelson, I like David Mitchell.

I am 1/3 through SUDDEN TIMES. I was forming the view that it belonged to a subgenre of 'rural or provincial fiction in which the modern rural landscape is not traditional or wholesome but chaotic and populated by a range of perverse characters'. Alan Warner's Scotland could be comparable. I was going to coin the phrase THE NEW, WEIRD IRELAND to gesture at the local instance of this mode. But actually the category isn't entirely correct for this novel as much of it takes place in a town. Within that more urban setting, it does still have some of that atmosphere. The characters have now just arrived in Dublin. The novel has a sense of repressed memory of violence which I assume will eventually be explained.

Elizabeth Bowen - To the North
William Styron - Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness

Martin Amis is a grub compared to Burroughs, can’t trust the taste of anyone who believes otherwise afaic.

The Wild Boys is the book of his that remains most important to many fans and detractors alike. Fwiw, I have my problems with Burroughs, but most of the objections and handwringing about him seem to relate to the objectors’ latent homophobia.

Finished Anthony Beevor's Stalingrad. Felt a sense of urgency as I had been reading it for 7 months when I realized it's the same book it took Mark forever to read on Peep Show, and I didn't want that comparison. Now started Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich.

Also started Cutter and Bone by Newton Thornburg, because I can't go too long without a fix of down and out 20th century grifters.

xxpost he made a lot of good records Not only do you get the mighty wry drone of his voice carrying the words, but records are shorter than books! Also, although he did make some effective unaccompanied albums, esp. his ESP-DISK, Call Me Burroughs, peak years bought added value via appropriate music of Material, Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, R.E.M., Kurt Cobain, and Hal Willner, among others.

So I'd much rather listen than read much more, but although his texts could push racism and misogyny past too-hip irony and socially relevant-to-over-the-top satire, including of his own cosmic comic strip reels and jabs, you could say the same for some of Celine's antisemitic forays: there's still something convincingly repulsive in there at times.

Although Burroughs' voice as a writer, on the page, also can convey a lifelong struggle with what he identifies as systems of control, especially heroin and language, and the confounding existence of women: sometimes he seems to be writing around the awareness of having killed his wife---agreeing to play William Tell with his pistol while wasted----but what the hell was he of all people doing with a wife?? Some said the kid wasn't his, but sure looked like him, whaa--life is complicated---again, not to let him off the hook, but he surely could twist on it---

you could say the same for some of Celine's antisemitic forays: there's still something convincingly repulsive in there at times.

He sometimes *seems* to get possibly deliberately crazy, ridiculous with it,and/or he can't help it, just feels so good to rub out faces in it, so what I meant to say re pushing past (or through irony and satire, more in Burroughs' writing than that of Celine, but some kind of compulsion in both cases---coming full circle to basic badness---

But meanwhile, in the reading experience, small distinctions can make for bumps I feel, however much it matters or doesn't (Celine could maybe give himself a pass, be the smugly virtuous physician when not writing; Burroughs doesn't have that, and can convey that sense of writing around, of droning over and pushing past anxiety and chaos, building his own system of control for the moment, over and over again)

Also, Celine concentrated most of his anti-semitic writing in what he called his pamphlets, actually three full-length books, evil gutter clowning: let me entertain you, shock you and invite you on a wild ride---with his *relatively* non-tainted novels of universal futility kept acceptable enough as Literature (though he still loved to rant about Jews in interviews etc.), thus giving himself another pass of sorts.

It’s a pass insofar as a lot of ppl will only read the novels and not see the other stuff, otherwise it has the opposite effect: by putting the bulk of the antisemitism in the direct form of pamphlets there is zero plausible deniability, no outsize literary character to hide behind

& I’ve only read some Burroughs but the misogyny tends to be more diffused in the corpus right, so it’s less clear cut than with céline

otoh he did fucking kill a woman

Relevant, I’ve been bad at posting my reading itt but earlier this year I read the big new céline bio & found it really didn’t tackle that stuff well; the author bemoans the neverending “céline culture wars” in a way that suggests he’s somehow moved beyond it but he doesn’t really do anything at all different: c wrote some great books but his antisemitism cannot be ignored but he wrote some great books but

This leads to a bizarre section at the end where he tries to outline ways to resolve the argument (which is already absurd, there’s no way these debates stop happening while céline is still being published, either he is forgotten forever or the debates go on sorry if it bores you pal) and — no shit — one of his suggestions is that we consider the true objective worth of the books only, by looking at the prices his books go for at auction! It’s probably one of the stupidest things I’ve ever read in a book tbh

Was that bio by Damian Catani?

That’s the one yeah

Ah ok, that's a shame - read bits of it (the early chapters) but didn't finish.

The book has this gap bcz since it was published these 'new' novels have been discovered. Not that it would make that much of a difference.

o.nate, Martin Amis wrote a review about Burroughs in about 1980 that could interest you.

Thanks, I think I found it: "William Burroughs: The Bad Bits" from the New Statesman (1977). I liked this analogy:

Reading him is like staring for a week at a featureless sky; every few hours a bird will come into view or, if you're lucky, an aeroplane might climb past, but things
remain meaningless and monotone. Then, without warning (and not for long, and for no coherent reason, and almost always in The Naked Lunch), something happens: abruptly the clouds grow warlike, and the air is full of portents.

I can relate to that feeling.

The Wild Boys is the book of his that remains most important to many fans and detractors alike

If I get around to another of his books, I may try that one. Thanks.