2018 Summer: A Loaf of Bread, a Jug of Wine, and What Are You Reading?

I just finished reading Helter Skelter by Kyoko Okazaki. I generally don’t read manga (this is a josei book, aimed at adult women), but I was intrigued after a friend described it to me.

What a book, though. It’s about a model at the top of her game, Liliko, who’s achieved everything she has through illegal surgical modification and treatment, and what happens when it all starts falling apart. Josei is strong on emotions and expression and this book more than delivers. I loved the contrast between the dreamy art of the characters and scenes and how deeply ugly and flawed almost everyone in this was.

I really liked Liliko even though she’s awful. I generally almost always like troubled female characters but they’re seldom so terrible. I liked how frank the whole thing is; about being a woman, about beauty, about expectations. It doesn’t hold back at all.

This was completed in 1996 so some of the musings about women, fashion and celebrity are no doubt dated but it’s as sharp as anything I’ve read on the subject. The Japanese context lends it some unfamiliarity as well but it’s all pretty much otm even for being written as far back as it was since then. It’s incredibly graphic - there’s sex (censored) and gore (less so), so not one to read on a commute.

I read it all pretty much in one go, and I’m still thinking about it now. The ending alludes to a sequel, but sadly that never happened as the author was struck by a car after completing this and left bedridden.

This is only one of two works she has translated into English, which is such a pity, because I’d love to read more if her stuff.

That sounds really interesting. I've only ever read one manga book I genuinely liked, so I may have to ivercome some prejudices to actually read it.

yup, same - no prejudices against manga just a part of human endevour I never got around to checking out. We should merge I Love Comics and ILB sometime.

Anne Carson - Red Doc >

Finished my Irish murder. Snuck in Stefan Zweig’s short and good as hell Chess Story tonight. And I think now I’m going to start plowing into Nixonland in earnest. This Nixon fellow is coming across as pretty unpleasant.

I just finished Garrett Epps' Democracy Reborn. I feel much better informed than I did prior to reading it. He was very clear about the constitutional issues created by the three-fifths compromise and how the slave states' oligarchy had a stranglehold over their own state governments and consequently over the Congress and the federal courts.

He made it plain that the anti-slavery elements in the post-Civil War Congress well understood the necessity for altering the fundamental structure of the constitution before re-admitting the secessionist states, or they would simply win back all the power they'd lost. He clearly defined the players, their positions and their faults, plus the political climate in the Union. He describes the immediate and instinctive migration of ex-slaves away from their plantations, homeless and uprooted. In short, he set the stage for the drama very well.

What I found ultimately dissatisfying is how, after defining the profound stakes at play, and giving a modest set of details about how Congress did its work, he rushes headlong through the election of 1866, the ratification process by the states, and gives only a couple of pages to explaining that in spite of the Fourteenth Amendment, the southern oligarchy rapidly emasculated it and indeed won back all their power for nearly another century, despite the passage of the fourteenth.

The amendment was an abject failure in accomplishing its aims until many generations had passed and he quickly glosses over why this happened. He never comes to grips with the extreme depth and persistence of racism in every part of the USA. He never concedes that it was the ceaseless, heartbreaking political work of black people, decade after decade, that did the real work and still does it now. The amendment was just a handhold, not a resting place. The book seemed excellent as far as it went, but still seemed incomplete. I wanted more.

another 25 pages of Terry Eagleton's RADICAL SACRIFICE.

I carried on about The Collected Stories of xp Elizabeth Bowen on at least one previous What Are Your Reading?, maybe more; because it's a brilliant doorstop, but still haven't gotten to the novels, though read some very intriguing descriptions. The stories are so dense, usually in a good-to-great way, that they're almost like mini-novels at times.

Thinking about starting John Berger's G next, or Malamud's Rembrandt's Hat---which is better?

An acquaintance's poetry book I will not name, since I am struggling to think of nice things to say. "Nice paper stock!"

Don’t go with that.

I am reading a lot of Frank O’Hara poems rn for my class. They are hit or miss. I’m also reading a lot of Gwendolyn Brooks poems and they are all A+.

The amendment was an abject failure in accomplishing its aims until many generations had passed and he quickly glosses over why this happened. He never comes to grips with the extreme depth and persistence of racism in every part of the USA. He never concedes that it was the ceaseless, heartbreaking political work of black people, decade after decade, that did the real work and still does it now.

I thought this was in there, but I may be projecting what I've read of Eric Foner and Douglas R Egerton. The amendment wasn't a failure -- the Supreme Court gutted it in Cruikshank and the Slaughterhouse Cases, and he makes it clear.

Will Hobson’s Musketeers translation, which is better at the jokes than Pevear

went back to OSCAR WAO, having never finished it. I really don't like this book.

By chance I stumbled upon the works of Welsh writer Cynan Jones, and the first I've read of him and finished last week - The Long Dry - has blown me away. Sparse and succinct, with quite a lot of white lines between paragraphs or even sentences for 'breathing' (I thought this would annoy me but it didn't), he's a master of punching you in the gut when you don't expect it, (heart)breaking and important plot-twists delivered almost offhandedly cool. He develops his characters beautifully and deep, without overdoing it. It's about our shortcomings, about regret quite a bit, about how we're captives of our own 'fate' perhaps, or the path we go down in this life which is so hard to leave even if you wanted to. Idk, I, shit at writing about literature but he's a master of fine, crafted prose that gets under your skin quickly. Also, he knows his nature (farm life, animal birth, dogs, the weather) and uses this for maximum atmosphere, without showing off. Highly recommended.

Reading his The Cove now.

(Also his books are rather short, 100-250 pages at most, which suits me well)

I'm reading Zen and the Birds of Appetite, Thomas Merton. These essays were not written for a broad audience, but get into some rather technical aspects of Catholic theology while explaining Zen to interested theologians.

I read 99 stories of God by joy williams, never read her before. I thought it was really good, just the right level of arch. I read the whole thing through quickly as I thought the cumulative effect was the point, more so than most collections - it felt very like flipping through a book of cartoons, with the title of each story printed at the bottom like a caption.

I haven’t really read much flash fiction so my main point of comparison is Bernhard’s the voice imitator which is at something quite different - but then sure enough Bernhard himself shows up in story number 76 which mostly consists of a character reading a newspaper

Right, got to get some Cynan Jones.

That Joy Williams is really good.

Last night I decided to re-read The Aran Islands, J. M. Synge. It's been 40 years since the first time I read it, and I recently acquired the copy I bought for my father, a 1911 edition.

Spent much of the day going through Geoffrey Hill's Selected and a selection of poetry by the Bronte Sisters.

Eimear McBride - A Girl is a Half-Formed thing. Catholicism, sex, growing-up, Ireland, Joyce. Kinda know where its going to go. I'm not sure whether I want to finish it - It will be fine, it won't take long yet life is short.

I love Hill through the nineties up until the terseness I so admired often turned him inscrutable.

Its my first reading of him really. Quite like to chase some of the individual books.

Talk by Linda Rosenkrantz. great summer read

Have dented Nixonland, which is enlightening and infuriating. The guy had to have been history’s biggest piece of work.

Worse to have lived it than to read it, I can assure you.

First as tragedy, then as farce, or something.

I have read the McBride debut 2 or 3 times!

Would really like to make time for Synge's ARAN ISLANDS and other prose.

James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk

I liked that a lot!

His last completed novel, I think? Soon to be a film by Barry Jenkins of Moonlight.

Yeah, I gotta get on that one.

Speaking of books soon to be movies, I'm 2/3 of the way through Emily M. Danforth's The Miseducation of Cameron Post, which is excellent so far. Pumped for the film.

Lidiya Ginzburg: Blockade Diary -- fucking hell

½ way thru nabokov's collected stories

(thanks for e. bowen recommendation: will keep an eye out for it... & after reading a collection of elizabeth taylor's stories think i need hers as well!)

Antonio Tabucchi - The Edge of the Horizon
Milton - Selected/Paradise Regained

Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett
The Bird's Nest by Shirley Jackson

Would really like to make time for Synge's ARAN ISLANDS

It is quietly excellent. There's none of the wild extravagant language you might expect after reading Playboy of the Western World. He writes about very simple and ordinary things in very clear and simple prose, and lets the things described shine through.

after reading a collection of elizabeth taylor's stories think i need hers as well

YES YOU DO

Anybody read Leonard Woolf? Leon Edel's references to and contextualization of Tales From The East and The Village In The Jungle are intriguing. Kept telling himself he was anti-Imperialist, but watched himself get deeply involved in grassroots governance of Ceylon.

Very observant of self & others, it seems.

The Wise Virgins by Leonard Woolf is really good, and also really makes you wonder how he put up with his horribly anti-semitic wife.

Toook me a while to get into Damon Runyon but now I'm loving it! I think as with Wodehouse part of the trick is having this utterly self-contained world, where people agree on the same absurdities and thus can interact with each other regarding them.

"Well, I state that this sounds to me like stealing, and stealing is something that is by no means upright and honest, and Regret has to admit that it really is similar to stealing, but he says what of it, and as I do not know what of it, I discontinue the argument."

"I never know Jack O' Hearts is even mad at Louie, and I am wondering why he takes these shots at him, but I do not ask any questions, because when a guy goes around asking questions in this town people may get the idea he is such a guy as wishes to find things out."

Also the description of Alice In Wonderland as "nothing but a pack of lies, but very interesting in spots".

Last night I started The Golden Spur, one of Dawn Powell's NY-centered novels, from 1962. Last year I read a much earlier novel of hers, Angels on Toast (1940), which was a bit on the grim side. The other one of hers I've read was The Locusts have No King (1948), which saw the failings of its characters in a more humane light.

This one seems a bit more comedic than the other two. The characters are treated a bit more frivolously and there's a touch more buffoonery at work, but it is not mean-spirited in the least.

A Time to Live is one of the century's funniest novels.

a time to be born? (not trying to be a dick, just checking)

Was wondering

I finished Siege of Krishnapur. My initial impression held- it wasn't as good as Troubles but still pretty good. I still want to read The Singapore Grip. This one had more action and historical detail, but lacked a bit of the surrealism and humor. Now I'm plowing through Jonathan Mahler's Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning, which is eminently readable, though at least a passing interest in baseball doesn't hurt.

a time to be born? (not trying to be a dick, just checking)

― mookieproof, Friday, August 3, 2018 8:37 PM (ye

yep!

Ronald Firbank, THE FLOWER BENEATH THE FOOT (1923)