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

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.

Had no idea re new Oliver Harris, will be getting that.

Please submit info re under-the-radar Oliver Harris.

^Seconded. The name vaguely rings a bell but that's about it.

Halfway through, it’s very exciting. A few tweaks here and there and it could have a Belsey book. It’s got a similar contrapuntal setup - the shady but well-meaning investigator, reluctantly forced to solve a case in order to escape from a larger bit of trouble that he’s caused himself. But so far it’s a lot tighter than House of Fame, which was typically well-written but the plot was all over the place. And none of his books have really nutted the endings - hopefully this one will!

(And it’s a MI6 novel in Kazakhstan rather than a cop thriller in Hampstead this time. But there’s the same finesse and fun in describing weird zones of suburbia and eurotrash tat)

More broadly, Oliver Harris is a William Burroughs scholar who wrote 3 earlier books about a skilled police officer called Nick Belsey who is also unfortunately startlingly bent and suffering from massive impulse control problems. In the first book, The Hollow Man, he is bankrupt and homeless, so decides to secretly take up residence in the house of a missing Russian oligarch. The second book, Deep Shelter, is especially recommended -- it's also a deep dive into the hidden nuclear shelter infrastructure under London.

Interesting. Haven’t read any Burroughs in yearsdecades, but have really been enjoying this audio book I took out of the library of Naked Lunch read by Mark Bramhall.

Keep buying books even though I'm still reading GoThrones.

I'm reading Tom Drury's Hunts in Dreams, the second of his Grouse County trilogy. Drury is a joy to read and ostensibly a soft touch but he manages to smuggle meaning through and the cumulative effect of his storytelling is kinda devastating.

Also reading Robert Macfarlane's Landmarks wherein he produces a 'counter-desecration handbook', gathering lost language for the landscape in the hope of re-enchanting the world. I loved the Wild Places so much but it's been diminishing returns since. I find him so damn earnest at times I have to look away. Small doses.

Agree about Macfarlane. The Old Ways was too much about other writers, and it sounds as if his new one is similar. I loved The Wild Places.

Drury is wonderful.

Finishing Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, a book that can hardly be believed at times. A pile-on of hallucination, paranoia, sheer darkness to near (and the near is key here, it plays with the edges of) incoherence. I loved how the search and loss (and the transition of one to the other) of faith and meaning is realised by the people in it, to such an extent you feel there are no characters. Its rare to see matter really come out of the page like this, take a life of its own, the page impose its will on you like this. Although I've read a ton of things published after the 1870s that clearly go for this approach to life-on-the-page its really impressive how Dosto is able to leave a mark (or scars). I've read and stopped and re-started a couple of his books, The Devils I finished but that didn't quite hit, so I ended up feeling my time was past, that maybe he really works on the young and more impressionable, that I could go to others after him and get what he gave them - but that isn't true at all.

The worst of all is that its just fucking funny as well.

I am also reading The Psalms now, it just seemed appropriate from what was lying around.

I just started reading Before the Storm, Rick Perlstein. I enjoyed his Nixon and Reagan books, but this one seems to be early enough in the process that he hadn't quite found his approach. It begins with a fairly bogus recitation of grievances against FDR and the unions, from the point of view of an imagined conservative factory owner, but it is the usual self-serving bullshit the owning class likes to tell itself. I was not impressed. From there he segues into some background on Goldwater and his family which is far more informative.

"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."

I'm obviously reading this movie differently from other posters but for me its not about whether or not Dix is a decent guy. His moral character is a premise, not the conclusion.

It's a cliche to talk about Ray's European sensibility and the movie was immediately pegged as existentialist, being compared with Camus et al.

Dix is (admittedly in a slightly watered down Hollywood version) your standard outsider. Being morally repellent is in the character's job description.

Augusto Boal Theatre of the oppressed
Brazilian radical theatre theorist. Ties in with a course i did recently.

Ugly Things #50
another interesting edition of long running psych/garage/punk etc magazine. Pretty much a must read I think.

Albert Camus - The First Man
Julian Jackson - France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944

is that Vichy book worth checking out?

Yeah, it's good. I read it in an undergrad class on Vichy France where it was the main text.

excellent, thanks. I get the perception (possibly slightly misplaced) that Petain was probably as big an antisemitic cunt as Hitler. And he had enough autonomy to not make the statute of jews even worse than the nurembourg laws equivalents and he didn't need to deport Jews as freely as he did, but will have to check that book out.

I don't think outsider means morally repellent to Ray, really. Most often (Rebel Without A Cause, They Live By Night) it means unfairly maligned and misunderstood.

I also think the movie pulls our heartstrings for Dix in a way that say Camus never would.

Current reads:

http://i.imgur.com/GDShD3E.jpg

And he had enough autonomy to not make the statute of jews even worse than the nurembourg laws equivalents and he didn't need to deport Jews as freely as he did, but will have to check that book out.

Yeah. Jackson's book makes clear that Vichy enthusiastically cooperated in meeting quotas.