The Double Dream of Spring 2019: what are we reading?

If you like painful and hopeless, try her The White Book (which is very good indeed)

Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War

Now that's one heck of a weird book

One of those things I read once in childhood/adolescence that I can only dimly recall the details of and probably didn't particularly get the point of.

I'm still slogging through In My Own Way, but hope to end it soon. It appears that Alan Watts only knew amazing, talented, perceptive, intelligent, artistic and enlightened people -- approximately 1000 of them -- and he gives each one of them a brief advertisement of his deep and undying esteem for them. These one-paragraph love letters account for the bulk of the book and they eventually become indistinguishable.

xp

Yeah, it is a strange one. One of those YA classics I'd never read, but remember seeing frequent reference to over the years. I'm guessing its allegorical weight makes has made it a favoured book to assign high school students; more than once while reading it, I thought of that After School Special with Bruce Davidson as the teacher who turns his students into Nazis (we actually did watch this in class when I was in high school).

TCM is airing the movie (directed by Keith Gordon!) later this month. I made the mistake of reading up on the cast while I was still reading the book, and after seeing that John Glover plays Brother Leon, I found it impossible to read the rest of the novel without Glover's voice in my head whenever that character speaks.

I'm guessing its allegorical weight makes has made it a favoured book to assign high school students

Allegory peaked in the early medieval period. It is rarely written at all these days and even more rarely written well. Who the hell thinks high school students would benefit from wrestling with the intricacies of an outmoded and mostly irrelevant genre? Just convincing them that reading literature in any form has some relevance or purpose in their lives is an uphill battle.

Read The Plains by Gerald Murnane when I had an hour or two to kill in a library last weekend. Sort of mesmerizing and boring at the same time, it kept me turning the pages even though I knew that essentially nothing was going to happen.

Just read this on Wikipedia, what a guy:

In June 2018 Murnane released a spoken word album, Words in Order [9]. The centrepiece is a 1600-word palindrome written by Murnane, which he recites over a minimalist musical score. He also performs works by Thomas Hardy, Dezső Kosztolányi, DEVO and Killdozer.

I know the guy who produced that album!

I've read both of Claudia Rankines two 'American Lyrics', 'Citizen' and 'Don't Let Me Be Lonely'. Both of them are amazing, but the world of 2004 really seems a long way away. Am also currently reading Buddenbrook, first Mann novel after reading Death in Venice many years ago. The portrait of Bendix Grünlich as emotionally abusive is pretty modern. Chilling.

Bought E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime from a charity shop because it was a Penguin Modern Classic and cost 50p. It's wonderful - how historical fiction should be written. Just finished The Book of Daniel, whicih is also great, but I didn't enjoy it as much.

Those are the only two Doctorows I've read, too, and had the same reaction. I loved Ragtime, so jumped straight onto Daniel and it cut my enthusiasm a bit. I have Billy Bathgate round here somewhere, need to get to that.

I loved Billy Bathgate when I was 13, but I haven’t read any Doctorow since.

I struggled a bit with Billy Bathgate at the time - something to do with seeing the bones beneath the skin. But it's grown in my imagination since and there are passages that come to me fairly often. I need to read Ragtime.

There's a film of Ragtime with a very late performance by James Cagney in. Haven't seen it in a couple of decades though.

On to Irene Handl's second novel, "The Gold Tip Pfitzer".

I read "Eileen" by Ottessa Moshfegh; I picked it up because someone was giving it away , though I'd liked (but not loved) "My Year of Rest and Relaxation". I liked (but did not love) Eileen. Like MYOR&R it is strong on the agonies of being a young woman, and strong on how those agonies can bend someone out of shape. I think there might be something technically interesting about how Moshfegh manipulates the speed of events in this one, nothing happens for aaaages and she just, just kept me hanging on, and then things quicken towards an end. I'm not critic enough to be able to tell you how that works, if it works.

I read The Book of Daniel first, which is not recommended. Found the historical elements compellingly presented, being totally unfamiliar with the Rosenbergs, who were presented as three-dimensional, fairly complex, forever crosshatched with teeming ambiguities and spectacular certainties: certainly fair game for good-faith fiction. But the wild 'n' crazy narrator and his hott 'n' maybe crazier sister. also their hapless, 1-d adopters, out the author as wanton maker-upper, which might be justified if he were better at it, but any case, it seemed unfair to the actual offspring, the Meeropol brothers, and to their actual adoptive father, bthe Bronx schoolteacher who had withstood much Antioommunist-attention for writing "Strange Fruit" a while back.
So that put me off, but did skim Ragtime, which seemed like it might be okay, and Billy Bathgate got a long and winding reception in NYRB, might have been his peak, also saw good reviews of Loon Lake, World's Fair gen favorable but with some snickers re "Proustian wannabee."

I'm not critic enough to be able to tell you how that works, if it works.

The fact you noticed puts you halfway there.

I'm reading Rock, Scissors, Paper by Maxim Osipov, short stories recently translated from Russian (mostly published around 2010 originally?). It's good so far, I think? Lots of stoic weariness re: human nature.

I'm guessing this is a fruitless search but does anyone know if there is there a way of buying/getting access to individual Paris Review interviews? They're such a fantastic resource but, beyond buying individual issues (at £30 a pop), or hoping they're in one of the anthologies, I can't see a way to access them.

read Ben Lerner leaving the atocha station then read james m Cain double indemnity now reading sally Rooney conversations with friends

xpost
Some of those art of fiction interviews are on aaaaarg.fail

A book called LOTS OF FUN AT FINNEGANS WAKE -- partly an introduction to FW and partly a very detailed genetic description of how certain passages were composed.

Xpost how does one go about accessing such things?

Dunno about purchase, but some are linked via Twitter and enewsletter, also https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews

Speaking of which, any of yall read Bette Howland---?

Wherever you position Bette Howland’s absence, the vacancy is glaring—she has the kind of large presence on the page that reconfigures the literary history of its moment, as, for instance, the revival of Jean Rhys did in the sixties. Both were mentored by an A-list great male novelist—Jean Rhys by Ford Madox Ford; Bette by Saul Bellow, whom she met at a writers conference on Staten Island in the early sixties. Like Rhys and FMF, Bette and Bellow were “lovers for a time.” He continued as her friend until the end of his life, giving her advice that’s solid gold for a blocked, often depressed writer lacking in self-confidence: “I think you ought to write, in bed, and make use of your unhappiness. I do it. Many do. One should cook and eat one’s misery. Chain it like a dog. Harness it like Niagara Falls to generate light and supply voltage for electric chairs.” Mercy!
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/05/06/a-space-for-bette-howland/

Now reading The Friend of Madame Maigret, Simenon. It delivers exactly what I expect a Maigret novel to deliver, thank goodness. It matches my speed atm.

I finished In a Lonely Place. It was a fun, tightly-plotted noir thriller with gobs of post-war LA atmosphere and unusual psychological delicacy. The use of third person limited perspective to get inside the mind of a killer reminded me of The Man Who Watched Trains Go By and was used just as effectively here. Now I'm reading Netherland by Joseph O'Neill.

xpost - for the books on aaaaarg.fail I think I just asked for a login and got one.

I loved In a Lonely Place but read it wrong. Having remembered the movie and assuming the movie to be along the same lines, I kept anticipating the narrator to (spoiler) not be the murderer! Which obviously you're not meant to think at all.

doctor faustus!!!

I haven’t seen the movie so I didn’t have any preconceptions going in. It seemed pretty clear from the first chapter that the character whose thoughts we’re privy to is a killer. xp

LOVED the movie when I first saw it. Dunno how I'd feel about it on a rewatch, abusive relationships and toxic masculinity taking up more space in my brane now. I mean Nicholas Ray's thing was always to express compassion for the outcast, perhaps regardless of the reasons for said casting out, but...

The Chateau, by William Maxwell. Semi-autobiographical novel about a youngish, well-heeled, cultured American couple who spend a long vacation in Europe in the immediate aftermath of WW2. Almost entirely set in France, either in Paris or at the chateau of the title. Not really a character study (the couple are rather colourless though not unsympathetic); rather a meditation on the difficulties of engaging with a different culture and trying to see beneath the surface of people known briefly, when each meeting causes assumptions previously made to be significantly revised. Beautifully written, not without the occasional longeur, but very enjoyable overall. I will read more Maxwell.

A Life of Duke Ellington by Terry Teachout (re-read). This doesn't have the kind of literary flair that might make it interesting to a reader with no interest in the subject but otherwise it seems to me a model biography of a famous musician, serious without being heavy, properly researched, very clearly written, fair. Teachout is equipped to discuss the technicalities of the music but doesn't make life tough for the general reader.

Teachout never doubts that Ellington is a significant composer but the portrait he paints of the man is often unattractive. Handsome, charming, capable of generosity but also self-regarding, a serial liar and a compulsive womaniser who treated the women in his life very badly. He routinely ripped off the musicians who worked for him. I've long been used to the idea that many of my musical heroes were unpleasant people, and Duke is very far from the worst, but still.

Major Dudes, A Steely Dan Companion ed Barney Hoskins. I was somewhat misled by the title: this is a disappointing recycling of rock journalism (by various hands) and old interviews. I must have read a fair proportion of this stuff when it was originally published, but that somehow didn't prepare me for how poor a lot of it was. I'd say for diehard fans only, but diehard fans won't find much new here.

Currently reading Rebecca West's The Fountain Overflows and Kate Atkinson's Emotionally Weird.

Loved The Chateau, must give it another go sometime.

I read "Built on Sand" by Paul Scraton, as part of my preparation for a forthcoming visit to Berlin. It's a melancholy number about living in Berlin but (more) about how life and circumstances bring people together and tear people apart and I thought it was very good indeed. He must have been tempted to call it "Goodbye to Berlin".

I also read "The Owl Service" by Alan Garner, which I imagine you will know all about if you're at all interested but it's a very good folkhorror / old wyrd Wales thing. For children, kinda.

LOVED the movie when I first saw it. Dunno how I'd feel about it on a rewatch, abusive relationships and toxic masculinity taking up more space in my brane now. I mean Nicholas Ray's thing was always to express compassion for the outcast, perhaps regardless of the reasons for said casting out, but...

I'd firmly argue that In a Lonely Place (the film) is *about* toxic masculinity, not an example of it.

I was pretty surprised after reading the book and not knowing anything about the movie to see that Bogart was cast in the Dix Steele role when I looked it up on IMDB. I kind of assumed he would be the Nicolai character. I guess that makes sense if the movie is more sympathetic to Dix than the book is. In the book he starts out creepy and becomes increasingly pathetic and loathsome.

Dix is a shit in the movie.

I'd firmly argue that In a Lonely Place (the film) is *about* toxic masculinity, not an example of it.

I think...it's complicated. The film portrays Dix as his own worst enemy at various times, in a way that I'd agree isn't far from toxic masculinity, but it's also accepted that much of the way he behaves is, if not Society's Fault (as it would be in some of Ray's more didactic works), at least partly a consequence of being a misunderstood sensitive artist in shitty, greedy ol' Hollywood. And it's fine to look for causes and how for how society molds people - I wouldn't want the film to have no empathy for Dix, or to just wag its finger at him. But it still seems to me like it's...kinda laying a lot of the blame at Laurel's feet, for not being sufficiently supportive and trusting and not being able to see the pain behind the angry exterior enough. Which, when I look back at Dix's pattern of behaviour, I really don't think should be demanded of her. It's very possible tho that the lens I was watching it through back in the day was a bit too enamoured of Bogart's character, perhaps the film is tougher on him than I remember/less tough on her than I remember. Will have to revisit sometime.

I also read "The Owl Service" by Alan Garner, which I imagine you will know all about if you're at all interested but it's a very good folkhorror / old wyrd Wales thing. For children, kinda.

― Tim, Thursday, 9 May 2019 12:34 (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I read this recently! More notable even than the wyrd stuff was the monstrosity of the moneyed English family, conveyed subtly at first but then increasingly foul an antagonist. You don't always get this kind of social commentary in kids' books and certainly rarely done this well

Picked up The Finishing School, Muriel Spark.

It's a long time since I saw "In a Lonely Place". But not knowing the book I remember watching it assuming that there was going to be a reveal that exculpated Dix, who after all was Bogart: and although Bogie had played nasty a few times, you were still primed for him to be the (flawed) hero. And the reveal doesn't come, and at some point you realise you're watching a different movie than the one you thought you were watching. And certainly as I recollect it, I felt the movie was very deliberately playing with the audience's expectations about Bogart.

I wouldn't want the film to have no empathy for Dix, or to just wag its finger at him. But it still seems to me like it's...kinda laying a lot of the blame at Laurel's feet, for not being sufficiently supportive and trusting and not being able to see the pain behind the angry exterior enough

I saw it for the third time last year, and while the script goes this way, Ray's choice of framing and Gloria Grahame's performance mitigate any sense of blame.

It sounds like the script is a different beast from the book.

frankiemachine, I agree the movie plays with our perception of Bogey, but...impossible to discuss this w/o spoilers but in the end the movie does come down on one side.

Meanwhile, I'm halfway through The Way Of All Flesh. E.M. Forster was an admirer, and it shows a lot - the anger at British middle class behaviour, university as a place of escape and bliss, there's even hints of homoeroticism in the main character's friendships. Butler's no Forster stylistically tho - it's very stodgy and 19th century in the way it's written. Not a diss mind, every now and then I enjoy having something that's like "yeah this huge paragraph is just going to be about one small development, what's your hurry anyway?".

On The Owl Service

I read this recently! More notable even than the wyrd stuff was the monstrosity of the moneyed English family, conveyed subtly at first but then increasingly foul an antagonist. You don't always get this kind of social commentary in kids' books and certainly rarely done this well

― imago, Thursday, 9 May 2019 16:25 (yesterday)

I am not sure I go along with that reading - I mean, you're right, the English lot are incredibly rude and disrespectful to the Welsh, and you're right it's well done but just when I thought it was going to pay off with a straight kind of city intellectuals are divorced from the folk-boldied blood of the land and are but rootless fools business, Huw and Gwyn and Gwyn's mum are all just stuck in this valley and failing to talk / listen to each other properly, and a result just killing each other over and over again, "she's coming back and it's owls" say the villagers, gossiping and monstrous in their own way. It's the English lad (Roger) who breaks the whole stupid cycle by just listening to / behaving reasonably towards Alison!

of course! the dual pull on every character is where the drama lies, and roger does come good, it's a nice little redemptive arc. and the bull-headed powerlessness of the locals is another antagonist, and drives their drama - but i really was struck by the casual brutality of the english characters, clive especially, and the strident total absence of the mother

Very under the radar, even by his usual standards, a new Oliver Harris thriller - a spy novel this time, called "A Shadow Intelligence". It's a bit Belsey Does MI6, but very good so far.

Also working my way through Red Shift and Shadow of the Torturer.