Winter 2021: ...and you're reading WHAT?!

i spent the better part of last year only reading dhalgren, which wasn't the plan, but my attention was so shot that... that's what happened. it was wonderful and i just finished reading, on table's recommendation, delany's heavenly breakfast, which functions as a short lovely memoir of commune living and a fascinating appendix to dhalgren itself; i lost it when the irl "scorpions" appeared

Preface by Eliot, Introduction by Ellmann. I highly recommend the book.

Yeah, saw that about Ellmann. Intro and notes, I think.

Brad, I'm glad you got something out of Heavenly Breakfast!

I finished Collobert's 'Murder,' and it was something else.

Now onto Kevin Davies' 'FPO.' Davies is a poet's poet, a sort of legend among followers of innovative poetry in North America, and it's been twelve years since his last book. This one sort of continues with what he does, but seems to lack an underlying purpose. As my friend put it, "it's still incisive and funny as hell, but seems directionless," and I'd agree. I'm still enjoying myself immensely, though.

I have about 80 pgs to go in Hari Kunzru's 'Red Pill', after a few friends raved about it. The first hundred pages have a "writer writing about writers (not) writing" vibe that grates, but it's picking up as a metaphor for alt-right internet trolls & black holes played out irl, or something.

Also reading Robin Kelley's very long bio of Thelonious Monk on an ilx recommendation, it's a little on the dry side but thorough, and there's a lot of good historical detail aside from the jazz stuff.

someone on tinder recommended jamie loftus' podcast about lolita to me so now i am rereading lolita. lol(ita)

"reread" is kind of a misnomer bc i've never finished it! i am excited to

Funnily enough it was, of all people, Patricia Lockwood who recently said something about LOLITA that I found quite simply perceptive and persuasive: namely that most of us mostly like the early part of it (the first half?), and don't much like it after a certain point (is it where Dolores runs away from Humbert, and Quilty becomes important?).

i'm starting A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders and finding it to be exactly what I want to read right now.

i have that on my nightstand but i need to read more of the stories it discusses first

hahaha i thought they were included, what a rip-off

oh they are! posting before i even know what i'm talking about. this is the kindle edition ftr.

just finished charles yu's 'interior chinatown,' which was good once i got the hang of the conceit (blurred lines between film/tv and reality). gonna start michael mcdowell's 'the elementals' next because i have a yen for horror at the moment. might finally read 'dracula' afterward.

oh they're included? isn't one of them like 50 pages? i guess i should open the book at some point haha.

yes they all are. the first one is a chekhov which he's analyzing a page at a time.

this year so far. bit of a rough start:

hamnet by maggie o'farrell - pretty good? thinking of william shakespeare as a real person was new to me, and that was weird i guess. it's sad when children die so the book was sad.

honourable schoolboy - low point for le carre. good on class (as per) and ex-pat HK. very bad on people who aren't white men. bit of a slog structurally.

how much of these hills is gold by c pam zhang - this got good reviews, but was just fine.

transit by rachel cusk - absolute banger. very funny. 5*

haunting of hill house - not scary enough

metamorphosis - good, at the risk of stating the obvious

the argonauts by maggie nelson - this was very moving

the arrest by jonathan lethem - i thought this was rubbish!

fatherland by robert harris - haha this was dreck

now reading:

mezzanine by nicholson baker (reread)

the deficit myth: MMT and the birth of the people's economy by stephanie kelton. i am completely ignorant of this stuff and this book is so convincing that i assume the argument is bad faith and straw men. but i like it so far.

yes they all are. the first one is a chekhov which he's analyzing a page at a time.

is it in the cart? that's the only one i've read!

I finished MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. Simply, for anyone strongly interested in the early Joyce, a priority. Fascinating.

I moved on to Peter Wollen: SIGNS & MEANING IN THE CINEMA (1969).

But as more of an indulgence I'm dipping in to Tom Gunning: THE FILMS OF FRITZ LANG: ALLEGORIES OF VISION & MODERNITY (2000).

I'm slowly making my way through M.R. James' Collected and enjoying myself immensely. Also reading Modern Nature by Derek Jarman and working out what to (attempt to) grow this year.

Funnily enough it was, of all people, Patricia Lockwood who recently said something about LOLITA that I found quite simply perceptive and persuasive: namely that most of us mostly like the early part of it (the first half?), and don't much like it after a certain point (is it where Dolores runs away from Humbert, and Quilty becomes important?).

― the pinefox, Monday, February 8, 2021 11:12 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

hmmmm. the first half of lolita is really funny though? like the story of vera leaving humbert with the very taxi driver that picks them up is just hilarious. the arctic exploration is silly and could easily be excised but again it's kind of funny. i will say the reconstructed diary of his early days at the haze house runs a little long and is only revealing horrendous portions of humbert's character the reader has already glimpsed. (it's also sort of obviously a device for the device's sake, like here is a diary reconstructed from memory by an already-unreliable-narrator, lol, good luck parsing the projection from reality!!! - love, vlad) but that's nabokov, to me? iirc i abandoned lolita a few years ago bc even when nabokov narrators aren't total moral wastelands they are usually a little annoying and pretentious (in often very funny ways!) and i was between books and uncertain of what to commit to next and just didn't want to stick around with humbert as a narrator after charlotte died

Always liked the movie, and saw maybe the last third of it again on TCM recently, from the point where they're on the lam and being followed and she keeps wanting to stop for snacks etc---think this part don't much like it after a certain point (is it where Dolores runs away from Humbert, and Quilty becomes important?) was compressed by Kubrick, with lots of veering momentum, still v. satisfying, though wonder if he changed it any, to make it more Crime Does Not Pay for guardians of movie morality---or maybe VN already did that,for publishers, mainstream crits, his Dean (he was still teaching, right?) ---haven't read the book.

Sarah Weinman, who put together the Library of America's domestic suspense anthology and multi-volume set---incl. In A Lonely Place etc., and leading to a publishing revival for Margaret Millar, wife of Ross MacDonald and just as good, from what I've read of her work---has since writtenThe Real Lolita, about the 1948 kidnapping case that supposedly was the basis of the novel, at least in part:
Weaving together suspenseful crime narrative, cultural and social history, and literary investigation, The Real Lolita tells Sally Horner’s full story for the very first time. Drawing upon extensive investigations, legal documents, public records, and interviews with remaining relatives, Sarah Weinman uncovers how much Nabokov knew of the Sally Horner case and the efforts he took to disguise that knowledge during the process of writing and publishing Lolita.

Sally Horner’s story echoes the stories of countless girls and women who never had the chance to speak for themselves. By diving deeper in the publication history of Lolita and restoring Sally to her rightful place in the lore of the novel’s creation, The Real Lolita casts a new light on the dark inspiration for a modern classic.
“The achievement of [Weinman’s] impressive literary sleuthing is to bring to life a girl whose story had been lost. “ – Diane Johnson, New York Times Book Review

Crime Does Not Pay not that I would have wanted it to end in a more pro- or go-Humbert-go way.

I had no idea, or had forgotten, about a real 1948 kidnapping case. I had an idea that the book was more based on a literary precursor from, I believe, the 1920s.

I finished Crampton Hodnet. As indicated above, it was quite well done for a posthumously published early novel, but among the Pym I've read it falls among her lesser work. Pleasantly entertaining, but wanted a bit more mustard.

I'm now reading another light entertainment, Maigret and the Wine Merchant, Georges Simenon. It's a late production from 1970 and so far it feels a bit paint-by-the-numbers compared to the best Maigret stories. Not complaining. I'm in the market for soothing & easy books lately.

Finished Ali Smith's Spring and Wallace Shawn's The Designated Mourner.

Gonna read a volume of Erin Belieu's poems and the new Adrienne Rich bio.

yes they all are. the first one is a chekhov which he's analyzing a page at a time.

is it in the cart? that's the only one i've read!

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, February 8, 2021 10:38 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

yep. the second story is turgenev, "the singers". saunders goes on about how his students always grouse about the heavily descriptive style, how the action keeps getting interrupted by it, which .. i loved that and thought it was funny. sort of tired of the super streamlined modernist hemmingway approach tbh so i found that aspect refreshing - give me all your beautiful words! it's definitely my favorite story so far.

I have finally read 'The Nose' thanks to this book, but I have mixed feelings about Saunders' commentaries, which I will mull upon before sharing...

What did you think of the Ali Smith, Alfred?

I tried some of Wallace Shawn's essays recently and found them kinda vacuous - to the point that I assumed I was missing something.

I like teaching a few Saunders stories, but also find his whole public intellectual persona deeply annoying, for some reason. Was obsessed with him when I was in high school.

I am reading Jackie Wang's 'The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us From the Void,' which has some positives going for it: Jackie and I have existed in the same worlds of rad-left politics, punk rock, and academia for many years. In addition, my roommate from junior year of college— when I started posting on ILX, actually!— did illustrations for the book.

That said, while the content is relatable and hits notes that I agree with, the poetry is formally uninteresting— mostly end-stopped lines and long prose blocks. The older I get, the more conservative I get about this point— one of the basic units of verse is the line, and to eschew its use without good reason is to throw away one of the main tools available to a poet.

What did you think of the Ali Smith, Alfred?

My third novel. It took a bit through Autumn to get that discursiveness is her method, which means some of her arias work better than others.

Saunders just seems to do the same thing over and over these days.

great post

the same thing over and over

who doesn't

civilwarland is amazing but his work gets worse as it goes on imo, gets cloudy with sentiment

i still liked lincoln in the bardo anyway

Lincoln in the Bardo was so good! I loved it

Well, as a more specific example, he just had a story in the New Yorker about a disaffected confused guy working in some sort of weird amusement park. It's possible to suggest this is evidence he is going over the same ground repeatedly, but apparently this is not allowed.

I finished Peter Wollen's SIGNS & MEANING IN THE CINEMA (1969).

Chapter One: Eisenstein. A quite vivid account of the origins of the 'montage of attractions' etc, but mostly a chronological account of SME's career. Unusual perhaps in being critical of him while still supportive.

Chapter Two: The Auteur Theory. This I wanted to read Wollen on. Mainly he talks about Ford and Hawks, in a 'structuralist' sort of way, ie: their films are structured around repeated oppositions. Perhaps, but it seemed limited. The idea of style hardly comes up. Then PW goes into an interesting long section on text vs performance throughout the history of art.

Chapter Three: Semiology of the Cinema. Basically a case for C.S. Pierce and his tripartite theory of signs as the best way to describe film. Subtle points here on how film signs can be indexical, iconic and symbolic all at once.

Conclusion (1972): This is odd. Wollen is in a totally different mood, talks about auteurism in a very different way, no longer has the subtle interest in types of sign. It's as if French Theory and a certain Dziga-Vertov-Group avant-garde have taken him over and made him a different thinker, in 3 years. He makes a big argument for 'modernism' as the model of textual communication, but seems to be making straw men of the opposing concepts. Godard is even more central here than he was at the very end of the 1969 edition.

sp: C.S. Peirce.

It's as if French Theory and a certain Dziga-Vertov-Group avant-garde have taken him over and made him a different thinker, in 3 years.

This isn't so surprising or unusual tho, in terms of film theory/practice in the post-68 period - things were moving fast! I think the basic text of Signs and Meaning is even older than 69 so pretty early in terms of semiotics/structuralism being applied to film; by 72, Wollen was far from alone in film theory or wider critical theory in revisiting and overhauling their thought - Robin Wood being perhaps the most notable example (Leavisite close reader to psychoanalytic Marxist-Feminist).

JUst finished Angela Saini's INferior her book o Gender inequality. Qui8te like her work, Superior the one on Race Science is a must read.
Hope there's more coming, have a couple of webinars by her on this to look forward to over next few weeks.
NOw just wish I hadn't missed teh 2nd part of her BBC thing on Eugenics cos I can't find a d/ld that works.

Still working away at David Olusoga;s The World's War but have had another couple oif things I was working away at at the same time. Good book though. THink I could do with a book on a similar subject concerning WWII too though since this is all WWI.

want to read some Kehinde Andrews since I've been catching webinars by him.

Next up is probably going to be 1491 which I've been meaning to read for ages. 1491 picked I think to illustrate teh fact taht there were people who existed in teh world taht Columbus stumbled on for who that was just an incident in a continual timeline. THough 1491 is of course a Eurocentric timeline. I think his sequel 1493 explores the imapct of the discovery of teh New World on that of Europe.
I started it a couple of months ago but then bought Inferior so read that first and then had a great delay in finisghing it. Xmas and teh like.

Read a bit of the Sword In The Stone last night where Wart meets Merlyn. That's another thing I've been meaning to read for years. Saw the Disney cartoon as a kid so decades. Not sure if it was all that time but has been a lot of it. Now have had teh omnibus copy I have for a year plus. Not spending enough time reading probably.

Well, as a more specific example, he just had a story in the New Yorker about a disaffected confused guy working in some sort of weird amusement park. It's possible to suggest this is evidence he is going over the same ground repeatedly, but apparently this is not allowed. Yeah, aside from so-far uncollected New Yorker stories, the ones I've read wound up in Tenth of December, which gets predictable fast, esp. the overwrought (in detail as well as emotion) arias of pathos, and the disaffected etc. would fit right in. Some of the simpler ones are better, but even/especially among those, one is from the POV of a hyper kid and an old man with dementia, setting out from different points into undeveloped terrain, and you just know they're going to somehow bump into each other and have A Saunders Moment, looking at the sunrise and/or sunset, and that's what happens.
Did like the one about the Middle Eastern Wars vet back in the States, wandering around, who gets into a brief conversation with some convenience store workers, and they're commenting on how marginalized, how forgettable such warriors have become for most civilians (and the media), over the years and years and years---later, seems like he might flip out, but gets re-absorbed into his family dynamic, at least for now, in a plausible way.
Saunders as social realist! Wish he would do more like this, since it suits his talents/interests, and seems like, from the reviews, that he doesn't fuck around w historical basis of Lincoln At The Bardo, while still drawing on his imaginative powers, so will check that out.

And I do like some of his more risky ventures, but mainly, so far, having not read his novel, for socio-historical concerns/beefs/burns x contemporary literary rocket juice (descendants of Ralph Ellison etc.) I prefer Kelly Link, ZZ Packer, Karen Russell.

I like Saunders, especially the novel, but the mode where all protagonists are sincere, wide-eyed dumb dumbs gets old. The sci-fi dystopias as on-the-nose social commentary are still fun to read though, idk.

I'm finally reading Lorrie Moore (the one you think), and it's great.

I finished the Maigret novel last night. They're all quite short. I think Cather's Song of the Lark is at the head of the queue right now and it will get auditioned this evening, but I have a fistful of interesting books available and if the Cather doesn't grab me quickly she has some very strong competition lurking in the pile.

I read Donald Davie's ESSEX POEMS: 1963-1967 (1969). A nice object, a book with line-drawing illustrations. The tone is bleak. Some moments in the poems hit home, but a lot of is rather oblique and obscure to me. It's curious to recall that Davie was grouped with the Movement, as these poems are much less directly communicative and obviously coherent than Larkin's. He draws on Pasternak (whom I don't know). He was also a Poundian, and I think I can see a Poundian touch somewhere here, for instance in the tendency to repetition that Larkin wouldn't have done.

I'm finally reading Lorrie Moore (the one you think), and it's great.

― change display name (Jordan),

Which?

It seems to me that Moore peaked in the 1990s, with FROG HOSPITAL and BIRDS OF AMERICA; that before that, she was a bit brittle (SELF HELP), and after it, a bit unfocused (GATE) - but also that her talent is great enough and consistent enough that even the lesser Lorrie is better than the best of most other people.

I've read HOMER'S ODYSSEY (2006) by Simon Armitage. This version of the epic takes less than a day to read. It's brisk, communicative - in fact it's basically the script of a radio play. It doesn't contain that much obvious poetry, nor Homeric epithets. But it conveys a story well, makes certain things clearer to me, and delivers the encounters with the Cyclops and Sirens especially vividly (the Cyclops' dumb voice; the Sirens' circling song).

My sense is that the things that seem most exciting about the Odyssey (the encounters with particular monsters and threats) are things that Homer, or most versions, said very little about; and that most of the text is generally about relations between people - Odyssey, the suitors and other less interesting characters. If I'm right, it's odd that someone invented such vivid monsters and adventures and then made relatively little of them.

But the business with Eumaeus, the suitors, the scar, the bow, are all clearer to me now than they were before.

It seems to me that Moore peaked in the 1990s, with FROG HOSPITAL and BIRDS OF AMERICA; that before that, she was a bit brittle (SELF HELP), and after it, a bit unfocused (GATE) - but also that her talent is great enough and consistent enough that even the lesser Lorrie is better than the best of most other people.

― the pinefox, Saturday, February 13, 2021 4:17 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i disagree with the latter half of this, i found bark mostly very bad, but otherwise yeah this is the progression. frog hospital still so great

Bark has "Wings," one of her very best.