ILB Gripped the Steps and Other Stories. What Are You Reading Now, Spring 2017

aimless wrong as usual

^ you almost baited me into responding seriously to that troll.

The best way to understand history is to read novels anyway.

Ditched Henderson the Rain King and am reading Remajns of the Day. I'm kind of cynical of the cohort that came out of Malcolm Bradbury's UEA course, inasmuch as there's a voice I associate with it: immaculate, mannered, a little bloodless. Ishiguro seems to be the apotheosis of this - and Remains is riddled with a kind of structural neurosis that almost swamps the already neurotic narrative voice. It's fascinating to watch Stevens' fear of being though, and how the affect sort of seeps out, gradually accumulating in the margins.

xp How do the people who write those novels acquire their understanding of history then? By reading other novels?

Obviously! But your initial post sounded as if you were tut-tutting me for reading a novel about a historical personage; I said I don't read fiction to "understand" real people.

(I'm reminded ofWilde's remark about memoirs being the best novels)

EP Thompson - William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary

bedside reading: Raymond Carver - Collected Stories

I've read The Persian Boy and about four other Mary Renault novels, so I must have been tut-tutting myself as well. I also read a variety of historic novels by other writers, most notably Gore Vidal's series on US history. But historic novels aren't history and while Renault's accuracy extends to broad facts and some minor details, these are woven into a larger fabric that is largely imagined, highly colored, and no more accurate than anyone else imaginings about characters, a place and a time wholly outside their experience. Compare The Persian Boy to The Blue Flower, Penelope Fitzgerald, and it is quickly obvious the degree of romantic fairy dust that has been sprinkled upon it.

I'm not sure how you define "romantic"; The Blue Flower is set during the apex of German Romanticism. Or why you imply that "romantic fairy dust" is something to wince at.

You still sound as if you're urging me to rip scales from my eyes about the verisimilitude of historical fiction that I never applied! And I think you underestimate to what degree a Gibbon or Dangerfield embellished historical narratives with irony and asides.

And Vidal's Lincolnis as truthful to the historical Lincoln as anything Eric Foner has written.

The idea that we can history /= fiction is rather pedantic...

omit "we can"

The Blue Flower is set during the apex of German Romanticism.

Surely you can appreciate the difference between an historical setting and an artistic style. The style in which The Blue Flower is written is not the German Romantic style.

You still sound as if you're urging me to rip scales from my eyes about the verisimilitude of historical fiction that I never applied!

Sorry. This was not and is not my intention. I didn't think I was talking about you, but about books and about how I perceive them, individually and generically. I am sorry that my statements have obviously promoted a misunderstanding between us.

The idea that history /= fiction is rather pedantic...

I think the imperatives of the historical fiction writer produce a rather different kind of fiction than those of the historian. Each has a purpose in its own sphere, but I don't think they are equivalent to one another simply because each contains a certain amount of questionable interpretation, omission, or bias. So, call it pedantry, but I don't think it is truthful to say history = fiction, if fiction is taken to mean historical novels.

Came to post that History is Blecch I don't know how Alfred made it through an American Junior High School or Intermediate School without reading The King Must Die.

Sorry. This was not and is not my intention. I didn't think I was talking about you, but about books and about how I perceive them, individually and generically. I am sorry that my statements have obviously promoted a misunderstanding between us.

It's all good!

I don't know how Alfred made it through an American Junior High School or Intermediate School without reading The King Must Die

I don't read Bernie Taupin lyrics!

just finished "riders in the chariot" by patrick white. i loved it, but i knew i would, as i love everything i read by him. definitely felt that it in many stages crossed the line between visionary and eccentric/mad after threatening to often in the novels that came before it. perhaps better to say that in the work the line doesn't really exist or is arbitrary. lots of very beautiful scenes that read more as set pieces.

picked up a copy of "today i wrote nothing" by daniil kharms. the microfiction is amazing, lots of absurdities and breaks of causality. the poetry is more hit and miss, lots of it feels like free association, reads like scribblings in a journal which makes sense as it is. i envision leaving this on my desk for a while so i can pick through the microfiction often.

/I don't know how Alfred made it through an American Junior High School or Intermediate School without reading The King Must Die/

I don't read Bernie Taupin lyrics!

Some of Kharms I really enjoyed, but I found a lot of it a bit, "I'm so crazy, I am, I really am, watch me put this, uh, here, this lobster... IN MY HAT!"

Now reading Dawn Powell, Angels on Toast.

^^ nice one

Am withdrawing my reservations about Le Guin's 'Malafrena', was completely absorbed in it by the end

dissolution, disaster & decay:

robert walser - jakob von gunten
alfred kubin - the other side
géza csáth - the magician's garden

What's the last like? Loved Csath's diary, have not been able to afford a collection of his fiction.

a strange mix of naturalism, psychiatric case studies, ornate/decadent fairytale & (proto)kafka-like fables... elements of late nineteenth century lit shading into early 20th c. modernism. found the more realistic stories concerning turn of the century hungarian petty bourgeois families unquestionably more disturbing than the overtly fantastic/horror material. was interesting and worth a read, but not sure i'd say i actually liked it!

Started reading the Cherie Currie autobiography Naked Angel. I picked it up a couple of months back and its been lying around the bed since. Quite interesting so far, she's just been raped by her twin sister's ex a few pages after her dad collected teh rest of his clothing to move to Texas. but she's discovered Bowie live and presumably been saved. Also the joys of food colouring as hair dye.
I was thinking this might be a dodgy read cos I thought it was the one where she alledged Kim Fowley raped her and other band members claimed it was spurious. But that turns out to be the bassist Jackie Fox not her. So can keep reading with confidence, great.

Thanks, no lime tangier

Read Truman Capote.: The Early Stories -- feeble stuff, should not have been resurrected. hilton als's intro valiantly avoids discussing the quality of the stories, and understandably so. At least capote got better, before he got worse again.

back to Wood on Empson: Wood naturally great, but the super-subtleties of whatever Empson is saying are getting away from me. His kinds of irony, as described by Wood, are increasingly things I don't follow.

I thought "Wayward Heroes" by Halldor Laxness utterly brilliant: it has the form and texture of an Icelandic saga but inserts just enough hints of narrator-reflection and occasionally even of the internal life of the characters to bring recognisably saga-ish heroic deeds into a world that feels recognisably human rather than saga. It ends up being partly mock-heroic, occasional hints of saga-style Don Quixote and even Candide... Along with "Attrib." it's the best book I've read this year.

Natalia Ginzburg: Family Lexicon -- for some reason I had it in my head that though this was probably going to be good, it was also going to be pretty dour, but it's not at all! Really wonderful so far.

Empson's THE STRUCTURE OF COMPLEX WORDS seems to have been entirely passed over in this Michael Wood book.

I meant to say, almost entirely passed over; I think it's quoted once.

I suppose I should just try again to read Empson himself, one of these days.

Was in Russell Square a little while ago, was pleasantly surprised to see a blue plaque for Empson there (just a few doors down from a blue plaque for Kenneth Williams).

B-b-but where is the blue plaque for Emlyn Williams?

That's in Marchmont St also, IIRC?

Correct!

Cheating on Len Deighton by dipping into "All-Out War" about the Brexit vote. It's a huge "Servants of the People" style political bonkbuster. Pretty well-written for a cash-in, interviews with everyone. No idea if I'll finish it though.

Nicole Markotic, Rough Patch
John Darnielle, Universal Harvester
André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name

Prof Wood: an apology. I was wrong to say that MW passes over COMPLEX WORDS. It just comes up later than I thought.

Now on what I think is the last chapter, on Empson & Milton.

i love empson tho i have not read COMPLEX WORDS

COMPLEX WORDS, COM-PLEX WORRDS, CMPLX WRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR-DSAH

I finished Michael Wood's ON EMPSON.

The opening chapter or so is often stunningly interesting and droll. Then it comes and goes a bit. But it's Michael Wood so it's better, and funnier, than almost anyone else would be.

Back to Flann O'Brien's drama - still on his first play Faustus Kelly. Will read the rest also.

remy de gourmont - angels of perversity
mirbeau - the torture garden
cendrars - moravagine
apollinaire - the poet assassinated

had only read some of gourmont's criticism prior to the story collection & wasn't that impressed by it (theophile gautier did that kind of thing better!), still interested in reading the novel of his that arthur ransome translated though.

Jean De Florette, Pagnol. I recently watched, and very much enjoyed, the Yves Robert adaptations of Pagnol's memoirs so I'm happy to dive deeper.

I've now read all the Simenon Maigret novels from 1931 up to 1950, and the absence of any mention of WW2 is quite odd

The way my (German) parents talked about their parent's generation a lot of people just wanted to forget about the era as quickly as possible, perhaps in France as well? (though that doesn't explain lack of mentions in the 30's volumes).

Simenon was accused of collaboration after the war, so maybe he wanted to keep quiet about everything. Also, he didn't publish any Maigrets between '34 and '42, and then only a few for the remainder of the war.

2/3rds of the way through Mason and Dixon

Haven't read it, but I've seen favorable review of Simenon's The Train, about a little guy faced with moral conundrums in Vichy France---maybe also self-justification, like On The Waterfront---?