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

Yes, that Emants is amazing.

I swiftly zizzed through this peculiar little number, which sees a Sinclair/Sebald figure survey a present-day England where it's clear to them something has gone terribly wrong, something easily recognisable to anyone who reads the Real England thread.

http://probabilitydistributiongroup.bigcartel.com/product/this-wounded-island-volume-one-the-condition-of-england

In the Arndale Centre in Dartford we found an inscription on a wall which read God knows more than you and he doesn't even exist. Green found this to be a perfect summary of our journey to date.

When we returned to the site the next day the message had been removed by the authorities.

Re Coetzee, I'd second Disgrace and Michael K, and add Waiting for the Barbarians, Boyhood and Youth (the last two of which, while hardly rollicking LOL stuff, are surprisingly funny)

Gardiner said that two rising trends on their platform are “puppet horror” and “dark mermaids.”

http://www.publishingtrends.com/2017/01/digital-book-world-asks-what-do-the-readers-and-the-gatekeepers-want/

it would be so easy to combine those two and make a fortune.

Escaping THe Delta
Elijah Wald's history of the Blues. Pretty interesting so far, if a bit dry possibly. He's been exploring the ori8gins of the genre. Says a lot of things were swept up into the category, shows that most of those viewed as archetypal blues artists may have been playing much wider styles live as opposed to what was recorded I guess that's nothing new, John Hammond etc have been shown to be somewhat agendaed. Wald does say that before that, throughout the 20s those recording were doing things more widespread to see what regional styles might catch on. & after a certain point they knew what would sell and therefore cut out the widespread recording of different styles.

I've listened to one side of Robert Johnson's King of the Delta Blues and heard what sounded like a jukebox playing through several different performer's styles. I think he has been shown to have picked up influence from a number of different artists, but that always sticks in my mind when the idea of purity or authenticity comes up.
looking forward to reading this through.

Just finished Elmore Leonard's SWAG. I enjoy everything he writes but this was by far and away the best one I've read - has the usual loose narrative but doesn't spin on too long like some of the others.

I finished Bolano's Amulet last night. It is definitely of a different cast than 2666, Savage Detectives, or the other novels of his I've read, in that its narrative style employs much impressionism, some surrealism, with a bit of stream-of-consciousness thrown in for good measure.

Although he does succeed in this experiment to a large degree (I got some pleasure from the book), I'd have to endorse his decision to move away from this style in his subsequent novels. Both 2666 and Savage Detectives are much more effective books. The somewhat airy contrivance of Amulet suffers in comparison with their greater brutality and directness.

yep, and obviously from love and hunger if for any reason you haven't read it. some of his essays and fragments are good too - or are those collected with the short stories?

outside of a simenon translation don't think i'd ever read any j m-r productions: will keep an eye out for the novel too... the selected is made up of pieces from the collections published during his life + an otherwise uncollected later story (no essays). think i must have first come across his name in nz novelist/publisher dan davin's collection of reminiscences of his writerly acquaintances way back in the nineties.

Anybody around here read this?
The Collected Poems: A Dual-Language Edition with Parallel Text (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
"No doubt anyone with an interest in Marcel Proust will be grateful for Penguin's new dual language edition of The Collected Poems, incisively edited by Harold Augenbraum and drawing on the work of 20 translators. But devotees of David Foster Wallace, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar, Jean Rhys -- even Kenneth Burke -- will also be enthralled: if an infinite book has no beginning or end, then surely this is one. Augenbraum's introduction and hugely entertaining notes help make the volume at least three books, really. Palimpsest or holographic to the poems, Augenbraum's given us a biography of Proust as well as an engrossing cultural history, a cubist portrait of the writer's milieu and his most intimate friendships. [ ...] All along the book has been a network of boulevards and gardens, cross streets and alleys, and we are flaneurs, flaneuses, wandering once more through Proust's youth, roaming through the middle of the text again, and we find there much worth discovering, much worth remembering."
—John Hennessey, Huffington Post

Also wondering about Proust's Days of Reading.

Of Love and Hunger is excellent. Very Patrick Hamilton, from memory.

I've picked up and started The Post Office Girl, Stefan Zweig. After the idiosyncratic, impressionistic first person narrator of Amulet, this one has an omniscient third person narrator who is as dispassionate and detached as lepidopterist skewering dead butterflies into a specimen pan.

Just finished Kleinzahler, Sallies, Romps, Portraits, and Send-Offs. August Kleinzahler's personal reminiscences aren't much more interesting than yours or mine, but he is good on other writers. He was a long-time friend of Thom Gunn.

He liked picking up younger men and doing methamphetamine with them, and enjoyed bringing off a splendid poem of his own devising most of all -- as you do if you're in that line of work -- but he loved rereading Dickens and Shakespeare in his garden, always finding new bits to marvel over.

That could be Thom Gunn in one sentence.

Miguel Tamen's What Art Is Like, In Constant Reference to the Alice Books. It's a book on philosophy of art, but quite unusual: it's written in numbered, interconnected paragraphs kind of like the Philosophical Investigations, exclusively references Lewis Carroll, draws weird analogies (the main analogy in the first part is between poems and kittens), and derives most of its jargon and imagery from the Alice books. The Alice references build up so that after a while you end up with paragraphs that would sound ridiculous without the prior prep work. Enjoyable, but I'll need a second read to actually take it in, after I've reread the Alice books.

wonderful

That sounds both mad and great

Hi Fizzles, really want to read that, and reminds me that my Mom's got Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter, collecting and providing context for letters to her father (his replies have been lost, maybe burned by abbess of daughter's convent, being too hot to handle re his branding as heretic, though some of what he said might be inferred from her side of the conversation). Chapter One here, with link to the NYT review:

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/sobel-daughter.html

― dow, Friday, 2 June 2017 19:31 (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

btw, thanks for this dow. it looks good, and certainly provides a corrective to the portrayal of their relationship in the Brecht. In fact reading that excerpt, it's a little bit of a mystery how he ended up portraying daughter and their relationship. She is seen to be curious about Galileo's research, but he constantly rebuffs her (where he encourages the housekeeper's son), and is seen to stifle her curiosity (at a cost). She is betrothed to a landowner's son - clearly a good-ish match - but I hadn't clocked the fact that as she was born outside of marriage, it's extremely unlikely this would happen. I can't specifically remember but it's possible Brecht nods to this at all by implying her beauty is enough. The fact that she ends up his keeper - ward to warder - is again well outside the biog, but i guess this is about dramatic logic rather than biographical truth.

Now reading perennial ILB fave "A Month in the Country" by JL Carr.

^ I have a hold on that at my library.

read paul goodman's shortish novel don juan; or, the continuum of the libido. written in 1942 but not published till the late seventies after being found amongst his papers (doubtful he would have found a publisher at the time given some of the language/subject matter). from what i understand the central characters were all supposed to represent different/conflicting aspects of the omniscient narrator's psyche... didn't entirely work for me or come anywhere close to the magnificence of the empire city.

now started on felipe alfau's locos: a comedy of gestures wherein a hapless author is being bamboozled by his characters...

Like that one, Locos, and the whole crazy story about the author. Still haven't gotten around to reading his second novel though.

Just had Cosey Fanni Tutti's Art Sex Music arrive and read the first couple of pages.

Been reading Positively 4th Street on buses etc and am about 30 pages or something from the end. The Farinas have just recorded their 2nd lp. Been an interesting read.

Elijah Wald's Escaping The Delta is the book i have for bed. Got 4 chapters or so in. Interesting so far. Not come across robert Johnson yet so not sure what his depcition leaves to be desired. Really enjoying it so far.

Colour: The Professional's Guide is my bog book. Interesting overview. Doesn't seem to go into full spectrums as far as I really want. So may need to pick up further books or further training.

Got Memoirs of A Geezer by Jah Wobble waiting to be started, probably as my transport book since I put it in my bag yesterday thinking I might finish Positively 4th Street

Just got the Leith How To Cook book and the Cook's Book through the post yesterday so been looking through them as I've been sitting around the flat. Hopefully will learn some techniques and improve my cooking beyond stir fries which I think i'm getting progressively better at.

crawling my way thru Tony Tulathimutte's Private Citizens, I think I have like 70 pages left. Came out last year, my dad gave it to me to see what I thought because it was pumped up as another "millennial spokesman" novel. It's like Franzen meets Tao Lin. Also lots of incredibly obvious DFW worship and riffs that are straight out of Infinite Jest. But he's a good prose stylist, very lyrical, lots of really cool turns of phrase. I look forward to reading whatever he puts out next.

Re: Elijah Wald and Robert Johnson, see my post and Edd's response here: Big Star

Or here: Good books about music

Isabel Colegate: The Blackmailer

Lena Andersson: Wilful Disregard -- very chilling/bracing novel about romantic obsession; liked it a lot, though the plot requires focus of obsession to be a selfish shit, and you get pretty sick of him by the end

plus many Margaret Millars

Thanks James. Will see what I think when I get to him actually covering RJ. I've heard him sound like he's going through a load of borrowed styles and thought the obscurity thing might be true. But will see how it's covered. Thanks.

Wondering about Man Booker winner A Horse Walks Into a Bar and David Grossman's previous:
http://forms.em.penguinrandomhouse.com/ats/msg.aspx?sg1=32f7bb0deb0c2732d9b8a5d6eb33450a&aid=randohouseinc48279-20&ref=PRH68BB44CE61E0&linkid=PRH68BB44CE61E0&cdi=49C5BD5957C34D9EE0534FD66B0AC478&template_id=6543

Grosssman wrote better books imo

Art Sex Music by Cosey Fanni Tutti
very interesting. Only got as far as '71 or '72 so far. Cosey is just beginning to pose nude. Coum are operating. & Genesis sounds like a self centred asshole. Not really sure what the attraction to him is. But guess that Cosey wouldn't have got things together herself in the same way then we wouldn't have the toetapping tuneage of TG.

Psychedelia by Richard Morton Jack.
this has 101 lp review entries and so far i've only dipped in and not read the introduction.
But enjoying so far, though thinking that some extra input would have been good. The Electric Prunes Stockholm '67 set showing how good they were live was pretty revelatory when it came out after there had been rumours they were more of a studio band before that.
& I've been thinking that I read Amon Duul saying taht the Hapsash and the Coloured Coat lp was influential on them.
Also i think i would have had Can Monster Movie as an entry.
But good introduction to the genre and RMJ is a decent writer. Hate to think how unreadable something like this by John Mills or somebody would be

An Advertisement for the House I Don't Want to Live in Anymore, Bohumil Hrabal

I want that

gombrowicz: ferdydurke

I finished "A Month in the Country". It's a quite enjoyable book. Often nothing much seems to be happening plot-wise, but by the end, I was admiring how seamlessly it hangs together, even though plot is not really the main interest. It's more of a poetic reverie on youth, innocence, and simpler times, with a current of melancholy running through it. My only complaint is that at times the WWI backstory seems called on to provide more in the way of pathos and empathy for the main character than the author really earns. Not that I'd have wanted the author to flesh that out more - it would have changed the focus of the book - but maybe it could have been downplayed a bit, or leavened with a bit of sardonic wit, or something. Anyway, that's just a minor quibble.

"Three men in a boat". Something breezy and light-hearted for the sunny weather

The first issue of Jacobin’s journal, Catalyst.

I read "Three Light-Years" by Andrea Canobbio, which is a mildly diverting tale of a relationship, I enjoyed it well enough but it's going straight back on the free book exchange thing from whence it came. It's on MacLehose, and I've generally been extremely pleased with romance-y books on his imprints, "Con Brio" by Brian Svit comes to mind -I loved that one; this one didn't meet my high hopes. "Italo Calvino meets Paul Auster", said Boyd Tonkin, according to the cover. Tonkin.

I am reading "All The Devils Are Here" by David Seabrook, Backlisted podcast favourite fwiw, this one is living up to its billing, spooked (nearly) non-fictional tales of Kentish sleaze and loathing (possibly sleaze and loathing of Kent, I can never remember how that sides-of-the-Medway thing works). Charles Hawtrey and Lord Haw-Haw, cor.

I finished "A Month in the Country". It's a quite enjoyable book. Often nothing much seems to be happening plot-wise, but by the end, I was admiring how seamlessly it hangs together, even though plot is not really the main interest. It's more of a poetic reverie on youth, innocence, and simpler times, with a current of melancholy running through it. My only complaint is that at times the WWI backstory seems called on to provide more in the way of pathos and empathy for the main character than the author really earns. Not that I'd have wanted the author to flesh that out more - it would have changed the focus of the book - but maybe it could have been downplayed a bit, or leavened with a bit of sardonic wit, or something. Anyway, that's just a minor quibble.

i felt like the slow pace gave it a strange combination of realism mixed with human emotion. i never felt that way about the war stuff, but that's just my take on it, the sparseness and almost vague sense of the main character was a sort of strength for me, it really is just one month of this life, but there's a sense of a longer story never told that i like. i guess like many here i consider this book almost perfect, so my view is prob irrational :)

I finished The Post Office Girl, Stefan Zweig. It is an excellent book and I don't want my criticisms of its imperfections to obscure that fact. It is class conscious, as befits a 1930s novel, and its critique of capitalism and class are deft, compact and hard-hitting, without making any of its characters into cardboard villains. The people act as people are wont to act, from understandable motives. The psychology is usually well-observed and quite sound.

Only two really incongruous elements obtruded themselves as I read it. One was the head-spinningly swift transformations Zweig imposes on his title character, which may be convenient for the plot and moderately plausible when each one is considered in isolation from the others, but occur in such rapid fire succession they at last become hard to swallow. The second was the dismaying sexism Zweig displays in the second part of the book, which would have seemed harmless and natural to his contemporary audience, but grates on today's sensibilities.

The final ten pages give Zweig a chance to be clever and demonstrate his ability to plan a 'perfect' crime, but they were fun to read anyway and fitted snugly into the story, so it wasn't purely an exercise in showing off.

Suspect, from reading other Zweig, that those sudden-change infelicities might have been ironed out in a final draft

Love "Three Man In A Boat", particularly the bit where he contrasts his own relationship to cats with that of his dog. Still need to read the sequel.

Sequel is fun, if not as good: also full of prescient stuff about germany, along the lines of 'if these weirdly efficient people ever get militaristic we'll all be in trouble'

I am reading "Wayward Heroes" by Halldor Laxness, his go at Norse saga business. I am a sucker for this kind of thing.

plus many Margaret Millars

― Mince Pramthwart (James Morrison), Wednesday, June 14, 2017 11:03 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I grabbed a small pile of these a few years back but haven't read any of them yet. Any in particular you'd recommend?

Beast in View is her best-known and is great, the Tom Aragon novels and Fire Will Freeze are very funny. Any of the books from the 1960s and 1970s are likely to be wonderful, from what I've read so far.

Been thinking for a while of buying book of her husband's correspondence with Eudora Welty.

Bought book of Eudora Welty/William Maxwell letters instead.

Beast in View is in the pile. Will start there. Thanks!!

David Lodge, THE YEAR OF HENRY JAMES: astoundingly myopic self-importance and lack of perspective - embarrassing - an inadvertent comic novella.

Jonathan Lethem, HOW WE GOT INSIPID: two stories from his Fantastic 1990s - the second an odd combo of detective story and Surrealist art

Michael Wood, ON WILLIAM EMPSON: so far, often hilarious; MW back on form after the last book of his I read that slightly disappointed me (oh yes, it was his Hitchcock)

I got off the David Lodge train around the time of Nice Work, although I did go see him do an instore at Books & Co for Paradise News. Still curious about his H.G. Wells book. Feel like linked to a funny review of that James book which mentioned someone "stealing his Groucho's card."

I got off the David Lodge train around the time of Nice Work

same here, although a grad school professor assigned Paradise News for a class set in London.

Oh – I discovered Mary Renault! I'm almost finished with The Persian Boy, which I've gobbled.