Poetry uncovered, Fiction you never saw, All new writing delivered, Courtesy WINTER: 2019/2020 reading thread

Dune, Frank Herbert

Garlicky?

what i like about ambler is his extraordinary compression. so much happens in the first two pages. it’s extraordinary.

also it’s extraordinary.

Baz Luhrmann's Gatsby is a bit of a go-to film at this time of year as it's vaguely literary and fits with stuff I teach on America in the 30s (via Steinbeck, naturally). I've grown to really quite like it but was concerned it was supplanting the text in my head so I've been re-reading it.

Things I've noticed this time around: it's in thrall to Joyce, mostly the Joyce of Dubliners; it feels modern in that it seems to reach out and encompass great swathes of stuff that have succeeded it; the child, jesus, the child - in a book of absences, this has to be the absence around which the others swirl (to stretch a metaphor, she's like Bertha, hidden away); I'd forgotten how expository big chunks are - sure, Carroway is the mariner's wedding guest, and is beholden to pass on the tale, but he sure spends a lot of time simply *telling*; Fitzgerald loves the adjective 'turbulent', which is I guess a kind of code-breaker for the text; I'm noticing more neologisms this time: unrestfully is the one that springs to mind, alongside the obvious orgastic.

I think I'm more suspicious of Fitzgerald's prose than I used to be (it slides past too often and he's a child of Emerson and Whitman in his reading of the American myth) but he still makes me catch my breath:

Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something - an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard a long time ago. For a moment a phrase would tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man's, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.

The March of Folly - Barbara Tuchman

This was a book where I also think she faltered badly. The concept was born straight out of an historian's desire to use her prestige to disseminate those infamous "lessons of Vietnam" and perhaps instruct the nation. The concept was too broad and too shallowly executed. The book fails in its stated objective.

"Garlicky" reminds me of Martin Amis writing about Antony Burgess's "garlicky puns": the phrase seems vividly memorable but irritatingly opaque. I was never sure if that made it a success or a failure.

Recently more Maigret, The Abbess of Crewe (very characteristic of Spark in her more idiosyncratic mode but only partially successful) The Driver's Seat (coming from the same place but much better, quite brilliant).

Now reading The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead. Psychological it's wonderful but with self-indulgences that make it an occasionally stodgy read: given its length I'm not sure I'll stay with it to the end. It's a pity I didn't read it when younger when I'd have had much more tolerance for its weaknesses.

that may even have been where i picked it up actually.

Fizzles: your description of Pynchon has reminded me of my dislike of him.

Chinaski: yes - agree on the prose and everything - but where exactly do you see the DUBLINERS element? Something about things unstated or understated?

I don't think I can think of one thing in Pynchon that is funny.

I'd say stick with the Stead. It is maddeningly self-indulgent in places, but it's part of the imitative function of the prose alongside Pollit's manic, wheeling character. And there's something almost Roth-like in the way it ends.

Pinefox - the Joyce thing is a more a feeling, really. I don't think Fitzgerald has Joyce's frigid intelligence and what remains unsaid is very much more foregrounded in Gatsby. Instead, I think it's in Fitzgerald's rhythms as much as anything. Joyce's voice isn't sui generis, exactly, but there's something new in Dubliners that seems to flower in Fitzgerald, albeit with more opulence. It's not an exact opinion by any means!

'Frigid intelligence' is like Amis' 'garlicky puns' in its opaqueness but it's the best I got.

Last night I picked up The Dog of the South, Charles Portis. I've been looking for lighter entertainment to shake off the after effects of imbibing too much information about the James Madison Administration. This fits the bill.

Fizzles: your description of Pynchon has reminded me of my dislike of him.

Last night I picked up /The Dog of the South/, Charles Portis. I've been looking for lighter entertainment to shake off the after effects of imbibing too much information about the James Madison Administration. This fits the bill.

I don't think I can think of one thing in Pynchon that is funny.

_Last night I picked up /The Dog of the South/, Charles Portis. I've been looking for lighter entertainment to shake off the after effects of imbibing too much information about the James Madison Administration. This fits the bill._


karl malone put me on to portia, which was a great service. haven’t read this one, but it’s good to know there’s more there for me to read.

I’ve been wanting to read Dog of the South for a while. Curious to hear how you like it.

"Garlicky" reminds me of Martin Amis writing about Antony Burgess's "garlicky puns": the phrase seems vividly memorable but irritatingly opaque.

When JG Ballard died amis wrote an obit where he praised JB’s “creamy prose” which struck me at the time as a very rong and blaggy description

ugh that’s awful.

Ballard's prose isn't creamy at all! It's machine tooled.

right??

If it had been Kingsley Amis who wrote that about Ballard's "creamy prose" I'd just figure he was drunk and didn't give a flip. I've never paid any attention to Martin.

Now reading The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead. Psychological it's wonderful but with self-indulgences that make it an occasionally stodgy read: given its length I'm not sure I'll stay with it to the end. It's a pity I didn't read it when younger when I'd have had much more tolerance for its weaknesses.

― frankiemachine, Friday, December 20, 2019 9:00 AM

Stick with it! One of the few novels about which I'll say its weaknesses improve its verisimilitude.

Chinaski: I like this about Joycean rhythms. I'd like to read that analysis at convincing length, from someone.

Fizzles: yes I think I see the humour in that. Though not in Pynchon.

I agree also that 'creamy' sounds wrong though I suppose MA was trying to get at unflappable smoothness of some kind - which would go with motorways, airports, function, in its own way?

But who really is 'creamy'? Maybe Proust? We'd need to decide what on earth the adjective really meant re: language anyway.

I finished After Claude. Kind of a strange book in that the first half and the second half, despite featuring the same narrator and following a continuous sequence of events, feel so different in tone as to almost be separate books. The first half is scabrous and funny, and although you begin to feel there's something a bit off about the narrator, she still has your trust. In the second half, the same self-destructive tendencies that were funny in the first half become alarming and ominous. Thematically, it reminded me a bit of My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Now I'm reading Dreams from My Father by Obama.

I started the Nick Lowe bio and Joseph Roth's The Hundred Days.

Been thinking about buying that Nick Lowe bio for months but maybe now I’ll wait until you finish reading it tonight to see what you have to say.

Curious to hear how you like it.

The Dog of the South is not an easy book to describe, but I'll take a whack at it. All views are my own, unsupported by any authority or external evidence.

As I saw it, Portis created his characters and situations using the same techniques as a skilled caricaturist drawing a portrait, where everything typical is exaggerated and disproportioned, but the likeness is immediate, striking and unmistakable. His subjects are Americans whose lives are shaped by the paradox of marginal life in the USA, most often seen in rural areas, where there are profound constrictions and limitations in some directions, but nearly unlimited freedoms in other directions. So people may grow into crazy shapes, partly stunted and partly luxuriant.

In particular, the characters in Dog of the South have become untethered from any roots or responsibilities that might keep them stable, and all of them have drifted south through Mexico, converging on Belize. Metaphorically speaking, they are sinking toward their ultimately grotesque shapes. Their misadventures can be read as hilarious farce, but for me, their stories had too much truth hidden in them not to be taken somewhat soberly, too.

It's an odd book.

Began reading A Book of Common Prayer, Joan Didion. It was published in 1977 and very obviously plays off of the Patty Hearst situation for a large chunk of the plot. She employs some very sore-thumbish stylistic quirks. Mainly short sentences. Some repetition. But short, yes. These sit reasonably well within the overall compression and terseness of the exposition. Didion really pared away at this novel well past any brevity attempted by Hemingway. Outdid him.

I expect I'll finish this quickly, in spite of all the diversions and distractions that come at this time of the year. It is extremely short and moves fast. Time to post to the What did you read in 2019? thread. No way will I finish another book after this one and before New Year's Day.

I read it two weeks ago -- the only Didion novel I finished and found effective.

The Caravaners, Elizabeth Von Arnim - Very funny, though the protagonist's non-native sentence constructions make it somewhat opaque for a light entertainment. The Prussian main character a total chauvinist militarist asshole, all Brits depicted as meek, progressive proto-hippies. How times change, eh?

My Friend Maigret, Simenon - Maigret takes off to an island in the South of France, accompanied by a Brit tasked with analyzing his methods. Solid as always, tho I think I have a problem with Maigret's post-resolution endings - I'm always expecting some slice of life bow at the end, because the mundane is what keeps me coming back to these, but instead it always seems to end with an angsty reflection on the horribleness of the crime, when mostly through the books Maigret doesn't seem too bothered.

Now reading: The Doomed City by the Strugatsky Bros - More magic realism or maybe weird fiction than sci-fi. There's an Experiment, involving a City, and the protagonist, an idealist from Stalin era Russia, has been brought to said City, where he interacts with ppl from all around the world and different periods of 20th century history. No one knows what the Experiment actually is, some believe it's controlled by aliens, some think it's already been a failure. Obviously a handy metaphor for the Soviet Union itself, but a lot of fun also comes from seeing ppl with different political orientations trying to make sense of it; our protagonist just assumes it's a continuation of the road to communism. Also people are asked to change jobs at random, so far he's been a garbage collector, police inspector and journalist. Tiyl Kafka, China Mieville.

I have read 2 or 3 Didion novels, including that one, and sadly never been convinced by any!

I finished THE LIFE AND DEATH OF HARRIETT FREAN, by May Sinclair. A study of self-denial, isolation, frustration. Chilling in a way. As a depiction of childhood, quite interestingly comparable to Joyce's PORTRAIT.

I then read a bunch of Sherlock Holmes stories: A Scandal in Bohemia, The Copper Beeches, The Red-Headed League, a couple more. I started to realise that they were a bit more formulaic than I'd hoped. Slightly relevant to a recent discussion of detective fiction with Fizzles and Tim of ILB fame.

I have finally started a book I have meant to read for months: Jane Austen, NORTHANGER ABBEY.

Sadly, this Didion novel is turning out to be deeply flawed to the point where I am only finishing it out of a misplaced sense of duty. Also, I am 3/4 of the way through it already and the sunk cost fallacy is in play.

Inexplicably, I spent the hour between 5 am and 6 am this morning trying to summarize in my mind what I found lacking in A Book of Common Prayer, so I could pass it along in I Love Books. It's not like it is that important to anyone.

My central thought was about her first person narrator, who starts out very strong, but after when the scene of the book moves location the narrator rather abruptly becomes omniscient(!), while all the time maintaining the exact same writing style as before, then just as abruptly switching back to a limited first person perspective. Moreover, Didion makes the narrator's character be an anthropologist-turned-microbiologist, but she clearly knew nothing at all about microbiology and drops in some details that are not just ignorant, but weren't even necessary.

The upshot of all this is to make it more than usually plain that there is really only one voice and one character in the book and it is Joan Didion. The image that kept recurring to me is a girl having an imaginary tea party with a dozen stuffed animals and pretending to talk for all of them.

So, then the question comes down to whether Joan Didion has anything interesting to say about life, using this story as her vehicle. For me the answer is, god, no.

I could go on and critique the plot and her style and how these give only a superficial and highly artificial impression, suggesting a meaning or depth they do not possess, but I've already driven this post into the tl:dr weeds. Let's just say I didn't like the book, ok?

I liked the random observations and, yeah, I realized by pg. 50 it's a Didion-esque narrator telling the story, and that's fine. She never wrote a great novel.

i finished parable of the sower over the holiday and i'm just blown away. i can't stop thinking about it. of course i'll be picking up the second in the series and everything else butler wrote, but if anyone has any other suggestions in this vein i'd really appreciate them: prescient books that deal with the disaster of now, that understand social reality outside protected bubbles and point ways forward, from queer povs a bonus.

i'm about 2/3s through stoner by john williams and finding it increasingly repulsive. it's going in my goodwill pile.

i read more over the last week than i have all year. i'd really like to keep it up but it feels like a challenge to find promising material. at least i have the rest of butler i can dig into.

xp ah joan didion - speaking of protected bubbles...

re: reading more in a week than a year - I've been like that with films in the last week!

That post about Didion's bad novel being like an imaginary tea party is hilarious !!

I read Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising for the first time. I liked it - the landscape writing in particular and the way it totally nails the delirium and eldritch whack of the Christmas period - but I do wish I'd read it when I was in my early teens. Credulity, innit.

Speaking of landscape writing, I've been re-reading Blood Meridian. It's a hoary old tale and beyond parody in lots of ways but jesus christ, some parts of the midsection are extraordinary in their world-building and brutality.

for landscape writing D.H. Lawrence can't be beat; his travel writing has a lightness that his novels often lack. I've owned and treasured Sea and Sardinia for years; now NYRBC published this delectable collection.

Frederic Jameson came up with a word to describe Barthes' writing - scriptible - because it makes one want to write further sentences in that style. McCarthy is like this. I find myself narrating, say, a trip to buy shoes and making it into a comma-less hellscape with a sagacious cobbler thrown in for good measure.

Totally agree on Sea and Sardinia - what a beautiful book. That edition looks amazing.

Wonderful to go out on a frozen road, to see the grass in shadow bluish with hoar-frost, to the grass in the yellow winter-sunrise beams melting and going cold-twinkly. Wonderful the bluish, cold air, and things standing up in the cold distance. After two southern winters, with roses blooming all the time, this bleakness and this touch of frost in the ringing morning goes to my soul like an intoxication. I am so glad on this lonely naked road, I don't know what to do with myself. I walk down in the shallow grassy ditches under the loose stone walls, I walk on the little ridge of glass, the little bank on which the wall is built, I cross the road across the frozen cow-droppings; and it is all so familiar to my feet, my very feet in contact, that I am wild as if I have made a discovery.

available in the uk/commonwealth in this form:
https://cdn2.penguin.com.au/covers/original/9780241344606.jpg

His writing on New Mexico is some of my favourite Lawrence.

If I was going to choose one book for landscape writing perfection, I think I'd go for Dorothy Carrington's book about Corsica, Granite Island.

have a copy of that sitting around which i've yet to start on^

at the moment i'm reading alfred doblin's massive panoramic trilogy NOVEMBER 1918. have finished the first part which switched between demobbed/invalided soldiers, deserters & racketeers, sdp vs sparticists, worker/soldier/sailor councils and a duplicitous military command playing the different groups against each other. all this is set to the menacing beat of the remnants of the defeated army marching back from the various fronts to a berlin experiencing food shortages and mass unemployment. the second part sees their return... and somewhat annoyingly it looks like the third & final part doesn't seem to have ever been translated into english!

Chinaski, surely it was Barthes himself who introduced that term? At the start of S/Z, as far as I know. But I know that Jameson essay you mean, if it's 'Pleasure: A Political Issue'. And I'm not sure how well I've ever understood this aspect of Barthes.

I have taken another copy of NORTHANGER ABBEY out of the library and it is growing on me. Beautiful Bath; very deliberate comic irony; metafictional reflections about novels, heroines, etc -- a lot to enjoy.

I didn't know ANY of that Doblin had been Englished!

neither did i till i came face to face with it... mid-eighties translation published as a people betrayed; november 1918: a german revolution. doesn't have the concentrated power of berlin alexanderplatz but still worth a read. also a reminder to myself that i need to get the nyrb collection of stories.

Last night I started reading Iceland's Bell, Haldor Laxness. Everyone is starving, except the gentry.

Are you familiar with Pascal Quignard? I think it's fair to say that he's one of the finest living French writers, with a proclivity for historical and linguistic leaps, from fragment to fragment, especially in his ongoing Last Kingdom series. He's very fond of collating and methodically, poetically glossing 'secondhand chronicles' such as the one you quoted.

i am not - thanks for the recommendation. sounds v much up my street.

it reminded me of a paragraph i've read a number of times - i'll quote it in the excellent translation's english What is this from?

It's from Pierre Michon's Abbés / Abbots.

I'm not feeling up to any truly adventurous reading these days. I will probably read less and pull out some old favorites as "comfort" reading for a while.

rereading a couple of things this weekend: wodehouse's joy in the morning and vidal's 1876. both are bringing me some much-needed cheer.

Love Joy in the Morning

I have never heard of JE DETESTE TOUT.

Tbf il ne veut pas être trouvé; il vous trouvera.

Great post up here Fizzles! And thank you Pom for recommending Quignard. I need to get on that.

Joy in the Morning is my favourite Wodehouse, which, I guess, makes it one of my favourite things ever. Very glad there’s a copy in the house right now.

I’m just reading Psmith Journalist, which is terrific and features very un-Wodehousian things like the acknowledgment of working-class poverty, a vivid sense of place, and actual dramatic stakes. The jokes are the weakest part, but it’s up there with his best IMO.

For some reason I’m also reading Franzen’s Strong Motion, which started well then puttered off drastically, but I’m halfway through now and resigned to finishing.

50 pages into NOSTROMO. Not especially easy going. A long way to go - about 400 pages in fact.

I'd probably be doing better with Thomas Hardy.

Conrad pumps away at his obscurities like an organist in a cathedral. Nostromo's worth the trouble, though. When finished, pinefox, find Edward Said's work on that novel and Conrad generally.

Last night I started in reading Parting the Waters, the history of the civil rights movement by Taylor Branch covering the years 1954-63. It is well-written and engaging so far, but just holding this behemoth of a book will challenge my wrists. (And yes, I am aware of e-readers. Don't @ me.)

nearing the end of Marcus Grey's Clash bio "Last Gang in Town" (he is not a good writer) and Joanna Russ's short fiction collection "The Zanzibar Cat" (she is an incredible writer).

unfortunately after that I'm fresh out of new things to read, being almost entirely dependent on the local library, which is now closed. Bookstores aren't really filling orders (though I have placed several), so looks like I'm going to have to resort to re-reading things in my personal library. The collected works of Naguib Mahfouz? Or Italo Calvino? Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire?

All of them!

That Clash bio is interminable. I tried twice to get through it and failed.

Came across this brief, fervent thread: Obit: Larry Brown What should I read by him? Also by Harry Crews? Still hoping for some help!

trying to finish 'bring up the bodies' so i am only bringing 'the mirror and the light' on the plane

Harry Crews' A Childhood: The Biography of a Place is his best book. Of his novels, I'd start with A Feast of Snakes.

feast of snakes seconded

i have a soft spot for body

Are we ready for a Spring thread...?

Yes. Tradition must be served.

Done and done!

"And sport no more seen / On the darkening green" -- What are you reading SPRING 2020?

Started reading William Golding's Adventures in the Screen Tradea fter having it sitting on my shelf way too long.
Very interesting. Not sure what I've read by him outsid eof this, did read princess bride a couple of years back and Lord fo the Flies way back but not sure what else.
Oh he gave lovelock the name Gaia.
But this is a great look into various aspects of the film making scene

The Philosopher's Stone:A Quest for the Secrets of Alchemy by Peter Marshall
Picked this up in a sale an age ago have started reading it a couple of times then moved over onto something else. I think its an interesting subject so hopefully going to stick with it this time.
He's currently talking about early Chinese Alchemy at the moment around 10th century and especially the significance of sex. Tantric like rites and things.

All-new, exciting 'Springtime Collection' thread is linked right above your post. Try it on for size!

Adventures in the screen trade, princess bride = William Goldman

Lord of the flies = William Golding