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

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.

The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior: Da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Borgia and the World They Shaped by Paul Strathern

leonardo da vinci, niccolo machiavelli and cesar borgia all hung out and went on a hike through emilia-romagna in the autumn of 1502. who knew? this book tells the story in a surprising amount of detail, mostly surmised indirectly through oblique references in their correspondences and notebooks. extremely enjoyable popular history writing

Very excited to start Wrong: A Critical Biography of Dennis Cooper by Diarmuid Hester before I dive into Cooper's own The Marbled Swarm. The episode of Bad Gays about Cooper with Hester was fantastic, which bodes well.

Glad you found it, o. nate!

Previously on ILB: several favorable mentions of early (life) Burroughs, esp. Junkie and Queer and maybe Exterminator! (he was an exterminator for a while). I still want to check those. Also I think The Job may incl. some I have read when they were published in Rolling Stone: his conversation with Bowie, and his chatty review of Scandals of Scientology (the Church made an example of the author), incl. some of his own experiences with the e-meter, to understand what one did in past lives: an effort toward going clear---something about hiding a body in an alley--he didn't endorse anything except the e-meter, which he considered a very good polygraph. Also would want The Job to include his Crawdaddy confab with Jimmy Page.

Somewhere mentioned smoking hash in an orgone box---was a big Denton Welch fan (not saying those interests were related)

Very excited to start _Wrong: A Critical Biography of Dennis Cooper_ by Diarmuid Hester before I dive into Cooper's own _The Marbled Swarm_. The episode of Bad Gays about Cooper with Hester was fantastic, which bodes well.

I took four different books with me for a four night beach vacation because I had only just finished my previous book and hadn't landed on a new one yet. I wound up deciding on a bit of fluff by Bill Bryson called At Home, published about a decade ago. Bryson excels at writing books compounded of hundreds of short, pithy anecdotes and factoids, draped upon a flimsy narrative structure just strong enough to sag under this weight, but not collapse.

What saves him is his keen sense of wit and irony in his choice of anecdotes and factoids. They are genuinely interesting for the five to ten minutes you spend engaged with each of them before you move on to the next. It fits the profile of 'beach reading' very well.

I continue, now and again, reading THE BEST OF C.M. KORNBLUTH.

Thread of Wonder, the next 5000 posts: science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction 2021 and beyond

reading Ivo Andric, The Bridge on the Drina -- utterly excellent, part of a trilogy though mercifully not a trilogy tracing a narrative arc as you can't find a copy of the third volume in English for less than a hundred buck

reading Shane McCrae's memoir Pulling the Chariot of the Sun -- I have memoir fatigue and didn't expect to find, in this, a book I think everyone should read; his story is hard, kind of unimaginable, and the writing is piercing -- every page a pleasure, but "pleasure" is the wrong word because every page is also hard going, his story is painful to hear but his telling is stunning. I'm reading a galley, it's not out til August.

I almost bought The Bridge on the Drina at the store yesterday.

I have a musty old hardback copy of *Bridge on the Drina* that I *will* get around to one day.

Funny, I find Shane McCrae’s poetry insurmountably bad, but have always enjoyed the bits of prose I’ve read. I’m interested in this memoir!

I couldn’t make it to NY to see Bob Glück read this past week, so I am re-reading his Elements, re-issued in 2013 nearly thirty years after its first publication. While not on par with his other book of stories, Denny Smith, there are moments of stunning clarity and insight. I highly rate all of his novels, particularly Jack the Modernist, for those who are interested.

Most interesting about his writing is its ability to make me want to write— a unique and powerful gift for any writer to share with their readership.

Several books back, but this one keeps coming back to the spotlight in memory theater: Karen Joy Fowler's novelBOOTH, which earns its brevity x caps via encompassing mutability of family experience, tree of lives, with BOOTH in the face ov history courtesy little brother John Wilkes re-absorbed, as much as possible, into family context, while changing it, another change, incl. the way stories told by one's memory gradually change over many years.
Fowler, known for her speculative fiction with a strong feminist undercurrent, at least, and often with an uncommon sense of the historical, here boldy reaches through the ever-expanding welter of mid-etc. 19th Century lore & troves, apparently authenticated discoveries and bullshit, esp. regarding all things related to the Civil War, and brings forth Rosalie, the least-known offspring of Junius, among those who made it to adulthood,for the center of the chronicle's first section. On an isolated homestead, she minds her little sibs, living and ead, while also sorting out her sense of her parents, with mother frequently incapacited, father frequently on tour, fairly frequently crazy when he comes back. It's not unstressful and often fairly eerie to watch, but it's a way of life, frequently bringing the news from inner and outer spaces, day to day, night to night: she finds a balance.
Gradually, especially when the family moves back into town, to Baltimore--later, as adults, in New York City and so forth--the outer world grows a lot, with Rosalie taking her turns in the foreground, as the young 'uns grow up, each with a very distinctive personality, variations on a theatrical sensibility. John emerges as, while never the best actor, a born dreamer, and joiner of kid gangs he romanticizes, while gradually losing sense of fair play, also sense, period. Abe starts showing up periodically, likewise other increasingly familiar bits of plot points, but only when necessary, only for a while.

Hester’s book is incredible and while ‘The Marbled Swarm’ is a departure in his oeuvre, it is one of Cooper’s most accomplished books— its structure, syntax, and tonal shape are a real marvel. Just be prepared for some squishing

Just finished the Hester and yes, it is a really great insight into how Cooper's work is informed by/goes onto inform so much interesting, cool stuff. Delighted it exists.

I continue with SUDDEN TIMES. It becomes very much book about "the Irish in England" - in a certain generation, 1980s, 1990s, going through Coventry, Birmingham and London. Much of its world is that of building sites and labourers. Meanwhile it also develops its very menacing plot of crime, murder, vengeance, fear - but does all this through its meandering monologue which could veer anywhere at any time.