Are You There, God? What Are You Reading In The Summer Of 2021?

The constraints Perec devised for Life A Users Manual are many-layered and complex: it takes twelve or so pages of Bellos’s Perec biography to explain them!

My rough précis: he uses 10x10 grids:

(1) a grid superimposed on a picture of the house; the order of the chapters is based on “the knight’s move” a way for a knight in chess to make its way around a board - or in this case an extended 10x10 chessboard - visiting every square, once only.

(2) 21 grids, with a thing / name / concept in each square. Each row / column was a more or less coherent list of things with a title. By combining and recombining the elements of these lists he had what Bellos calls a “machine” to distribute material around the house and around the main plot (fee free to quibble with there being a main plot) and the 170+ other stories listed at the end of the book. Bellos reckons none of the stories in the book are untouched by this content-generating machine.

Past that, there were various other sets of book wide or chapter-specific rules, puns, references word-games and jokes.

Bellos says Perec didn’t use any of his rules completely consistently, the closest he came was the knight’s move stuff and even there he omits the content for square 66 (there’s speculation about what that means). Perec makes it impossible to trace the shape or nature of the constraints from the final work: once the scaffolding is removed the building has to stand on its own.

Personally I find this stuff interesting in a way that I might find the story of a recording session for a song I love interesting: the act and process of creation is cool, but what I love about the finished work is something else entirely.

I don’t know if the above is helpful or just obscure, I can scan and send the relevant pages if you like.

I’m not much of a consumer of literary biogs but the David Bellos biography “Georges Perec: A Life In Words” referenced above is really good.

I need to reread Life A User's Manual but I've been saying that for decades. I think I read it in my late teens or early 20s. I remember when I was on the protest camp somebody was coming up with books regularly and i think a copy turned up then but it may have been in French so not much use to me. Which is now a decade ago anyway.
I remember it being really good so need to reread that and read a few others of his.

Did get hold of 2 Marlon James books from the library yesterday. A Short History Of Seven Killings and Black Leopard, Red Wolf . NOt started into either yet though. Maybe shouldn't have got both at the same time since they're both pretty thick and I have other things already on the go

Am just finishing the Larry KIrwan book Rocking the Bronx his novel about the Irish punk immigrating illegally to the Bronx. Have found it quite great so will read the memoir Green Suede Shoes which I picked up a few weeks earlier.

That's a good post from Tim.

And also a stimulating thought about how relevant process is or isn't to the experience of the work.

My sense would have been that, in this particular kind of case (formalism, procedural art, or whatever), it is; that thinking about process is a big part of the experience. Tim seems to suggest otherwise.

For me, the central pleasure of LAUM is in the text itself, which I found and find dizzying and coherent (which is quite a combination). I read and loved the book with a vague sense that some kind of process was in place but without any idea of what it was or how it was applied. Only long afterwards did I even begin to understand how Perec structured and used his constraints.

Perec's preface to the novel is all about jigsaws, which is relevant to the "main" story but also a bit of a tease: it feels like a hint that it would be possible to take the contents of the novel and reassemble them into the source materials and constraints: that turns out not to be possible.

As I understand it the question of "scaffolding" is a live one in OuLiPo circles: some writers think it's important to retain and show the working process, others think it's important to remove it. I tend to take the cowardly and somewhat mealy-mouthed position that either's fine if the end product is rewarding on its own terms.

I am with you there, Tim. I find process fascinating, and have been working with intense formal and processual constraints in my own writing for years, but find that I don't want my readers to care too much about it...yet on the other hand, I want to know how books like LAUM, among others, were written. A bit of a contradictory position.

There's a somewhat interesting document from 2009, during a brief resurgence of more conceptual poetics within contemporary poetry. Due to the asshattery of some of its main characters— Kenneth Goldsmith, Vanessa Place, Nada Gordon, etc— it has been batted down and isn't part of the conversation any longer, though as an aesthetics document it holds some interest, I think. Free pdf: https://monoskop.org/images/1/1e/Place_Vanessa_Fitterman_Robert_Notes_on_Conceptualisms_2009.pdf

I look forward to reading that, and I will try to stay away from any asshattery if I possibly can. Thanks!

I said this:

For me, the central pleasure of LAUM is in the text itself, which I found and find dizzying and coherent

and I want to expand on it because it's not-very-meaningful personal shorthand. The other week I went to see some of Yayoi Kusama's infinity rooms at the Tate Modern: they're small spaces which (through carefully positioning of lights and reflective surfaces) seem to go on forever. In some you seem to be there everywhere you look, over and over and in others you seem to disappear completely into the infinity. My brain always feels on the edge of making sense of these impossible landscapes but never quite does.

That's the best comparison I can think of for LAUM: the stories seem to go on forever, to reflect and affect each other, it feels like everything is probably there if I look closely enough but I know it's impossible to look closely enough or hold enough of it in my head. I know that's an effect, generated by careful layering of stories and references, and I love it. Knowing there's a process and structure behind it makes the whole thing even more tantalising!

On top of which many of the stories hit me emotionally too.

The asshattery mostly has to do with some works created by these people that are racist. Place had a project where she tweeted out sentences from "Gone With The Wind" and the profile picture was a Mammy caricature, to draw attention to the racist elements of the most beloved novel in the US. Goldsmith read parts of Michael Brown's autopsy report, rearranged and "remixed," at a conference at Brown University. Basically doing poorly thought-out conceptual takes on Objectivist material, like idiots mimicking Reznikoff. Goldsmith is an execrable human, Place is (I think) rather brilliant but doesn't seem to have much emotional intelligence. Fitterman is a smart dude, and he co-wrote that PDF with Place.

I finished The True Deceiver last night. It's brilliant, but in a low key way. The story is spare and tersely told, but I found that so much was packed into each short chapter that I would frequently stop reading and lay the book down so that I could absorb what I'd just read and tease out what had happened between the lines. More so than any book I've recently read this short novel was beautifully constructed in every detail and each small incident bores in like another twist of an augur. A very fine book!

I finished "Leave the World Behind" by Rumaan Alam. Structurally, it is basically a horror novel. Emotionally, it proceeds from a gently comic calm to increasing cringe and low-level anxiety through to dread and eventually to a few moments of genuine horror. The setting is quite mundane for a contemporary novel, NYC creative-class types vacationing on Eastern Long Island, not the Hamptons, which they can't afford, but somewhere in that general direction. The initial family dynamics are also mundane, and one hopes this implies a payoff which is going to be as disturbing and weird as the setup is normal. The first major plot twist is clever, deftly skewering the latent awkwardness behind new social arrangements enabled by AirBnb and the sharing economy. Things get progressively weirder, but Alam pulls some punches, in my view, by keeping the real weird stuff offstage and only obliquely hinting at it in kind of arch H.P. Lovecraft fashion, implying that to fully reveal it would likely drive the reader to madness. So some good ideas, but it seems like the book kind of ends when it should be just getting going.

John le Carre, Little Drummer Girl - politically it holds up surprisingly well, I think? Socially not so much.

Rachel Cusk, Second Place - only a quarter through so far and not enjoying it as much as the Outline trilogy, but there's still a lot to enjoy in her writing.

Meghan O'G1eblyn, God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor & the Search for Meaning - only googleproofing because she's a friend, but it's really amazingly written. Talks about AI & consciousness, the pervasiveness of technological metaphors to describe the human brain, etc. Really approachable and personal given the subject matter.

Politically it holds up surprisingly well, I think? Socially not so much. How do you mean? Haven't seen this distinction (re anything) before.

Although some politically astute people aren't so good socially, come to think of it.

You mean the characterizations are clunky, politics aside?

thx Tim!

Sorry that was poorly stated, I just mean that the Israel/Palestine stuff is handled well and holds up, but that a lot of the male/female relationships can be cringey at times.

(also is this le Carre's horniest novel? I've only read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and a couple of the Smiley ones)

The Gay Revolution by Lillian Faderman
American gay political history starting from the 1950s. The early stuff was the most interesting to me as I knew nothing about it. Also new to me was the lesbian separatist movement. One of the main themes of the book is the mainstreamers vs. the radicals and it's pretty evenhanded, pointing out times where the radicals triggered reactionary responses and also times where they were pointlessly shut out by mainstreamers. There were also conflicts between male gays and female gays and neither side comes across well, having petty conflicts and a general apathy between them.

currently reading the short novel The Album of Dr. Moreau by Daryl Gregory, a murder mystery about a boyband of human-animal hybrids.

xpost Yeah, that's what I thought you meant, Jordan (and the way I come closest to actually remembering it), but wasn't quite sure.
Just finished Emma Cline's The Girls, and will re-read parts, but certainly plausibly (as far as this simple male mind can grok) develops/runs with what Lena Dunham's blurb references as "the intricacies of girlhood," though here maybe a little too tied in with a schematic ov Thee Manson Family--notably simplified---and I wonder if third person would bring in the other girls' mynds more; here, narrator Evie keeps zooming on her beloved Suzanne, eventual point person in murders, and always principal handmaiden to scuzzy Love God Russell--but the group dynamic is vivid enough, unpretentiously shaded as much-examined crucial events can be, many years later.
A framing b-plot, set in the present, extends the early and late teen and older male dynamic past cultimess per se, further emphasizing (along with 14-year-old Evie's earlier and ongoing experiences among normies, when she's away from the ranch)how gender passports get stamped etc. on different situations---also there's a reference to Russell learning lot from his early public service with "a religious group in Ukiah," re needy, vulnerable women of various ages and backgrounds, not just teen runaways (making me think of Ted Bundy, psych major, volunteering for the help line at the crisis center) Also how other males of various ages and backgrounds take advantage, or fumble it, in some cases, but take a poke at it.
Mainly it's about girls, and the plot could be another plot, many others---if any of several subplots and brief scenes here became dominant----which, although this storyline stays on course, seems an implicit point, or theme, brushing by.

Excited to start By Night in Chile on vacation.

I'm currently reading a Penguins Classics book with the excruciatingly long title+subtitle of: Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North. It is comprised of Parts I, II, & III plus 4 Appendices. Part I is a lengthy narrative by Ibn Fadlan into the southern Urals. Part II is an account by Abu Hamid of his adventurous travels east of the Caspian. Part III contains 46 individual snippets from 20 different authors.

What makes it all interesting is that all these bits and bobs are among the few somewhat reliable accounts of huge swathes of Central Asia from the ninth century to the thirteenth century. The Khazars get big play in them so far.

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. I wasn't expecting a sort of picaresque, usually my least favourite kind of novel but this is so compellingly nightmarish - and lyrically written - that it put me in mind of the third policeman, though it's far more realist in intent.

Started reading Marlon James A Short HIstory of Seven Killings.
It's tied in with the deaths of several people around Bob marley in an attempted assassination of him. I think so far it has people trying to tell you who they were . NOt read very far into it but so far have read a couple of different people trying to explain perspectives.
Seems to be trying to keep people in their natural idioms.
Have seen this heavily recccommended and seen a webinar with teh writer so hoping I can get heavily into this, do have several things on th ego at the moment and probably shouldn't have grabbed his Black Leopard, Red Wolf from the library at the same time or vice versa. But had seen the local library has the 2 of them on their website and then this vanished from there. Not sure what the story with that is. BUt had to ask librarian if they did actually have this listed so took both

ANgela Saini Inferior
I read this at Xmas when I was drinking quite a bit so thought I'd give it a cleaner reading. Think it's pretty good. It's Saini's book on Gender imbalance and unpacking why science has tried to support the assymetry, what agendas were involved etc.
I enjoy Saini, I need to read her first book Geek Nation about science practise in India

The Gay Revolution by Lillian Faderman

good stuff

I finish John le Carré: THE PIGEON TUNNEL: STORIES FROM MY LIFE.

I admire JLC's ability to inject modesty and humour all the time. He almost literally never lets conceit, grandeur, acclaim get the better of him; always sees it sidelong and brings himself down to earth.

His life was more dramatic, interesting, packed with extraordinary encounters than that of most modern writers. He wrote an extraordinary number of novels. I should read more of them.

His father was a scary conman, like a psychopath, judging by Le Carre's Fresh Air interview: so bad it's funny in some instances and there's laughter when there has to be---worth looking for in the FA archives.

Perfect spy is semiautobiographical on the topic of his father IIUC.

I’m reading Pigeon Tunnel right now, based on a recent ILB rec (yours?). I find the modesty veers to humblebraggery but there’s no doubt that it’s an extraordinarily juicy and well-composed book - I prefer it to the novels so far.

I just finished Wizard of Earthsea, which was astonishing. I’ve always avoided Le Guin, found her austere and difficult — and it turns out she is, except that’s what makes her so good.

Hope you won't be stopping there.

Chuck Tatum: I thought about your statement on JLC and I think that we might be in some degree of agreement.

I might put it this way: Only someone with so much to be proud about as JLC would be so repeatedly and noticeably humble.

Finished Rodefer's 'Mon Canard,' read Bruce Andrews' 'Tizzy Boost,' Thomas Meyer's 'The Umbrella of Aesculapius,' Ben Roylance's 'The Chymical Wedding of Benjamin Roylance,' and Ken Irby's 'Antiphonal and Fall to Fall.'

Now I'm toggling between the massive Gerald Burns book, 'Shorter Poems,' and my friend SLUTO's non-fictional travel narrative that borrows the form of a crew-change. Both pretty neat and interesting.

I finished Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness, but it became something of a slog in Part III, where the snippets from many hands repeated many of the same facts, often in the same words, because the snippets was derived from a later epitome, compiled directly from earlier sources with slavish fidelity. The purpose of all the repetition in this book was clearly based on the idea that centuries of scribal errors in reproducing the original text could be retrieved by scholars, by overlaying many examples that relied on the same textual sources. But, tbrr, scholars of these texts shouldn't be operating from a Penguins Classics translation.

Only recommended for those who are very curious about the Khazars, Rus and various Turkic tribes around 950 AD.

Last night I started The Hearing Trumpet, Leonora Carrington. As I begin it, it reads rather like a sophisticated version of the sort of shaggy dog tale a parent might make up on the fly as a serial bedtime story for their kid. Or maybe like a less sophisticated Lewis Carrol.

Anyway, so far there's enough invention and interest to carry me along, based almost entirely on its childlike tone and quirky atmosphere. I hope eventually there is more to it than that.

read vladimir sorokin's ICE TRILOGY, which was occasionally intriguing or at least stylistically impressive, but mostly absurd and repetitive

i mean the word 'heart' is used 1200 times and the phrase 'meat machines' almost 500

seems like more a feat for the (late) translator than the author. or critics who can be all like 'here is the true russian history of the 20th century' (it isn't)

I'm selective with what fiction I listen to on audiobook but I really enjoyed Sian Phillips' reading of The Hearing Trumpet.

Yeats in 1885-6. Theosophy, hermetic societies, mystics, magic. Complete nonsense. R.F. Foster continues to write superbly. I've probably never read a better historian.

sometimes it's better not to know how foolish/juvenile/egotistical/abusive an artist is/was. it's like watching shakespeare pick his nose, examine the product and casually eat it.

well i thought hamnet was good actually

hamnet was fiction

jfc

lol

jfc

mostly fiction, too

^^^^ all of this just made my afternoon lol

The two McCullers novels I hadn't read 'til a few weeks ago:

Reflections In A Glass Eyewas the follow-up to The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, and not as well received, at least at the time. Same voice, some of the same themes/undercurrents, but otherwise can see why it was a jolt, as if The Professor's House arrived just after Cather's early crowdpleasers---not a peak like as TPH--there are a few bum notes, and a few declivities---but overall, it's an eerie, elegant, psychological thriller, almost a novella--small cast, short period of time, tucked away on a small-time-seeming US Army base, with not even a flicker of war over the horizon, even though published in 1941: so more striking differences from big, rowdy, somewhat misleadingly-titled, rollin' with the Great Depression rounds of THIALH/
Delving scenes, as always w McCullers, here sometimes seeming so done that they're set pieces, reminding me of Warhol's "My portraits are my still lifes." 'til all the snapshots are cards on the table, uh-oh---making me think of Dream of The Red Chamber.
LoA chronology for The Complete Novels incl. a call from a purported Klan member, maybe because the flamboyant Filipino houseboy is much more responsive and responsible to his (also observant) invalid mistress than her feckless white officer husband, certainly more to the point than any of his vastly amused white officers-and-ladies betters (as a servant, of course, he'd better be).
Race in the reader's face 20 years later, in her last novel, Clock Without Hands, written under great duress, as her health got even worse, but the youthfulness of some characters is very fresh, as convincing as the gradual, relentless decline of their elders.
Sweet clarity, no need for much charity: her steady gaze seems just, and she knows how obliviously people can damage themselves and each other (not that all of her characters are like that in the stories, but maybe they all could be, given enough pages, enough living).

Reflections In A Golden Eye, duh, sorry! Although I like "Glass" better, but/and it's maybe a little too wiseass for her, more Algren or Flannery O'Connor.

I think I still have CLOCK WITHOUT HANDS on the shelf from 15 years ago - I should get around to that.

LONELY HUNTER, I found a devastating portrait of loss and despair.

Yes, but there's also a lot of vitality, incl. the power and pleasure of storytelling, pushing against that, and making its way through the years, at least for a while, and that's life (although I don't think that her characters having sex ever leads in a good direction)(but it's more about the power of their drives, whether they even ever get laid or not)

power and where it takes them

took a break from Life: A User's Manual to read 'the sluts' by dennis cooper, which i picked up because table is the table told me that a side-plot in 'darryl' by jackie ess (which i read last month and loved) referenced. i read it in one sitting (on a plane-ride) and HOLY SHIT. such an intense experience. it's basically a horny version of seven samurai, written through a sequence of reviews left on a gay escort review website in the early 2000s. the whole structure of it, where all the information is delivered by unreliable narrators--and he plays with the anonymity so that at some points you e.g. suspect that one person is assuming multiple identities--ahhhh it was so genius. it reminded me of that old ilx thread where a bunch of people got catfished. it's NOT for the faint of heart (i consider myself to have a pretty strong stomach and i was squirming hard in some sections) but imho has a great dark comic sensibility. got 'closer' out of the library, i kinda don't think anything can live up to this but man

In a Lonely Place and a volume of John Berryman's criticism; in the latter, he proves himself a more incisive writer of prose than of increasingly nattering poems.

Lonely Place is terrific. Unfortunately I read it assuming the plot would at some point turn into the plot of the movie. Unreliable narrator meet unreliable reader.