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

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.

I started reading The Waning of the Middle Ages by J. Huizinga, which had been on my shelf for ages, and I'm also dipping into stories from the George Saunders collection Civilwarland in Bad Decline.

During the move from a beach vacation to coming home, rushing to a hospital and coming home again in a few hours, I can't locate my copy of Amnesia Moon anywhere. My major impression of it when I was only half-finished with it was that it seemed like Lethem was recycling a lot of short story ideas into a novel. But the device holding them together was adequate to keep it feeling like one story and his narrative ability was strong enough to keep the ball rolling.

Now I have no idea when, or if, I will be able to finish it properly. :-(

Stevolende - I read some of Pyle's pieces when I was going through the Modern Library's book of WWII reporting. I don't know how I'd do with a whole book of his writing, but it was interesting to see his very unpolished and rather corny, but still effective style contrasted with the more writerly pieces.

Just finished Luis Sagasti's Fireflies, a short book where each chapter is just the author drawing some connections between disparate historical events, writing, art, concepts, etc. Most of it works, though there are occasional jarring moments where he clearly gets something wrong, and I'm not sure if it's intentional or not. Endorsed by Enrique Vila-Matas on the cover, definitely reminded me stylistically of Bartleby & Co.

Also just finished England's Hidden Reverse. Pretty fun, even though I've barely scratched the surface of any of the groups being written about. The story of John Balance getting in trouble at age 12 for astral projection sounded like it came out of a Daniel Pinkwater novel.

Chinaski: I think you're right about Toibin's writing style. I don't think that BROOKLYN the film manages to be very excoriating. My recollection is that compared to the book it rather sentimentally fudges the ending.

Aimless: You're quite correct about AMNESIA MOON - JL has stated that it did originate that way. It's a relatively wild collage of ideas, perhaps to the point of lacking coherence, but I think it does hold together and keep propulsion and purpose.

I finally finished Empson's chapter on ALICE and have put SOME VERSIONS OF PASTORAL aside. Such an odd book - barely coherent as a 'book' at all, it seems to me. I admit that my problem as a reader is not knowing the primary material well enough, but then that didn't stop me getting through the even denser SEVEN TYPES OF AMBIGUITY. A difference is that that debut does at least announce what it's about, whereas SOME VERSIONS has no Introduction, let alone any Conclusion, and never gives a readily understandable idea of what it means by Pastoral or why that word would be a good one to unify what it's talking about.

I moved on to read, at last, James Wood's essay on Keith Moon in THE FUN STUFF.

last part of latest enewsletter from The Crime Lady (AKA Sarah Weinman, good writer and editor, for inst. of Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives: Stories from the Trailblazers of Domestic Suspense, the stand-alone anth, and Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s, the Library of America boxed set, incl. novels mentioned on prev WAYRs):

So many authors are seeing their book tours canceled, years of dreams supplanted. Amy Klein, who has a book coming up in April, on https://electricliterature.com/what-its-like-to-try-to-promote-a-book-in-the-middle-of-a-pandemic/ and alternative ways of doing so.

Which is also why I want to stump for my favorite books of 2020 so far, some that aren’t yet published yet:

The Third Rainbow Girl by Emma Copley Eisenberg (I reviewed it here: https://airmail.news/issues/2020-1-25/chasing-rainbows)

Weather by Jenny Offill — a timely novel that’s only going to get more classic over time.

Pretty As A Picture by Elizabeth Little — the voice! The insight into moviemaking! The scathing commentary about sexual politics and true crime! The teens! We did an event at Chevalier’s Books last month and I’ve never wanted an event to go on for many more hours. That’s what the book is like.

Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong — a brilliant collection as a whole, but I was particularly taken with her piece on the life and murder of Theresa Hak-Kyung Cha, an artist I’ve long wanted to write about (Dictee is one of my favorite books of all time) but now I don’t have to.

Lurking by Joanne McNeil — for the Internet old-timers, for those who want to know when the Internet was good, why it went bad, how it can foster community, it’s just a wonderful, thoughtful book.

Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson — for pure confection, post-modern mystery escapism.

Take Me Apart by Sara Sligar — my favorite debut crime novel of 2020 (out in April), just spot on about transforming life into art and who gets sacrificed — particularly women — as a result.

Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker — Lost Girls was a stone masterpiece and so is this book, out in April.

Wandering in Strange Lands by Morgan Jerkins (it’s out in May, and it singed my soul for how good it is)

My Life as a Villainess by Laura Lippman — chances are you’ve read some of the essays already published in venues like Longreads and Glamour, but trust me, the entire collection — also out in May — is dynamite. I’ll be thinking about the final piece for a long, long, time.

These Women by Ivy Pochoda (also out in May, and it reverse-engineers the serial killer narrative from the vantage point of all the women — victims, loved ones, those on the margins — who don’t end up in his orbit, but supersede his orbit.)

Life Events by Karolina Waclawiak (also out in May!) — I loved how it mined a woman’s drifting ambivalence through life, marriage, travel, and there are no easy answers, nor should there be.

Mother Daughter Widow Wife by Robin Wasserman (out June 23) — this novel had me questioning all of my life choices, and it wrung me dry. I felt changed reading this.

Becoming Duchess Goldblatt by Duchess Goldblatt (out in July) — it stole my heart and is a damn good memoir about creating a new identity to save yourself.

Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby (out in July) — my other favorite debut crime novel of 2020.

The Devil’s Harvest by Jessica Garrison (out August 4) — I blurbed this because it’s a propulsive and incisive look at a hired killer who targeted those on the margins — often poor, undocumented immigrants living in the Central Valley — told with necessary compassion.

True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee by Abraham Riesman (out September 29) — another book I blurbed because it made me understand the complex, hard-to-pin-down man that was Marvel Comics’ id and superego, and the archival research is amazing.

There will be more added to this list, of course. Let’s keep reading, let’s keep supporting authors, in this time and at all times.

Still can't locate my copy of Amnesia Moon. Now reading The Highland Clearances, John Prebble. Who needs stinkin' dystopian fiction when there's history to read?

Who needs stinkin' dystopian fiction when there's history newspapers

Was gonna say

A True Novel, by Minae Mizumura

I bought this but it's now stranded in our workplace mailroom :(

At last I've started Joseph Conrad's NOSTROMO.

I've been doing well with short books so far this year, reading 15 so far. I was thinking of starting The Decameron as more of a challenge. Is it a book to occasionally read a story from, or is it worth reading all the way through over a few months?

I was also considering that, and I’m sure we aren’t the only ones! I got a Lydia Davis collection out the library that I now won’t have to return until doomsday; and I keep thinking with all this spare time I should go back to cancer ward but it’s not too appealing to read about life in a shabby hospital for some reason

i plucked off my shelf calvin tompkins bio of robert rauschenberg 'off the wall' ~ really enjoying it, hope tompkins is presently ok

barely posted in this thread recently, so thought it was worth updating gradually with a few of things i've been reading, in no particular order:

Plastic Emotions - Shiromi Pinto, a novel freely interpreting the life of 20th C architect Minette de Silva, and a relationship with Le Corbusier. I am not enjoying this book and don't think I will finish it. Lots of short sentences starting pronoun verb.

She scans the parking lot... She wonders at her audacity... She sighs... She will not offer...

Endless paras of the stuff, and it's not at all clear a lot of the time why you are being told this stuff.

It's a voice that reminds me of 'what i did in the holidays' school essays, and a proxy some writers use to convey a privileged sensuous immediacy with the world - I assume because the voice is somewhat childlike. I tried to resist this immediate reaction – my learned critical instincts were forged largely around white male western writers. I'm super wary of dismissing a woman writer, with Sri Lankan background, because of voice. I wrote a bit here about how we may need to reconfigure or work a bit harder at what our conception of 'good' is if we are to allow other types of writers into literary spaces.

However, wherever on the scale of personal irritation or critical annoyance this is, I'm struggling. I was drawn to the book because i quite liked the idea of a romance framed through architecture, which is what the title and brief description suggested. I continued despite immediately recognising that I was going to struggle, because I happened to pick up at the same time Seeing Like a State by James C Scott, which is part covers Chandigarh, which as designed by Le Corbusier also features in Pinto's book. and the coincidence piqued me to think that approaching the same subject from two radically different angles wd be interesting.

The imaginary letters to Le Corbusier are painfully bad, as they are part filled with exposition and narrative, for the benefit of the reader. It's hard to read them as letters.

I will persist for a bit longer. Maybe skim a bit.