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

After owning it for years I started Gwendoline Riley's SICK NOTES because I was going to an event featuring her. The writing is surprisingly quite good, better than that in her debut (COLD WATER) as far as I can recall. ('Surprisingly' because that debut didn't leave me with a terrific impression.)

Thompson, Escape from Model Land
Bosch, "You Are Not Expected to Understand This"
Gosse, Gossip in a Library

I had to read Life and Fate (a slog, I thought) in grad school when it was impossible to find; now the NYRB has republished most of Grossman's fiction. I may give it another go.

I figure that by not concentrating on sorting out the multifarious relationships among all the characters I'll reduce the effort needed to read Life and Fate by about half.

I reread John Millington Synge's play THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD (1907).

The language remains a delight. The basic character of the running joke, that Christy appeals to people because he's supposed to be a murderer, comes through strongly. Elements of farce and rather caricatural dynamics (Christy getting scared immediately after he's said something brave - rather like a Warner Bros cartoon character).

I continue to find the last private dialogue between Christy and Pegeen terribly beautiful, one of the greatest pages of romantic exchange I've ever read by any writer - notwithstanding what happens in the rest of the play.

i love 'species of spaces'. i think that i first heard about perec and 'life a user's manual' from ilx back in the early 2000s.

i've been reading some poetry, 'fall garment' by paul cunningham, some beautiful, curt images, but he sometimes employs a slightly flashy, trick ending to the poems that i don't like so much. also read a bit of 'run off sugar crystal lake' by logan berry just now (you can borrow it on archive.org as the press don't seem to post to the uk), which i am enjoying

i started reading 'solenoid' by mircea cartarescu, which has been getting some very positive reviews - it's long and i'm only about a quarter of the way into it, but i'm not completely sold. some of the descriptive writing feels a little sophomoric to me and the surrealist passages... i don't know, they don't completely come off. i'll persist with it though. there is one set piece near the beginning where the protagonist reads a long poem in public for the first time and it goes down very badly, that was excellent

i also read 'diego garcia' by natasha soobramanien and luke williams which i think has been posted about on one of these threads before. i didn't care much for the style and while some of the political content about the chagos islands was fine, i don't think it was well developed or integrated - the first time i read about what happened to the dogs on chagos i was appalled, the fourth or fifth time i read about it i was bored.

been going through 'bonding', short stories by maggie sciebert and i read 'gordon' by edith templeton, flicked through the new translation of the kafka diaries and i also got the dril tweets book

i like to blame my broken reading rhythms on the pandemic but much as i love reading grand, endless literary novels i've had trouble maintaining focus on any of them for most of my adult life, so this year i'm attempting to break the pattern by starting off with straight trash — the thomas harris hannibal books, inspired by my recent rewatch of the nbc hannibal. a few surprises: 1) i've read red dragon before but i wasn't aware that some of my favorite lines from the show are straight up harvested from it ("he bore screams like a sculptor bears dust from the beaten stone"); 2) silence of the lambs, whatever its faults, is a marvel of sustained tension and atmosphere where it feels like nothing good will ever happen; 3) all of the great adaptations of these books are at least somewhat surreal and psychedelic, even manhunter feels like it's walking on the edge of unreality, but the books are extremely literal and have a proto-csi "forensic investigators doing their jobs just so well" quality (which made red dragon great raw material for mann tbh) except in isolated moments (the red dragon talking to dolarhyde, any description of buffalo bill's basement)

i'm on hannibal now and it opens with one of the most ridiculous and offensive drug war raid scenes i've ever encountered and i kinda hope it continues to be that stupid

Reading the newest Krasznahorkai, bc I am a parody of myself

just finished
Robert Thorogood - DEATH COMES TO MARLOW , unlikely people investigate a murder premise from the guy who created the death in paradise tv show. it was okay.
just started
Seishi Yokomizo - THE HONJIN MURDERS

Over a rare pint of bitter I went back to Declan Kiberd's perennial INVENTING IRELAND (1995) and at last properly read the chapter on Bernard Shaw's SAINT JOAN, which corresponds well enough to what I remember seeing on stage, and most of that on Yeats's THE WINDING STAIR, which doesn't correspond so well to what's great in that collection.

Just started Kristin Lavransdatter, 1100 pages of one woman's life in the 14th century \o/

I've been clicking through a netgalley advance of Ian Penman's book on Fassbinder. Some brilliant bits of course - IP is peerless at peering into old postcards, videotapes, fagpacket notes and discerning new constellations. But overall it feels adrift, frittering and noodling through airless, late night free associations through YouTube, wikipedia within a tomb-without-a-view lined with Benjamin, Cioran, Derrida usw. You don't expect coherence, but it feels like it runs out of steam, and the most vivid thread - Fassbinder's frenzy of industry recollected in IP's late-life sobriety and ambivalence - isn't really teased out enough...

I've never seen a Fassbinder film.

Doesn't like IP will help me change that.

Doesn't *sound like!

I do note that he made a BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ of some kind, which even I feel interested in.

You should seek it out, there’s a good chance you might like it and that will be your way in.

After a decade of failed attempts, I took a running jump at WOLF HALL and finally cracked it. It's impressive so far but "best book of the decade" as many of the inside blurbs claim seems like... pushing it.

I'm reading via the (excellent) audiobook and simultaneously reading Ian Rankin's LET IT BLEED in an old paperback. I've never read a Rankin before but it's almost exactly what I might expected it be like (i.e. highly readable but middle-of-the-road).

I read a graphic novel, THE NICE HOUSE ON THE LAKE, which is an apocalyptic take on LOST, and I'm just here to tell you it's bad and don't bother.

Just started Kristin Lavransdatter, 1100 pages of one woman's life in the 14th century \o/

― ledge, Wednesday, 1 February 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Let us know how you get on!

"I do note that he made a BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ of some kind, which even I feel interested in."

it's only probably one of the finest TV series of the 20th century. No rush kid!

Morbz once seemed to suggest on here that the real way for serious RWF headz to watch the 'plazt was in two 7 1/2 hour viewings in some arthouse cinema near you. I found that idea not good and just watched it like I would The Sopranos or whatever - one ep at a time.

the correct way to watch it is on 15 tellies simultaneously, each playing a different ep

for ease of viewing eight of the TV are arranged in a quarter circle while the other seven are stack on top, and upside down

:P

this is more of a heimat joek really

it's evolving from very funny before I realised I didn't get it properly, to mildly whimsical now I've worked through it a bit more, but probably still misunderstanding it! Are you a fan of tv series BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ, mark?

i greatly enjoyed what i saw of it when it was first shown on UK TV in the 80s (C4 in 1984) -- which was however not all of it by any means

i have always planned and so far failed to rewatch it

(the joek is really just a silly elaboration of the notion of the "proper way to watch telly", pay it no mind -- rip morbz but he was surely talkin nonsense in this instance)

(and heimat is also a longish german TV serial which i also saw some of on telly and some of in the cinema, except this time it was partly abt a stockausen-esque composer among many other characters)

"the correct way to watch it is on 15 tellies simultaneously, each playing a different ep"

ICA played it all over a weekend a few years ago lol.

I did screen it at home from Xmas eve to Boxing day like five years ago.

Still largely basing my reading habits on whatever free ebooks I can find. So I just finished Jack London’s Martin Eden — I wouldn’t highly recommend it, it’s problematic in many ways. Unlike any of his other work I’ve read however. It seems mostly autobiographical? Kept waiting for the big reveal that the whole verysmart edgelord protagonist bit was parody, but no.

The ending tho, did any other sad sack make it that far? Wtf.

I don’t think I ever finished Berlin Alexanderplatz, were there only 15 episodes? It seemed…etwas langer. But in a good, meandering way.

Was it based on an Isherwood book? Probably not right.

Morbz once seemed to suggest on here that the real way for serious RWF headz to watch the 'plazt was in two 7 1/2 hour viewings in some arthouse cinema near you. I found that idea not good and just watched it like I would The Sopranos or whatever - one ep at a time.

It seems mostly autobiographical?

Long ago I read a critical piece that cited Jack London saying that his purpose in writing Martin Eden was to create a working class prototype for Nietzche's Übermensch and to use this superlatively capable character to 'prove' that his working class origins would be too great a barrier to his eventual triumph within society, thereby 'proving' to his working class readers that whatever their personal talents and capacities, banding together to promote socialism was their only means of meaningful social progress. Knowing London's biography it seems pretty likely he used his own life as a model to sketch out Martin's, but he altered it to suit his polemic goals.

Ah ok thanks. That sort of makes sense, in a completely counterproductive way. It really seemed proto-libertarian to me.

That actually would follow if we take Nietzsche as the ur-libertarian maybe?

Reminding me: how is BAP as a novel?
Here's the NYRB Classic, looking good:

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/A1BUlqh1ROL.jpg

I enjoyed it a lot when I read it a few years back - it is incredibly...busy...in a largely really fun, free-wheeling way!

I suspect Hofmann's translation is lively, and I would like to know Doblin [afraid I can't make the umlaut on here] as Brecht and Benjamin debated him so much around 1930. I imagine the book is long but I would like to read it if I could make time one day. Actually I think the idea has appealed to me for a long time simply because I like the actual Alexanderplatz.

Just finished: One, Two, Buckle My Shoe by Agatha Christie - convoluted Poirot written during wartime, so full of stuff about Nazis, Communist agitators, plucky British spies, old v new values etc - all red herrings, in the end. The speed and economy of Christie's storytelling is impressive in a reckless sort of way - lots of dialogue, one or two line paragraphs, short chapters, vast subjects (the nature of capitalism eg) dealt with in a imperiously superficial way - it's still the essence of bestsellerdom, but tied to a vanished social world.

Just starting: Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter

Morbz once seemed to suggest on here that the real way for serious RWF headz to watch the 'plazt was in two 7 1/2 hour viewings in some arthouse cinema near you. I found that idea not good and just watched it like I would The Sopranos or whatever - one ep at a time.

I did this at the ICA screening xyzz mentions and it showed me that it was very much not the way to see it - the opening and closing credits between each ep really driving home that it's a tv show. And of course people do enjoy binging TV shows, it's fine on that level, but silly to pretend it's somehow intrinsic to the thing, it'd be like insisting you need to watch the first season of Cheers in one go.

I like the Doblin book better than the Fassbinder I think, understand where bain4z's coming from with "fun, free-wheeling", it's a lot more formally experimental than the show (which only goes that way in the last ep iirc). Be advised though that this playfulness comes within the context of a depressing as fuck Weimar crisis novel.

I think Ali: Fear Eats The Soul would be the Fassbinder to point neophytes to, but I'm not a huge fan so prob wrong.

RE: ways of watching BA - I think Morbs, or someone, quoted Fassbinder as saying he would prefer audiences to watch it straight through, beginning to end. And Tom D very wisely pointing out that Fassbinder never stayed still for 14 hours in his entire life.

Again, I seem to remember reading, possibly on Wiki, that Fassbinder considered the TV series something of a failure and wanted to have another crack at the novel at some point.

I’ve never seen it (or read it) but I watched 8 hours don’t make a day in one long screening at moma - I enjoyed it but I also thought this clearly isn’t meant to be watched this way

It's a curious period where it looked like things were switching over from cinema to TV, with lots of big name directors making multi part shows.

I caught a four part TV drama from the 70s directed by Bergman at the BFI on a Sat afternoon, that's the nearest I've gone to seeing something originally broadcast on TV by an auteur. Otherwise I've seen it in DVDs/Torrents.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_to_Face_(1976_film)

Watched a Gian Maria Volonté interview from 1982 where he keeps trying to guide the convo back onto "how our consumption of images has changed", this tying into the Christ Stopped At Eboli TV mini-series he had just done with Francesco Rosi. Pointing out that a viewer has much more agency with television (changing the colour contrast, muting, recording) and that the amount of images produced in a day are comparable to the amount of images cinema produces in a year. I'm not sure what he was getting at in the end, perhaps just obfuscating because he felt a bit ashamed at doing TV, but who knows?

Home recording made a huge difference! Also having choice of pre-recorded for home viewing---though I still wanted to go to the Film Society screenings at theater in Student Center, plus classroom screenings---pass the word on those---and out-of-town, sometimes out-of state, limited theatrical screenings:get it while you can.

Favorite film books?

As in? Just in general? I’ve always liked The Devil’s Candy, about the filming of Bonfire of the Vanities. You can read an excerpt from it here.

Thanks! Yeah, just in general: collected reviews, essays, by single authors, anthologies, re diff eras, genre/subgenre, also about specific films, actors, directors etc.
I don't know many, but usually enjoyed Kael and Sarris reviews in TNY and VV. Bookwise, Agee on Film is a trip; Manny Farber's Negative Space taught me some more things about writing and thinking about what I've seen and am seeing (he's kind of the counter-Agee, but not anti-); Alfred and I enjoyed Robert Gottleib's life-and-works-and-afterlife-incl.-mentions-and-swag bio-anthology Garbo.

Thanks! Yeah, just in general: collected reviews, essays, by single authors, anthologies, re diff eras, genre/subgenre, also about specific films, actors, directors etc.
I don't know many, but usually enjoyed Kael and Sarris reviews in TNY and VV. Bookwise, Agee on Film is a trip; Manny Farber's Negative Space taught me some more things about writing and thinking about what I've seen and am seeing (he's kind of the counter-Agee, but not anti-); Alfred and I enjoyed Robert Gottleib's life-and-works-and-afterlife-incl.-mentions-and-swag bio-anthology Garbo.

xp: ha, Tom Wolfe and Savonarola! Yeah, thanks for that.

Agh, too many windows open, sorry.

I read The Devil's Candy decades ago--I can recall a large amount of time spent by a unit director trying to prove to DePalma that they could do an interesting shot of a plane landing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No2xc_5zd4I

LOve Saves The Day Tim Lawrence
talking about the development of the discotheque largely in NYC in the early 70s. Ties in with the podcast LOve Is The Message where the author and a companion retrace a lot of the same scene and a few related ones. Pretty good so far.

Restorative Justice Reader Gerry Johnstone (ed)
various key texts on teh subject. I've had this around teh bed for months and need to get through it and return it sine they seem to be tightening the renewal process in teh Irish library system. Quite good so possibly good that I got an incentive to read it. Think I stretched myself in too many different directions to get everything I started trying to read last year so some things I really wanted to read go backburnered too much.
Want to read more on the subject anyway.

DePalma took the correct position. Shots of planes landing can only provide a few seconds of bland filler during a transition between scenes.