Autumn 2020: Is Everything Getting Dimmer or Is It Just Me?

and his poor kids!

Only 10 pages or so of Kate O'Brien to go. I suppose what I feel now is that this book is sentimental about its two heroines, but in a deceptively formal and dignified way. They are - up to 10pp from the end - perhaps too perfect.

I'm touched, though, by the fate of Charlie, after he takes a purple / white / green ribbon from a suffragette to make a Votes for Women tie.

OK. I got far enough in to A Scanner Darkly that PKD has settled on the story he wants to write and it is basically about the hard drug addict culture in 1970s California with a light dusting of sci-fi tropes. The point in the book where it gels is when he more or less sets aside the sci-fi content and the writing becomes almost documentary realism, drawn straight from his own life, I presume. I was near enough to the fringe of that scene in the 70s that the squalor of it feels depressingly familiar.

Yes, for those of us who were around then, and any one else who can relate, it's something dark that still smells bad, always there, as soon as the book is opened---in your face, and his: he is testifyin' while still in the midst of it, bringing his talents and skills---incl., always, the documentary realism, to bear and to ground on his crackpot control-freak earthquakes and mudslides and fires of whatever origin, the California Kid locked in Manichean Civil War---although I think the talent won, more often than not, if you read enough of the fiction---though Lethem did him a stan disservice by pushing The Exegesis through the Library of America: that stuff should never be read out of context. Drug culture (inc. cops) were just part of the source material for his ongoing chronicles of illusion and delusion and all manner of fakery as part of consensual realties, incl. as they become known as such, sometimes---basically all the time, because this world is a bad copy of the real one, as became clearer during Watergate, as the False One stumbled (the real world is just a few years A.D.---as became even clearer when he beheld the Christian fish-symbol earring of the Dark-Haired Girl who delivered his pizza)
think you have to accept a certain amount of, uh, chaos with Dick? He wrote so quickly (to stay alive, mainly), was battling psychosis and addiction. The vision comes through almost by osmosis or something. Or he'll drive you mad with his lack of discipline and you'll give up, I guess.

― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Tuesday, December 15, 2020 2:38 AM (ten hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I just read the first few pages and, like the first time, was instantly transported into the world of a paranoid and delusional drug addict, so consumed by his own nightmares as to be almost devoid of any fellow-feeling. And the bit about the scramble suit, yes it says the voice is 'toneless and artificial', then the guy gives a speech with pauses and where he raises and lowers his voice, I don't really see a contradiction there.

― ledge, Tuesday, December 15 word

But I do think some of this comes, to some cold-sweat degree, from/toward a place of/desire for fellow feeling--he has to tell us, testify, warn us, maybe to scold some of us who were/are also getting too far into something (and I think this is the one where he mentions having done permanent damage to I wanna say pancreas, via speed)

I think my favourite Dick-adjacent thing is the Emmanuel Carrere sort of biography, autobiography, flight of fancy I Am Alive And You Are Dead'. I read it a while ago but have that residual sense of being close to Dick's consciousness for better and worse.

did carrere do that book on the french/swiss man with the fake life? hang on...

ah yes here we go, The Adversary.

meant to read it when it came out in english but completely forgot until just now.

I don't know that one, sounds interesting. I have his memoir about the tsunami in Sri Lanka in 2004. Girding myself to read it.

(lol "bad Primo Levi" sez ever-reliable Guardian; just for that, I'll check it out)

Books in which PKD's talent and skillz def prevail incl the first volume of his collected short stories, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Man In The High Castle, Martian Time-Slip, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, also some of the "mainstream" novels, like Confessions of A Crap Artist. Mary and The Giant, and The Broken Bubble.

By the time lists come out, incl. mine, I'm usually pretty much ready to shrug and move on, but this one has a lot of appealing comments---https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/dec/06/the-best-books-of-2020-picked-by-our-acclaimed-guest-authors---incl. several mentions of Hamnet---is it good?

PKD's birthday today. And Arthur C Clarke's.

incl. several mentions of Hamnet---is it good?

I wasn't moved by it as much as the people in that article - my wife was - but it was pretty good, as historical fiction goes maybe slightly more fanciful than Wolf Hall. It had the best explanation that i've read of the famous 'second best bed' of shakespeare's will.

People latch onto the "second best bed" only because there are only a couple dozen verifiable facts about Shakespeare's personal life, if that many, and it is quirky enough to jump out from such a meager handful. But it means nothing in particular other than what it says on the face of it. That he purchased the right to a family coat of arms is much more boring and conventional, but as a bare fact it is more revealing.

Books you are never going to read:

Mayflies (Faber, £14.99) by Andrew O’Hagan is a gorgeous novel, full of crisp and evocative images. It concerns the love between two best friends. It begins in lustful youth, with a pilgrimage by a group of Glasgow boys to Manchester in the mid-1980s to see Morrissey and visit the Haçienda. It concludes with the same characters in middle age, confronting a crisis.

Hahaha

But it means nothing in particular other than what it says on the face of it.

it may not - we'll never know - but o'farrell gives it a plausible and amusing spin.

No, never gonna read about the lustful journey to Morrisey, but also intrigued by all of this (except the term "pacy"):
Shadi Bartsch’s new translation of Virgil’s The Aeneid (Profile, £16) is terrific (and a gorgeous physical book, too) – fresh and pacy. Bartsch walks the tightrope between maintaining the grandeur of the original and making the poem accessible to modern readers and makes it look easy. The Aeneid is the great refugee narrative of its own time, and it should be for our time too. I am obsessed with Thebes, the home of Cadmus, Oedipus and Antigone. So Paul Cartledge’s Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece (Macmillan, £25) is exactly the book for me. Academic books are often a bit dry, but this study of the city – its myth and its history – is anything but dusty. Religion, war and myth are all interrogated with equal rigour. Don’t tell me Thomas Cromwell wasn’t as beautiful and nuanced as Hilary Mantel makes him in The Mirror & the Light (HarperCollins, £25): I don’t want to know, I want to maintain the fantasy. As a sustained act of world-building, time travel and mind-reading, I’m not sure her Cromwell trilogy will ever be equalled. At the beginning of the first lockdown it was honestly more consoling than food.

xp the naive reading is that it was not a happy marriage, the conventional one is that this was standard practice, the best bed was for guests and not the family bed. o'farrell has will give her a fancy new bed to go in her fancy new town house and she says 'i will keep the bed that i conceived and birthed my children in thank you very much', so it becomes a private joke between them.

Yeah, I'll take a look at that when library no longer re-locked down.
xp Also, we need to issue a ban on "makes it look easy," though lack of evident strain v. important. But thanks Natalie Haynes
Broadcaster and author of Pandora’s Jar!

eh. connecting the "second best bed" to any more detailed meaning requires connecting it to missing information. the very fact that multiple, equally plausible speculations have been proposed to explain it only highlights the central vacancy of information that all the theories revolve around. we don't know, can't know, what it means beyond 'I bequeath to my wife the second best bed'. but that never stops anyone from trying.

it's just a bit of fun let's be cool!

obviously, in a historical novel about Shakespeare's family life there's no way an author could avoid including it.

obviously

I guess if the novel was "Shakepeare and the Zombies" the author might dispense with it, but that's more of an ahistorical novel.

Dennis Cooper's list came out a few days ago

https://denniscooperblog.com/mine-for-yours-my-favorite-fiction-poetry-non-fiction-film-art-and-internet-of-2020/

I got Penguin's new-ish (2018) translation of Simplicius Simplicissimus and it's..... something. The translator's note is extraordinary. I've never seen anything like it. I'm going to write it down.

This is a very well-known book. In the German-speaking world (where Simplicius Simplicissimus was first published in 1669) many students become acquainted with at least some of the text before leaving school; in the rest of the world it has been often translated (including into contemporary German, although the German language has not changed hugely since 1669), with many of the translations being into English; and Grimmelhausen's work has a substantial presence on the Internet.

So my editor and I have decided to let readers conduct their own background research to whatever level they require. Rather than produce a learned version of an acknowledged literary by ramming home easily accessible points in long footnotes that will slow down the eye, we prefer to offer an attractive reading experience.

Perhaps, like the translator, readers will discover that a seventeenth-century best-seller can come across as surprisingly modern.

J.A.U.

(That's 'J.A. Underwood.')

What do you guys make of THAT? I have so much to say about this. First of all, look at that first paragraph. A four-lane pileup of semicolons setting out the case: everybody knows this book, there's stuff all over the Internet about it, leave me alone willya? Sheesh, alright alright.

But second... who lets footnotes slow them down? I just don't read them if I don't want to. Make them endnotes if they're really so offensive to the eye. But really? They're worried that someone buying a Penguin Classic of Grimmelhausen in 2018 is going to be put off by.... superscript numbers adorning certain names and phrases? They can't be. It's a preposterous suggestion. The idea that anyone would even swallow it is even a little insulting. I can't help but think they just didn't feel like doing any work. Or their budget was cut. Something went wrong and this is their attempt to style it out.

'This is a very well known book.' Well... maybe? SOME Germans read PARTS of it before going to university. Okay. Not exactly proving your case, but okay. But this is an English translation. Nobody in the English-speaking world reads this unless they're a little weird (raises hand) or studying German literature in higher education.

In any case, their brainwave is to allow the reader to just... look things up on the Internet! And this is going to be "faster" "to the eye" than reading a footnote?? Well - maybe we won't even do that. We'll be surprised, they say, at how modern this little firecracker is. Who needs "learned" notes after all?? (I should say there is a pretty good introduction from Kevin Cramer that sets out the historical and literary context and gives a short bio of Grimmelhausen himself.) So maybe we can just wing it, eh? Or look things up on the Internet if we want to. We're just reading for pleasure, or we're ultra-nerds, either way this approach works - we can nerd out online if we want, or just blaze through.

Indeed the first sentence speaks of a 'new fad'. The second sentence refers to 'daft' fashions. The third uses the word 'celebrities.' In the next graf we hear 'waffling on.' We get modern words like 'twerp' and 'dunno'. Bumptious! But you get a lot of old-fashioned stuff, too. 'Ninny' and 'numbskull', etc. No big deal. But if German hasn't changed that much, maybe it would have been a good idea to use English that hasn't changed that much, either? Words that feel neither obsolete nor... faddish?

And then - and I will stop soon I promise - you really do want a few learned footnotes. What's 'Malmsey wine'? No idea. Presumably a reader in 1669 would have known. The translator appears to think the word 'nob' is shorthand for 'nobleman'. What's 'fernambuck'? 'Minium'? A 'Samoyed'? A 'palliasse'? Off to Google...

sorry should read acknowledged literary masterpiece

Tracer, you don't know what a Samoyed is?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0wjtlSTTiQ

much better than Google tyvm :)

I assiduously read footnotes, so ones that are not that necessary can take me out of a text, however it doesn't seem to make sense if there are so many terms used that are not familiar to the general reader (I have heard of none of the terms you note). having to check a dictionary on your phone while you read is annoying, I read Spanish well but not enough to not have to look up the odd word every few pages and it does make reading in Spanish a little bit less enjoyable

What do you guys make of THAT?

I'd say the translator and Penguin's editor let each other off easy and together skated past parts of their job that required extra thought and effort. I presume this was issued as part of Penguin Classics, which once upon a time held itself to very high standards.

I like to think of myself as a reasonably well read person, and I lived in Germany for 5 years, and I’d never heard of grimelhausen until a couple of months ago when i read a John le carre novel in which it is a recurring plot point. So yeah I feel like the odd footnote might be ok in a penguin edition.

It's just.. you could say it about anything, now. 'There's so much on the Internet! We don't wanna slow you down'. Well, no, I don't want to go on the Internet, I want to read your book, jackass. There's a word for free. Use it instead of 'ninny'.

i was trying to think of a way that this might be good not bad. but no, it's ridiculous, as you say, and if I'd been the series editor or whatever, I'd've said, 'You expect to get *paid* for this?'. I mean, the only community amongst whom Grimmelshausen would be a household name, and for whom many of the references would be 'easily accessible' are academics afaict, and of course they tend to demand *more* of an scholarly apparatus. An act of staggeringly laziness that somehow got published, because it would exceed the budget to go to another academic.

Presumably it's this guy?

He died in 2018. Maybe he got ill and they just tried to style it out? Though the fact he once worked for Calder is a massive red flag that he might be totally indifferent to fundamental editorial principles.

I have Underwood's translation of Walter Benjamin. It's unusually colloquial.

the simplicius talk made me go and finally read this lrb piece which coincidentally (xpost) singles out the old calder translation for praise (the only version i've read).

recently i've been catching up on some of thos. hardy's lesser known/regarded work, currently on a laodicean. could be down to its being dictated to his wife whilst on his sickbed, but finding it surprisingly breezy in comparison to his others (or my memory of them, at least)... almost a page-turner in the sensation novel mode with visits to the gambling dens of monte carlo and a machiavellian bastard son!

Don’t tell me Thomas Cromwell wasn’t as beautiful and nuanced as Hilary Mantel makes him in The Mirror & the Light (HarperCollins, £25): I don’t want to know, I want to maintain the fantasy.

From all I've read Cromwell not only wasn't "as beautiful and nuanced", he was a bloodthirsty gangster. I do wonder if these novels will have permanently rehabilitated him in the popular consciousness - and whether it matters.

Always felt Mantel was taking aim at the 'Man for All Seasons' narrative of Thomas More, making him an arrogant heretic burner and torturer, through the eys of a comparatively humane Cromwell.

A Place of Greater Safety has a similar sort of revisionism, with a sympathetic Robespierre and cunt Danton

Yeah, More was a cunt too, but you don't really need a goodie when it comes to the court of Henry. Thing about those books is that if you write down objectively what Cromwell does in them it's pretty obvious he's as bad as any of the others, but since we're in his subjectivity and Mantel is an amazing writer the reader is intrigued into believing all of Cromwell's bloodshed is done reluctantly and with good cause while that of his opponents is atrocious. It's that old mobster movie dilemma but I don't think seeing through it is the "point" of Wolf Hall either.

Nuanced, yes. Ambiguous, yes. Beautiful, not really?

Cromwell is not beautiful and nuanced even in Mantel, his mind is sharpened by renaissance accounting, mercantilism, and culture, but he's a thug, and portrayed as such - people are frightened of him and he'll physically knock people out of the way and push them up against walls - and he's a strong and practical, wide-shouldered, muscular dog.

Really don't think that's right, fizzles - Cromwell is in his inner monologue often astonished that people fear him - and as a reader, you're encouraged to view him as misunderstood on that count. The physical violence only tends to come out in moments where he is being badly done against, and we are on his side when it happens. Plus, the fact that he's been raised from a very rough childhood contextualizes his violence, while that of his opponents appears all the more despicable.

irrelevant depending on where you fall down re: death of the author but Mantel never sounds particularly critical of Cromwell when discussing him, either

irrelevant depending on where you fall down re: death of the author What does this mean? I was struck by "don't tell me" etc because she straight-up praised it as fantasy---she had me at "world-building"---but by the same token, despite all the vividness, which carries over into descriptions here, I was reminded that I got tired of The Sopranos and especially Game of Thrones (series only, haven't read the books) because anecdotal, episodic effects overrode character development, and if it's just asshole v asshole power struggle w everybody else caught in the middle or backing way the hell off--not really worldbuilding, past a certain point, which can come up pretty quickly, in any given ep, arc, or series---then I sure don't want any of that on the page, where I tend to pay more active attention---I want something more like Shakespeare or Kurosawa (sorry, don't really know historical novels, so no idea who might be good, but guess Mantel is?)

(Not that The Sopranos didn't have good bits all along, enough to keep me coming back from time to time, and her books would not take years and years and years to play out, from audience POV, unlike these series, jeez)

dow, I just meant Mantel's comments on Cromwell in interviews and etc may not be germane to the discussion if you think the work is a separate thing

I think you're right that this quote paints it as to be enjoyed as pure fantasy but also I parsed it as "don't tell me this person is actually more flawed than in the books" and not "don't tell me this person was actually a total asshole".

I get sick of asshole vs asshole narratives quickly, too - I'd say on that count Wolf Hall does well in that I never stopped being sympathetic towards Cromwell. Six seasons of the Sopranos left me w/ very little of that towards Tony. Some of the GoT characters stay pretty likeable iirc but that show has so many other problems.

I'm intrigued to hear talk of the Simplicissimus. I'm not 100% sure of how I came across the book . May have been me scouring shelves in a public library in the mid 80s but i did get it oout at that point but didn't finish it. Then came across it in the University library at the start of teh 00ies when i did get through it.
It is a large book with some level of obscure action in it. I think it would help to have things like the role of hermetism and the significance of the lake etc which were probabl;y both in the version i did read. Also I think there are references to other novels that would be easily missed.
I liked the book a lot but it has been nearly 20 years since I read it.

THis does sound crazy, would think notes would be useful.

to be fair a lot of it doesn't require explanation - e.g. failed strategies for farting quietly (he uses the word 'pong' to describe the smell which makes me think of like, Jamie Oliver, so THAT'S annoying) - but if you're gonna go full-on "this is a cheeky no-footnotes-required edition!! r0x0r" you just cannot use words like 'palliasse'

but yes, going further, if the battle of Nördlingen is indeed 'famous' then the reader could probably use a précis

still steamed about this tbh

Really don't think that's right, fizzles - Cromwell is in his inner monologue often astonished that people fear him - and as a reader, you're encouraged to view him as misunderstood on that count. The physical violence only tends to come out in moments where he is being badly done against, and we are on his side when it happens. Plus, the fact that he's been raised from a very rough childhood contextualizes his violence, while that of his opponents appears all the more despicable.

irrelevant depending on where you fall down re: death of the author but Mantel never sounds particularly critical of Cromwell when discussing him, either

― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, December 17, 2020 4:12 PM bookmarkflaglink

lol i was reading this and thinking 'do i want to double down on this, or relax my definition slightly? hmm, i think i'm going to double down.' but i need to give it some more thought, so am putting a bookmark against this to revisit later.

it all makes sense when you realise, as i believe i've said before, that cromwell is to hilary mantel what dirk pitt is to clive cussler - an action hero who's good at everything including exuding a certain manly menace when the requirement arises