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

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.

I have just over 100pp to read of Foster's 500pp+ WBY volume 1.

I love this book, though reading it is also a great labour. It must be the greatest biography I have ever read.

It is full of marvellous facts and details, like the endnote on p.555:

Bernard Shaw, in his diary, after his first meeting with Yeats in 1888:
'An Irishman called Yeats talked about socialism a great deal'.

Finally finished Gerald Burns 'Shorter Poems,' which was wonderful but felt a little like a slog toward the end because his style— long lines and a sort of rambling-yet-crystalline erudition— is so singular that it can be overwhelming. In any case, glad I read it.

In the meantime, I'm in the first few chapters of Colin Woodard's 'The Lobster Coast,' which is about the history of coastal Maine. Very interesting popular history book that makes me want to pack up and move there even more than I already do, tbh.

And speaking of Dennis Cooper, his newest book arrived the other day, and so I began that this morning— already can tell it is one of his most vulnerable and personal books. Will probably run through it as I usually do, his prose is so good.

been a while since i've posted. work innit. so a rapid book update:

wrote a long thing all been deleted. no rapid book update.

Today I noticed that the last book I finished, "Leave the World Behind", is being made into a Netflix movie starring Julia Roberts. Now I'm reading the Booker-prize winner "The Sellout" by Paul Beatty, which it's probably safe to say is a lot less conducive to the made-for-Netflix movie treatment.

I finished The Hearing Trumpet. The first two thirds were somewhat witty and amusing, as those qualities were prominent in the narrator's character. This changed gradually. As the story became more and more captured by pagan mythology and symbolism and the events became more cataclysmic the narrator's sense of humor faded away and the book became more serious. Which was a pity, because I couldn't find much value in sorting through the jumble of demons, pagan goddesses, werewolves, apocalyptic end times and whatnot. These held no reality for me and no matter how frantically they piled up it was impossible to care much about them.

I also read The Burning of the World: A Memoir of 1914, Béla Zombory-Moldován. A 29 year old Hungarian artist is called into the army and hastily thrown into the front line in the opening days of WWI, where he is trapped for a full day in the open under a continuous artillery bombardment, wounded, evacuated and tries to recover from massive traumatic shock. It was written much later in his life, but the level of recalled detail shows how deeply it burned into his memory. The story is not very new, but his telling makes it so personal and individual that it becomes new again.

Now I am re-reading Hons and Rebels, Jessica Mitford. It is an astonishing book with an artless veneer. She has an unerring talent for shaping an entertaining anecdote with a barbed point just under the surface and more material to work with than any fifty ordinary humans could generate in a lifetime. It's a hell of a book.

I should read Hons and Rebels again. Aimless you and I have been chasing each other in our reading lately - I also just finished The Hearing Trumpet last week and checked out The Burning of the World yesterday but haven’t started it yet. Also I share your admiration for The True Deceiver.

In the meantime I read David Mitchell’s recent Utopia Avenue, I wrote a bit on the Mitchell thread but basically it kinda sucked.

Finished the new Dennis Cooper book, "I Wished."

Still reading the book about Maine, usually before sleep, but I think today I'm going to try to tackle some chapbooks I've had piling up.

Now in the homestretch of Afterparties, the new debut book by Anthony Veasna So, b. 1992, d. Dec. 2020: 258 pages of short stories, so far hitting me like My Brilliant Friend and few other things I can think of: rowdy and resplendent and tragicomic and endlessly resourceful, with the excitement of language cruising ghosty dusty Cali "Cambo" life and lives: even-especially when you think you know the kind of thing that will happen and not happen around the next corner, here are more drive-by insights---they seem that right, so far from my own experiences and yet not: pain and pleasure and success and failure as art pop narcotic that leaves you with whatever keys you wake up with this time.
May try to say something more analytical later, but so far it's hard to believe he already did all this, and is already gone.

― dow, Friday, August 27, 2021 3:22 PM (three weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

I picked this up this week and read the first two stories, “three women of chuck’s donuts” and “superking son scores again”, both of which had previously been published but I hadn’t read before. his work is receiving a lot of positive press and I intuited from a few reviewers a sort of debt to diaz, which I think he tries pretty admirably to justify, though neither story so far has resonated with me like some of the best stuff in drown, an admittedly high standard for this reader. looking forward to diving in further this weekend and curious to read the experiences of others

We'll need an new thread in a few days. Equinox is a-coming.

"Superking..." seemed a little amiable or something compared to "Three Women..." and then everything in there---yet it's the one that received the Joyce Carol Oates Award, h'mmm. Will have to check Drown again (which I enjoyed, though it was upstaged in my memory, in a bad way by the novel and some subsequent stories/excerpts from the apparently abandoned second novel), but So's chronicles seemed convincingly drawn from experience, incl. close and unavoidable observation, also extrapolation---at one point, he even writes from the viewpoint of a straight boy with a girlfriend, although--well, you'll see).

Reporting back from holiday reading:

Infinitely Full Of Hope, Tom Whyman - Left twitter dude and philosopher (great case of nominative determinism) writes a memoir about becoming a father that is also a philosophical treatise on how hope can be possible in our current historic moment. Lad has a lot more time for Adorno than I do.

Cherokee, Jean Echenoz - I seem to end up reading a lot of French crime fiction, partially because I'm drawn to it and partially because, I think, French acquaintances figure it's easier for me to digest as a non-native speaker. But it's really not! Crime fiction relies on keeping constant attention to details, I think I could actually get a smoother ride from literary fiction even if I needed to look up words more often. Which is all to say that I'm not entirely sure I got the resolution of this comic thriller, though it was certainly an enjoyable ride, grimy and full of strange digressions.

Variations, Juliet Jacques - Another Left Twitter star with a series of short stories painting a portrait of the history of transness in the UK. This allows her to sidestep issues of trans as a historical category, taking in characters who wouldn't have identified as such. The stories are all framed as historical documents, too - letters, oral histories, newspaper clippings, etc. which is the kind of formal trickery I love. Really enjoyed this a lot.

btw I’m now about halfway through afterparties and am now completely bought in, great stuff

the patricia lockwood novel is bad, just a pile of tweets sloshed with autofictional pathos sauce, no thanks

Finished the new Dennis Cooper (devastating), had a busy weekend so not as much reading as I would have liked but spent some time with my book about the Maine coast and also nearly finished a do-si-do chapbook by my friends Daniel and Jenn.

I today finished James Joyce: CRITICAL, POLITICAL & OCCASIONAL WRITINGS ed. Kevin Barry (Oxford, 2000).

It's an outstanding, almost comprehensive collection. (My doubt: shouldn't JJ's original 'Portrait' essay of 1904 be here? Or maybe not.)

The Introduction is very shrewd, especially re how JJ was not as unique as he would want us to think, and how we should return to eg DANA magazine c.1903 if we're interested in this stuff. It's less good in a tangential section on JJ's Aesthetics. Those are written in an irritating, superior, pedantic, repetitive, stultifying style that I think is suppose to be an example of how well Thomistic Catholics think.

The extent of JJ's political knowledge (eg of England, let alone Ireland), in many of these pieces, is very notable and would surprise some people.

I followed up by starting the Foreword and Introduction to J.C.C. Mays' edition of James Joyce: POEMS AND EXILES (1992).

i read minor feelings by cathy park hong which i thought was great, but i'm white btw. apparently they're adapting it as a tv series, which seems bananas. table: do serious poetry people like her?

i also read hail mary by andy weir (who did the martian). it was well-executed trash.

Someone posted about a book recently that was written by a former professor from Queens College about a Jewish retirement home. Can’t find this despite many google searches.

The Sorrows of Young Werther. Christ what an asshole.

I started watching the film by Max ophuls but the sound was atrocious. So I gave up , did seem a tad sanctimonious.

The Mandarins Simone De Beauvoir
Her novel loosely based on the intellectual circle in paris in the immediate wake of WWII and over teh next 5 years. She did claim it was not a roam a clef at one point . But interesting anyway.
Have had this kicking around for way too long drifting around my front room so glad to be getting into it.

Angela Saini INferior
reread this book on science and Gender imbalance. Enjoyed and was drinking way less than when i first read it last Xmas .
Looking forward to her book on the patriarchy whenever that lands.

How To Rig an Election Nic Cheeseman, Brian Klaas
book on political intrigue I picked up a couple of months ago. Looks interesting.

Someone posted about a book recently that was written by a former professor from Queens College about a Jewish retirement home. Can’t find this despite many google searches.

This sounds like the Prince of West End Avenue by Alan Isler. Great book.

The Sorrows of Young Werther. Christ what an asshole.

Agreed, really didn't enjoy reading this dude's livejournal.

Someone posted about a book recently that was written by a former professor from Queens College about a Jewish retirement home. Can’t find this despite many google searches.

This sounds like the Prince of West End Avenue by Alan Isler. Great book.

― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Wednesday, September 22, 2021 5:52 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

This was it. Many thanks.