It's Fall, and the Autumn of the year, and the store of fruit supplants the rose - so what windfall words have you been reading?

I know Barnes interviewed Joyce as Ulysses was about to come out..

Just finished Pais, J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Life.

Meanwhile, in a protest poem entitled "Thou Shall Not Kill" (1955), Kenneth Rexroth included "Oppenheimer the Million-Killer" among the leading scientists and writers who, the poet alleged, had created a brutal and murderous culture responsible for the death of Dylan Thomas.

O kayyy...

But also in 1955, Oppenheimer received a more enthusiastic valuation from William Gaddis, a young, polymathic writer whose books are based around absurd, spiraling, cataclysmic events. Gaddis included with the letter a copy of his recent novel The Recognitions, at 956 pages nearly as long as the transcript of Oppenheimer's hearing, which was about the loss and recovery of personal integrity, and the meaning of fraudulence from all angles. You must get fan mail and crank letters of all kinds, Gaddis wrote Oppenheimer, but few half a million words long.

Good post alimosina - I watched a pretty good doc on Oppenheimer earlier this year. Really tragic how he lost his clearance, and for once dramatizing the proceedings which led to the decision proved to be a good move.

Proust - Sodom and Gomorrah. Not sure about how the role of the Dreyfus affair plays on the reading of this novel on modern readers. Its quite easy to get at what Proust is trying to show, but it seems a way too local event for its time (or too French? Would kids in France learn about it in school?) Just one more thing to get lost in.

This is, of course, just some of the background work that needs to be done anyway - I'll need to try some Saint Simon next year.

I think Dreyfus was pretty international. Queen Victoria was on the side of the Dreyfusards for example.

French schoolchildren would have defintely learnt about it and probably still do.

where to start with Julian Barnes & Sam Shepard? thx.

Gamaliel - From a review of a book that seems to be a pretty definitive account of the affair it seems to have been a wholly French (or at least it really focuses on the part of it that is French), but it also argues that this exposed wounds that would lead France into World Wars and the Vichy government.

I mean the review of the biog doesn't talk about the international aspect of this, although the Dreyfus affair rumbled on for so long that I'm sure everyone at that time had an opinion..

I'm pretty sure the Dreyfus affair was being followed at least across Europe...

read lately:

Portable Conrad
In Patagonia, Bruce Chatwin

review of the book...I need sleep.

Julian Barnes--try 'Nothing to be afraid of', his recent memoirish look at death, or for the novels, 'History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters', or 'Flaubert's Parrot' or for short stories, 'The Lemon Table'

I've only read Shepard's 'Great Dream of Heaven' Short stories), but it was pretty good

finished oryx & crake and jumped right into year of the flood. also started cloud atlas.

Uncle Silas - Sheridan le Fanu

The Governess in this speaks in French lolspeak, like Allo Allo - 'Wat horror! I am so pale. Quel ennui! wat bore! Ow weak av I grow in two three days!'

Schopenhauer's Essays

Now it is obvious of itself, that the thoughts of a great mind must shrink up considerably in order to find a place in the the three-pound brain of a parasite of philosophy, from which they emerge again clothed in the contemporary jargon of the day, and accompanied by his sapient reflections.

Recently finished V.S. Naipaul's Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples, his mid-90s travelogue of Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, and Malaysia. His MO is basically to try and find people with interesting stories that shed some light on the intersection of Islam, politics and culture in each country, and then to assemble the products of his interviews with them into somewhat cohesive narratives, while scrupulously observing the gaps and lacunae that remain. His descriptions of the logistical difficulties that he overcame as a tourist and outsider to find and meet up with people also takes up a fair chunk of the book. I think the episodic nature of the book as well as the difficulties in using such as small sample size (he was only in each country for a couple of months, at most) to tell a national story are the built-in limitations. I thought the opening and closing chapters (on Indonesia and Malaysia) were the best, and the ones where he seemed to have the most empathy with his subjects. Also, perhaps not coincidentally, these are the countries where the influence of Islam has been less extreme. In Pakistan, in particular, it seemed that his anger and disgust interfered with the application of his method, which depends for its success on the quick establishment of a bond of empathy and understanding with the subject - otherwise you are left with a brief, unenlightening CV of a stranger.

Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (think I spelled that right) - Memories of the Future -- quite amazing surreal fantasy/SF from 1920s Russia (but not published until long after author had died, due to taking the piss out of the USSR)

PG Wodehouse - The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - piss-take on the England-invadded novels popular at the time (1909?), pretty funny, though minor Wodehouse

Aldous Huxley - After the Fireworks -- a bit dull and a very OLD (in a bad way) book for him to have written in his 30s

Ron Carlson - The Signal -- literary/thrillery thing about a couple whose marriage has ended going on a last hike in the Wyoming wilderness--very good, actually

Yasnuri Kawabata - The Dancing Girl of Izu -- mostly lovely short stories

O Nate - is it still worth reading? I picked up Among the Believers recently but haven't got around to it yet (that and a thousand other books). Rage aside, is he a perceptive chap?

I think it's still worth reading. I have a lot of respect for his skills as a craftsman of sentences. He has a deft way sometimes of summoning a depth of feeling with a few quick lines. He sometimes has a surprising way of phrasing something - it sounds like maybe some old-fashioned idiom that you've never heard before. Maybe he read it somewhere in some old 19th century British writer, but it seems perfectly apt to the context of how he uses it. I should probably dig for an example to make this clearer. Anyway, I would say read it, but if you find yourself getting bored in one country, don't be afraid to skip ahead to the next section. It's a little longer than it really needs to be, I think. I haven't read Among the Believers.

Among The Believers blew my mind when I read it (right after 9/11). I think it's the best of his non-fiction, a blend of travel/history/journalism and far less angry & aggrieved than say his writing on India. Written in 1979-80 it's chillingly prescient yet also subtle, nuanced. One thing about VSN is his (deserved) reputation as a curmudgeon overshadows his very real empathetic gifts. Coincidentally I just finished Half A Life and am now halfway through Magic Seeds, his final (he says) novels. Overall I'd say he's a better fiction than non-fiction writer but every one of the dozen or so of his I've read has been worthwhile in the extreme. His unflashy stripped-down prose is so transportive, cinematic. There isn't anyone else remotely like him.

"Just as no man can truly wish to be someone else, since no man can imagine himself without the heart and mind he has been granted, so no man of a later time can really know what it was like to live on the land in those days."

That's a good example of his style. Unflashy is right. Almost bland except for a couple of little details that show his workmanship. In that example, I'd say the special touches are "granted" and "on the land". Both seem a little old-fashioned but not in a cliched way, and they are just enough to make the sentence unfamiliar enough to pop, despite the familiar sentiment it conveys.

Could the 'old-fashioned' just come from his being from the Caribbean? I find it interesting how the English language is developing slightly differently depending on when the seed was laid down. You don't notice it so much with American or Australian because you hear them so much (even though some of the vocabulary is old-fashioned), but e.g. South Africans speaking casually can sound a little bit archaic. Maybe the Caribbean has preserved certain phrasings similarly?

I guess that could be at least part of it - regional variations in English. Also, it wouldn't be unusual for a bookish fellow who probably spends a lot of time with his nose between the pages of a bygone century to sometimes break out the archaic diction.

Kim Wozencraft, Rush
Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son

Going for a month-long trip. Think I took longer in thinking about and selecting than on such things as clothes.

Anyway I think I'll re-read parts of Flann O'Brien, Borges, Musil, Broch. Took some Morante and Cortazar.

Then

Dave Hickey - Air Guitar and Joanna Russ - The Female Man for the longish plane journey.

Above all Proust (last couple of vols)

Typing this up I'm thinking its too much. otoh there will be no internet, and I have the space.

It will be the winter thread when I get back. Best to all.

Have a good break xyzzzz__!

I'm actually rather enjoying Uncle Silas now, his topographical writing in particular is good and an air of uncertain menace and supernatural retribution hangs about the whole tale without ever being made explicit.

reading p.k. dick anthology of short stories.

man, someone just brought in that bolano 2666 along with a great stack of books to trade and i don't think i can do it. color me daunted. so cool looking though. ( i think i might read the alasdair gray collection this guy brought in though. never read him, i don't think.)

which collection? unlikely stories mostly?

it's the eye of the sibyl. volume five in the citadel complete pkd story series. the little black box, the war with the fnools, and lots more.

Other author I think!

oh sorry hahaha! yes that's the one! unlikely stories, mostly. it looks crazy. is it really good?

Just finished Dorian Gray, half way through Jekyll & Hyde. Looking to start Wilkie Collins' "Woman In White".

"Unlikely Stories, Mostly" is my favourite book of all time.

this guy brings me good books. i love when he comes by the store. lotsa brit stuff. terry jones's war on the war on terror. villain's paradise - a history of britain's underworld. the english civil war by diane purkiss. a space opera anthology edited by brian aldiss.

and he brought me liebling's book on earl long. nobody brings me liebling!

(plus another book i'm taking home. a book of sci-fi stories by william tenn. never read him before.)

"Unlikely Stories, Mostly" is my favourite book of all time."

wow! well, okay, its going home with me too.

Scott, read it now... The only thing I haven't managed to enjoy in that book is the wilfully impenetrable "Logopandacy", but I think there's a reason for that. On the other hand, "Five Letters From An Eastern Empire" is all kinds of amazing. Do you have it in hardback? If so take the dust jacket off - the gold lettering was insisted upon the publishers (Canongate?) by Mr Gray (who had spent a good deal of his life sleeping on hardwood floors), and nearly ruined them.

And while I'm at it - why can I never find Gray books in shops? He's regarded by many as one of the greatest living Scottish authors and yet I never come across them save for chance finds in s/h bookshops.

xpost - It is good. He's got a very distinctive voice; precise, careful, compassionate, rather a didactic tone, not garrulous, which he'll use to describe everything from political theory to whimsical imaginative fancies.

I must admit I don't tend to pick him up now, partly I think because I've tired slightly of that voice. But I always used to admire his capacity for mixing the mundane with the weird (and often the sexually mundane with the sexually weird) and the slightly Stevensonian desire to describe many different subjects without varying the mental approach - democratising them, bringing them to the same level, so that the political is informed by the imaginative and sexual (and the other ways round).

WORK AS IF YOU LIVE IN THE EARLY DAYS OF A BETTER NATION

was his inscription to The Book of Prefaces and there's no doubt that for him writing is a political activity - a political activity which is designed to include the outlandish, rather than exclude it. Civic writing, if you like.

Perhaps because of this he can feel a bit pious and restrictive at times, but hey, that's criticising him for something he's not. Definitely worth a go (fwiw, I really liked Lanark and Janine 1982 of his novels).

Love the mixture of artwork and writing. Agree that it's odd you can't find him, dog latin - I haven't looked for him in bookshops for a while, but he should definitely be more easily available.

granted I live in scotland but our bookshops are always pretty well stocked w/alasdair gray

is 'logopandacy' the one about thomas urquhart?

i should reread gray. i read the three i really love (the two novels mentioned plus unlikely stories, mostly) in sixth form, though, and i'm worried that if i read them now i'll see flaws in them the same way i have with everything i've read since

currently finishing wise blood & reading some Father Brown short stories

There are at least two editions of Unlikely Stories, Mostly. The newer one has a few extra stories. I know only the older one. One of my favorite books.

Gray is very direct. There is no understatement or evasion. I assume it is a Scottish trait to avoid those things. But that doesn't account for the ebullient footnotes and rhyming page titles in Lanark.

Besides those I have read Ten Tales Tall and True, and skimmed through Poor Things, Kelvin Walker and A History Maker which I didn't like as much.

Civic writing, if you like.

He wrote a polemical work called Why Scots Should Rule Scotland. Can't get more civic than that.

I also like the self-deprecating jacket descriptions he writes for his books. Unlikely Stories has great fake reviews on the back.

"Five Letters From An Eastern Empire" is all kinds of amazing.

Yes indeedy!

Recently finished The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thorton Wilder. I guess that most of Wilder's ouevre now dwells in the shadow cast by Our Town, which has entered the American pantheon of frequent Broadway revivals and compulsory high-school reading. Rey seems mostly forgotten, though somehow a movie adaptation starring De Niro came and went this decade, without garnering much attention. Instead of being about early 20th-century small-town America, San Luis Rey is set in the 18th-century colonial capital of Peru, so perhaps the subject-matter is less accessible, and the writing is also a bit more writerly, and the characters less plain-spoken. Like Our Town though, Rey covers a lot of ground in a small amount of pages and doesn't shy away from asking (and answering) the Big Questions - the ones about the meaning of life and such. The narrative voice will be familiar - it shares a certain gentle, avuncular, but slightly clinical tone with the Stage Manager of Our Town.

I read Wilder's 'The Ides of March' a little while ago--it was actually very good, too--political novel about Julius Caesar's downfall.

Own recent reading...

Nevil Shute: Pastoral -- not bad, but no classic

Lore Segal: Lucinella -- had high hopes, was a bit disappointed

Leo Perutz: Little Apple -- now this is the stuff: proud Austrian whose been a POW with the Russians during WW1 is released because of the Russian Revolution, and then spends the next umpteen years in a mad, obsessive quest to find a Russian officer who mildly humiliated him in order to take his revenge--ends up fighting on BOTH sides of the Russian revolution, plus all sorts of other oddness.

Alan Furst: Shadow Trade -- one of his earlier books, which he now keeps out of print -- actually really good, but it was odd reading a Furst book set in the modern world, with TVs and so forth

Jerry Stahl, Permanent Midnight
Richard Peck, Don't Look and It Won't Hurt
Richard Naughton, My Brother Stealing Second

starting:

Simon Reynolds, Blissed Out: The Raptures of Rock

What was the Stahl like?

Interesting. It's a memoir of his struggle to kick his heroin habit. Tends to sensationalize the sleaze & assumes (probably correctly) that most of his audience has no firsthand knowledge of drug/street culture, but I liked it.

Sounds promising--I've got his novel about the Fatty Arbuckle scandal, but haven't read it yet: wasn't sure if it would be sleazy trash or good stuff, but maybe it will be both.

'now reading' would be a better Thread title, imo.
That Stahl was filmed; pretty funny, esp where they're looking fo the stolen stash. ' ow, if I was percodan, where would I be?'

Slowly enjoyed 'Against The Day' ( there's no other way, really) and, if the trade paperback ever comes out in the US, will buy 'Inherent Vice.'
'Bardo Thodol', mostly for its contribution to INLAND EMPIRE.

just finished effi briest (surprisingly boring), started closely watched trains

working on 'blood's a rover', the new ellroy. picks up the threads from 'the cold six thousand', a swift read, contemptible characters as per usual, leavened with a little more humor this time imo, and there's a mystery running through this one: who pulled off the brilliant and astonishingly violent armored-car heist that opens the novel and seems to have, at this point, no connection to the proceedings?

Reading that 'tibetan book of the dead'put me in mind of 'The Sea Of Fertility'
quartet by Yukio Mishima. I loved it as a kid, though that was before I realized that translations were so hopelessly useless.
A great bardo work, anyway, although the author probably was reincarnated as a Korean or an American, if not an axolotl or carp.
On topic:no luck on the paperback of 'Inherent Vice', so I bought a $10, beautifully printed and bound Charles Phillips,'Aztec and Maya: The Complete Illustrated History.' Excellent and far-ranging visually, not matched by the careless writing. Actually a work on Mesoamerican in general. Wonderful illustrations, mind. Well worth the sawbuck.