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

Empson was proving so frustrating that I went back to ... Michael Wood on Empson. Bedtime / comfort reading.

I just finished reading Jean Stafford's 'The Mountain Lion.' I'd never read anything by her before. In fact, I don't think I knew she existed until last week. It's both highly judgmental and critical of judgment. Unsure how I feel overall – there's a lot going against it: exaggerated racism, deeply-ingrained sexism, uncritical (?) mid-century classism, exaltation in self-harm, a cynical narrator. However, it's totally unlike anything else I've read. It's about a sickly, strange, and ugly brother and sister from Covina, California, who spend summers at an uncle's ranch in Colorado. The sickliness, strangeness and ugliness of the children is integral of the book, and the brother's burgeoning masculinity begins to subsume it, while it becomes a critical flaw in the sister's development of a feminine self. It's told over the course of fiveish years in odd intervals - a summer here, an evening there, a few years in a sentence - and it ends in a stagey act of violence.

Has anybody else read it?

I haven’t but have wanted to and have seen it praised in the archives.

Alfred and I are for it: I read it as building empathy or at least sympathy and concern for an obnoxious protagonist, without excuses, just something the size and shaping of justice. Also I liked Boston Adventure, and he may like The Collected Stories, which he's mentioned reading (I've barely started, but seems fine).

You're prob right about the ending. Overall kind of reminds me of a secular Flannery O'Connor.

Def. in your face, I mean.

donald barthelme 60 stories. extremely my shit

Yes, I did like The Mountain Lion. She got the Library of America treatment, which she deserves. I haven't read her third novel and my local and uni library systems don't carry it.

Does it feature a mountain lion?

finished 'drive your plow....' liked it a lot bar the boring horoscope stuff. really funny and I particularly enjoyed Czech republic as utopia.

Flann O'Brien: The Various Lives of Keats and Chapman
The temptation to skip ahead to see the war-crime-level pun that each of these stories is reverse-engineered from is incredibly strong.

Finished The Stand and it runs out of steam towards the end but it’s still pretty great!

Now reading Oryx and Crake. Crake unnerves me and I really like her prose as usual, and if I ever find a non-linear story I dislike it’ll be a shock. Brutal details all over the place, it’s easy to read because of the prose and being intriguing but it’s not something I’d choose to read again in a hurry, if you get me.

I've read a lot of Atwood but I've never tried any of her sci-fi/speculative fiction books yet

I feel so bourgeois, but I'm diving into the nominees for last years International Booker prize. The winner, Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharti, is pretty good, a chronicle of three generations of mostly women in Oman, really good at capturing a sort of rupture in their lives (they talk about having slaves, while also discussing getting educated in London at the same time, and the next generation seems caught between worlds). Have also begun The Shape of the Ruins by Juan Gabriel Vasquez, which is so much my jam. A long meandering book about the writer himself delving into the murder of Colombian politician Jorge Gaitan in 1948, it's almost Sebald'ian in it's mixture of history and personal observations. Absolutely love it.

I've read a lot of Atwood but I've never tried any of her sci-fi/speculative fiction books yet

Atwood is awful. Prefer LeGuin for didactic sociopolitical sf.

Normal People was good. Rooney is a talent to watch. One of the two central characters is described as carrying a worn copy of a James Salter novel on a trans-Europe backpacking trip, and there is something Salteresque about this winding tale of an on-again/off-again, friends-with-benefits relationship - partly in the way that the central relationship preserves a core of inscrutability. We're never quite sure why it is star-crossed, though there are some plausible hints. Rooney's prose has a pleasing suppleness and lyrical quality. Now I'm reading Castle Gripsholm by Kurt Tucholsky, a quirky Weimar-era German novel.

Remember the name! Sally Rooney!

I've read the two Rooney novels in the last month. Conversations with Friends seemed the more original novel but she's on to something limning relationships that novelists often overlook.

Cesar Aira - The Seamstress and the Wind

This is an author I wanted to read for a while. Aira has the kind of rhythm of someone who can let his imagination zig-zag all over the place and yet remain sorta contained. He has written 60+ books and its a bit like a thrashy Borges*, it doesn't look like there is a lot of re-working (which could imply a lack of care but I would need to read more to see what the deal is here). Its a short, fast read with little to no intensity. I could either read a dozen of these over a week, really gorge in it but to what benefit (beyond a little pleasure from turning over pages fast) I do not know. Not that I read for any kind of benefit, but that question came up while reading this.

* I hate saying this because there is very little like Borges. I could not back it rn.

Yeah, he doesn't rewrite or edit or reread what he's written, for better or worse.

The idea of a trashy Borges is very appealing, and he claimed that's what he was going for in "The Rose-Colored Corner "( as I think D Gi translated it). maybe others too, I haven't read 'em all (though obv. he reveled in some ripping tales of ripe imagery)

he central relationship preserves a core of inscrutability. We're never quite sure why it is star-crossed, though there are some plausible hints.

she's on to something limning relationships that novelists often overlook. Yeah, been there, but not in books, will have to check that out.

Does it feature a mountain lion? No, but it's got a Catherine Wheel. Don't remember much about reading it in the 80s (after James Wolcott's revelatory profile in Harper's----much later, he said that piece had gotten more of a sustained positive response than any other). Don't recall what he said about The Catherine Wheel (her last novel), but seems to be considered not as strong the first two. I'll bet it's worth a read after all her other stuff, at least (still need to get A Mother In History, her McCall's Magazine interviews with Marguerite Oswald, later published as an apparently rip-and-read paperback, judging by excerpts. It's out there).

found a copy of Maryse Condé's Windward Heights, a Caribbean re-framing of Wuthering Heights, so I went ahead and picked up the Bronte novel and I'm gonna read them bang bang

Then you have to read A True Novel, by Minae Mizumura. Absolutely wonderful Japanese take on WH.

"The idea of a trashy Borges is very appealing"

Sounds a lot like the start of a Michael Wood sentence.

Finished Clare Hutton, SERIAL ENCOUNTERS: ULYSSES & THE LITTLE REVIEW.

Not as exciting as Ulysses and the cyclops

A True Novel, by Minae Mizumura

thanks for the recommendation! this looks very good.

has anyone in here read Richard Powers' The Overstory? I've never read anything of his but I've been seeing it mentioned all over the place lately.

I bought it because I quite like Richard Powers and liked that he got the Pulitzer, but I've only read the first part, then I borrowed it to my then-girlfriend who likes reading about trees. The first part was great and I really want to delve back into it.

my wife and one of our best friends both super-loved it and advised me not to read it since I don't need any more climate-change-anxiety

richard powers is really bad at characters and plot but he's kinda good at ideas and vibe. the opening "story" of the overstory has the most overblown dumbass chekovs gun thing i've seen in forever.

galatea 2.2 and plowing the dark were both interesting but again he writes human beings on an isaac asimov level

I'm reading Swerve, Stephen Greenblatt. He writes well and covers a lot of territory. Much of it I was already familiar with through my interest in the classics, but he adds details and presents a very lively picture of the people and history involved, so it remains interesting even while on familiar ground.

Postscript: His thesis that the rediscovery of De Rerum Natura was the decisive event in the creation of modern secular science is rather silly, but it gives him an excuse to write the book, and for readers to read it, so I forgive him.

he writes human beings on an isaac asimov level

I've only read one Richard Powers book, "The Echo Maker", but I concur with this assessment.

I finished "Castle Gripsholm". It's an interesting period piece, a fable of louche sexuality doing battle against the forces of control and repression, which seems apropos for a Weimar era novel. I guess it was also the first book which Michael Hofmann translated, way back in 1985. Dude must be older than I thought. The translation was perfectly serviceable but not particularly distinctive.

Yeah, I was always disappointed by any Richard Powers I tried to read.

My favourite Tucholsky stuff is the poetry, which is often very funny and also very angry about the forces that lead to WWI. Written in Berlin dialect tho so it's difficult for me to imagine a translation ever capturing it.

I've finished rereading most of Michael Wood's ON EMPSON and started rereading Colm Toibin's ON ELIZABETH BISHOP. I suspect that this is one of CT's best books.

I also have a book of Tucholsky’s satirical writings called “Germany? Germany!” which I haven’t read yet.

trip to the bookstore yesterday, ended up getting 3 of 4 staff picks by an employee whom i don't recall working there before.

spinal catastrophism: a secret history by thomas moynihan

this one realy put out for me at the store but now that i have it i'm a little worried it's going to be one of those works by cross-disciplinary" academics that's a little too in love with its cross-disciplinariness, sort of rambling and not as profound as it thinks it is. unreadable preface by one iain hamilton grant. some edgelord vibes. i'm going to push on and hopefully learn some things about spines and evolution i guess.

the gift of death and literature in secret by jacques derrida

derrida is basically a religious writer i think? for some reason it doesn't put me off. mysteries of being type shit. beautiful and deep prose.

thomas the obscure by maurice blanchot

never heard of this, no real idea of what to expect although samples at the bookstore left me fairly entranced.

thomas the obscure is dizzying, may induce dissociative disorder

Great book

Thomas the Obscure is an all-time favorite of mine, just a completely unique reading experience ('dizzying' otm).

Is there a new edition, or is it the old Station Hill one with plain white title on plain black cover? I need to replace mine, it slid between the gap in my car seat cushions and ended up under the spare tire in the trunk(?), where it became saturated with moisture during a heavy snowfall(???)

I know there is something actively insidious about my own Station Hill edition because my marginalia appears now to refer to another, different book, or books

Elizabeth Inchbald, A Simple Story
Stephen King, Different Seasons
Frederick W. Farrrar, Eric or, Little By Little

The Swerve was pleasantly diverting most of the time. It spent very little time focused on Lucretius and De Rerum Natura, and most of its time focused on papal politics of the fifteenth century, and that was fine with me.

I plan on starting Amnesia Moon, Jon Letham, this afternoon or evening.

I predict you wont like it

(Mostly cuz i love it lol)

sp: Jonathan Lethem

Colm Toibin's The Blackwater Lightship. It's a hugely propulsive narrative and it struck me that Toibin barely uses any figurative language - everything is driven by action and character dialogue. Even when he does have recourse to description, he'll be perfunctory (the day is 'mild and sunny' a light switch is 'firm and hard'). My knowledge of Ireland and Irish life feels scanty and cliched, but is it fair to say that Toibin is both sentimental and excoriating about Ireland? There is a huge amount of (undoubtedly righteous) anger in the book - mainly at the silences and secrets in family and wider social life, particularly with regards to homosexuality.

I also saw the film of Brooklyn recently (sentimental, excoriating). Lord, but I couldn't take my eyes off Saoirse Ronan.

Been reading Ernie's War the compiled WWII articles/columns by Ernie Pyle a US war correspondent.
I think I've seen him played in a film by Henry Fonda.
THink I saw a similar anthology on the shelves of the local 2nd hand/remainder bookshop and then bought this through amazon marketplace.
It i spretty good now taht i'm getting into it.

Started Outlaw the book on the Country stars Kris Kristofferson , Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings.

Also started the Soul of an Octopus which has been travelling around in my bag for the last few weeks but I've been listening to podcasts too much to read on buses etc.