Spring 2021: Forging ahead to Bloomsday as we read these books

I was very confused there for a second when I saw the name Bob Gluck, as there's also my friend Bob Glück, who...uh...wouldn't have written about the Mwandishi band, knowing him lol.

Glad you're enjoying the last of the cycle, Brad.

I'm halfway through HEARING, a collaborative poem written by Lyn Hejinian and the late Leslie Scalapino. It is the sequel to their book, SIGHT, which dealt with that sensory realm. An interesting history behind it— when Scalapino passed away from pancreatic cancer in mid-2010, Lyn shelved the work, thinking that because she was unable to edit it with her friend and collaborator, it wasn't respecting Scalapino's legacy or their friendship.

Then, in 2017 or so, one of the trustees of Scalapino's papers, my friend Michael Cr0ss, was searching through Hejinian's correspondences with Scalapino and came upon a *FAX* that had Scalapino's edits of the collaborative manuscript, and a note that once these were implemented, she thought the book should go to print.

So, more than ten years after her passing, a new work emerges. It's a very cool thing, and a great book.

I'm still reading Siri Hustvedt: MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE. A hybrid form I suppose: memoir, fiction, essay, together. It could just be non-fiction, but she seems to change certain facts and thus complicate that.

I quite like this book: late 1970s NYC, literature. She's serious about memory, time, mortality, looking backward and forward in life.

Less good is the very long and tiresome series of scenes where she listens through the wall to her odd neighbour. SH doesn't seem to have any idea how boring these are.

The book also contains too much whingeing about things, which becomes too generalized. She goes to a lecture by Paul de Man, doesn't like it much (fair enough, I find de Man dull and fiddly too, would genuinely be quite uninterested in listening to him). It then becomes very convenient that de Man is later disgraced (a pretty old story now). But she also extrapolates that any time anyone gives a talk he's a 'Great Man' communicating nothing but his charisma and power to his adoring audience, and thus the same as Donald Trump.

Not very convincing.

But I still, on balance, tend to like the book.

Last night I finished I Capture the Castle, having enjoyed it quite a bit. The plot was updated Austen, but the voice was wholly original.

Unlike horseshoe, who in the Novels of 1948 thread expressed the idea that Dodie Smith found high modernism dubious, I thought Smith produced a very cogent defense of it. She chose to place that defense in the mouth of Simon, a different character than her narrator, Cassandra, whom we the readers are clearly meant to identify with, but in doing so I didn't read that choice as Smith dissing Joycean modernism. It just made more sense to do it that way in terms of the plot and characters she had created and who her likely readership was. Anyway, a greatly engaging book.

Now I have started Gringos, Charles Portis.

you think we're meant to identify with Simon? i...disagree.

i just think Cassandra is an aspiring writer in a Dodie Smith mode. i think Smith acknowledged that there must be merit in high modernism, because some smart people liked it, but personally it left her cold.

you think we're meant to identify with Simon?

uh, no. we're very much meant to identify with Cassandra. sorry if the referent of that clause wasn't clear.

oh sorry, no, i just read carelessly. you're right, she does produce a defense of it, but i think Cassandra's lingering skepticism reflects Smith's own.

laughin my butt off @ Pnin

As I only read books I hear about on here, I'm reading Lorrie Moore's Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?. I'm well and truly caught up in the tumble of her sentences and the way in which she beautifully creates the illusion that her characters are enigmas to themselves, following digressions to the seeds of the past.

I sense I should read everything but where could one go next?

Alice Munro? Pretty much Lorrie Moore's own favourite writer.

i read a lot of de man pre-disgrace and got a lot from it, abt ultra-close readings which reveal that the surface argument is undermined by internal assumed but unarticulated arguments (which is handy practice when yr an editor) -- i shd probably reread allegories of reading, to see how still on-board i am. at the time of the disgrace i convinced myself his US career was him working to make up for who he had been (not atonement bcz that would obviously need public admission and acknowledgment)

the edition i have of blindness and insight does something i've only ever seen in fiction or poetry otherwise: different essays are run in different typefaces, not as far as i can tell for any aesthetic purpose, just bcz they could be bothered to decide on a unified look

like all strong fabulators pdm is potentially someone we could learn a lot from, assuming you believe you know when he is not fabulating -- and would also make a good character in a book, assuming you don't lean too hard on moralistic gotchas (always hard to do when nazis and their collaborators are involved)

s/b could not be bothered

(what abt allegories of writing eh?)

The Penguin Book Of Japanese Short Stories.

>>> the edition i have of blindness and insight does something i've only ever seen in fiction or poetry otherwise: different essays are run in different typefaces, not as far as i can tell for any aesthetic purpose, just bcz they could be bothered to decide on a unified look

Interesting!

>>> and would also make a good character in a book

Surely this happened -- John Banville for instance wrote an odious-sounding book about a version of him, called SHROUD. Sounds very typical Banville.

I'm rereading Stafford's The Mountain Goat and started Robert Elder's new John Calhoun bio.

i will bring B&I to an ILB FAP if such an event ever takes place again!

done well PdM would make a good character, done by banville not so much tbh lol -- but yes, i imagine more than one novelist has already borrowed versions of him for inspiration

THE MOUNTAIN ... LION?

I like how everyone on ILB (except me, I'm afraid) has set about reading that book.

Lion, of course. Can't stop thinking about aerosmith

After a failed attempt 10yrs ago, finished Saramago's Baltasar and Blimunda last night and still feel under its spell this morning. Wish I'd gotten to it sooner, during the scarier days of the pandemic. His macro/micro sense of scale, the sweep of human lives bobbing along the tide of history, was a comforting perspective to be immersed in right now.

That's a great one, all right.

I recently finished Kelly Link's story collection, Get In Trouble, and it wasn't really for me, and am following that up with another story collection by an author that's often compared to K Link, Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado, and am kind of loving it. It's kind of funny how a certain kind of stylistic eccentricity can fall flat but a similar one can totally hit the mark when it's weird and absurd in just the right way. Currently I'm in the middle of the story that's composed of Law and Order SVU synopses, which is not a conceit that attracted me, but it's just so engrossing.

Machado is great, I teach 'Especially Heinous' to my students every chance I get...often at the same time as Link's 'Stone Animals.'

It's funny, I've grown to like Link a bit better than Machado, though, if only because Machado's stories are so much more tied together and 'neat,' whereas Link's rely on ambiguity and readerly attention, imho, which is a quality I admire much more.

The PdM issue seems somewhat complicated to me, I actually didn't know anything about it until reading up on it because of this thread. (I've never read him, probably because he fell out of favor for obvious reasons!)

What do we make of philosophers and thinkers whose contributions and insights into literature are invaluable, but who were also inarguably awful? Is it utter shit that I still find parts of Heidegger valuable? What about Black and Jewish writers who still study and quote Carl Schmitt? Mbembe, one of our foremost African scholars and post-colonial thinkers, utilizes ideas from Schmitt extensively in many of his works, alongside Fanon and any number of others— is he wrong to do so? I'm not sure! I know it's an old question, of course, but one that still troubles me.

For example, I read Nick Land before I knew about his turn toward fascism. His early writings, particularly on Kant, gave me insights and understanding into the latter's work that I'd never been able to access before. That said, I keep my copy of 'Fanged Noumena' hidden in a box, alongside my copy of the Pisan Cantos and a few stray Heidegger texts.

Anyway, not trying to derail, but interested in how others think around this issue— point me toward a thread if there is one!

Curiously I was thinking about this perennial question earlier today. I was thinking about how disgusted I am, even many years later, remembering the proto-fascist passages in BRIDESHEAD REVISITED, but how I still probably couldn't write off the author for that (though I think that particular novel is execrable).

I don't think my view would be especially typical, but I think I'd now say something like:

Almost everyone in history can be found to be 'compromised' or bad in some way, so rather than writing them off for any given infraction I'd rather take what's good and leave what's bad.

I wouldn't read de Man, not because of the controversy, but because he seems dull and anaemic to me. Many will say I'm then just bad at seeing how great he is.

I wouldn't read Heidegger either - I don't get anything out of him whatever.

People don't like Philip Larkin for things he said. I would gladly read him. I like lots of his poems and think I understand what he is trying to say and how.

I find that I am now giving a bland and boring answer to a vast and perennial question. But I think I would stand by my starting point: that you should read stuff that you get something out of, and discard what you don't like in it.

In some ways, I agree with you, Pinefox— the idea that artists, philosophers, or anyone else needs be a paragon of virtue and right thinking seems absurd to me. At the same time, I think it's fine to be uninterested in and even rejecting such figures outright if one sees fit to do so. I

One that I've talked about a lot with friends is Althusser— the manner in which we discuss ideology and interpellation would not even exist without his thinking. But he murdered his wife! He was, by many accounts, a vile person! How do we reconcile these facts? We can't just throw away our understandings that arrive from his thinking.

"Interpellation", I agree, he rather inserted (interpolated?) into discussion. I still use the word today for this and that, and might not do without him.

Having said that, I don't think that he has affected my sense of "ideology". I was never able to make much sense of his idea of it. I would say that most of the senses of it that I have found relevant probably existed before his did.

It occurs to me that the dilemma of "I like X, but I shouldn't because they did Y" may be less common than the more convenient formula "I dislike X, which makes sense, because they did Y". This might imply that "ideological disapproval", or whatever, is often happily in tune with what we want to feel about someone or something anyway. Maybe this is a guess.

Althusser's "murder" of his wife - again, oddly I was thinking about that only yesterday or so, and wondering if "murder" was even the word (not that it was good, whatever it was) -- my understanding is that it was spontaneous, almost accidental, in some kind of mania -- not a cold-blooded or premeditated murder; but goodness knows I don't want to look into it any more closely than I may already have done.

In any case I don't think that killing has much to do with the pros and cons of LA's thought -- almost all of which, of course, came earlier. I would suppose that it might be more logical to suspect that he was very mentally unstable during his major years as a philosopher, and that this could conceivably throw doubt on it. Though I suppose many will disagree with that view in turn.

But as I said, his work doesn't really do much for me anyway. Which is, as I said, convenient.

I feel like this is an entirely different conversation when it's about philosophers as opposed to writers of fiction, and that there are even more separate conversations about when an author has sins outside their work and when, as per pinefox and Brideshead Revisited, the evil is right there in the work.

Very true!

Again, didn't mean to derail.

#onethread, but I'd post thoughts on an ILB thread on the topic if you were to make one. I'm sure there's ILE ones already, but have a feeling those are best left unrevived.

yes apologies i am a known #onethread militant aka gemini flibbertigibbet w/o discipline or sense of boundaries

I might! Though might take me a minute.

Stafford's Complete Stories and Other Writings round-up from Library of America fucken finally upon us: in bookstores April 7, but supposedly you can get it sooner if order direct. It's Collected Stories, uncollected stories, and A Mother in History, comprised of visits (and travels, in the mental sense) with Marguerite Oswald. This incl. link to one of her milestones, "Children Are Bored on Sunday," with backstory:
https://loa.org/books/648-complete-stories-other-writings

Also essays.

I spent time with her collected stories three weeks ago, coincidentally, and was consistently underwhelmed.

Haven't read any of her stuff yet, but I found this writeup amusing: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/26/books/review-jean-stafford-library-america-boston-adventure-mountain-lion-catherine-wheel.html

Shuggie Bain: good but not great melodrama, couldn’t see what the fuss is about

A swim in the pond in the rain: not generally a big short story fan but I do like the Russians so I was optimistic about this. The analysis chapters were kind of sweet but mostly pretty uninteresting or superficial or mechanical. I think mainly I just don’t want to be in a classroom any more and the book is explicitly an adaptation of a class so I’ve only myself to blame.

Klara and the sun: enjoying this a lot so far. Usual Ishiguro unreliable narrator.

period was absolutely my favorite of the george miles cycle, maybe my favorite book i've ever read (been reading a lot of things that qualify for this lately, feels good). it is only 109 pages long and yet builds such a complex inner structure of interpenetrating realities that it feels endless

at a loss for what to read next

i see influx press are having an easter sale. Any recommendations?

starter for ten - i liked the idea of a book on minette de silva and her relationship between le corbusier. but i didn’t get beyond the first few chapters as it was Bad.

Attrib. by Eley Williams is one of my three or four favourite books that i’ve read in the last few years.

xp to the conversation about authors who are morally compromised people: I really liked Teju Cole's (lengthy, thoughtful) remarks about this in his recent appearance on Between the Covers, which I have reproduced here with timestamps:

We're all in the world and there's a very vanishingly small number of miscreants who are deserving of metaphorical or actual deletion. I think that's a small number. I think the much greater number is in a gray zone, and it becomes a question of saying:

1:54:54
"Whose work, at which moment, helps me with my own deeper project of humaning, of repair?" You have to have such a deep respect for that project that you will use whatever helps you do it better. That's my attitude to a lot of artists, including those who have done harm.

It's not a blanket thing and it's not an easily arrived at thing and I'm even wary of getting to name specific people; because the person whose work I think has some aspect that allows me to strengthen my own ethical commitments in the world, even if the person has done some other harm that is not present inside that specific aspect of their work -- that person could be somebody who is actively doing harm to somebody else. Or to somebody else, that person is: "No way, no how, not this guy, not this woman, not this person." Because they don't need it that way. And vice-versa: There are other people whose stuff, it's like, You know what? I like your work well enough, but then on top of all of this...? Actually there's plenty in the world, I don't really need to mess with that, I don't need to be inside that space.

I think these matters invite a great deal of public grandstanding, but ultimately, each person decides for themselves what difficulties they are willing to-- absolutely not overlook, but what difficulties fail to obliterate the VALUE of certain aspects of a person's work.

The world is actually not divided between the innocent and the evil. The world is for the most part people who have gotten lots of things right; and people -- the same people -- have gotten lots of things wrong, for reasons of their own personality, egregious errors they've made, the societies in which they live, their own lack of courage.

1:58:30
That is absolutely true of those of us in our generation as well, particularly from the point of view of coming generations. They are going to ask us how we could sit there complacently, while China incarcerated more than a million people and forced them to labor and killed untold numbers simply because they were suspected of having a faith that the Chinese leadership does not like. The future will look at us and say: "And you guys just filled your houses with Chinese-made goods? That was fine by you, apparently." In comparison to that, Louise Gluck's admittedly bad speech will come to look like a complete trifle, compared to some of our own staggering, staggering blind spots.

Haha, I disagree with A LOT of the excerpted above but best wait for an actual thread.

Finished JLB's the Aleph collection that included The Maker. It was great, though certain stories have more sticking power than others. He's weird because on one hand he's Lovecraft adjacent (though obviously a much finer writer) and on the other he's a pre-postmodernist. You can see how influential he was on a host of authors from the 60s on.

Where would I go next with him? Fictions?

Fictions is awesome, yeah.

I'd say both the Lovecraft adjacency and the pomo are aspects of the same thing: dude was a bit of an autodictact and as such consumed literature without any high-low genre-literary prejudices; that's a pretty cliched stance in 2021 but for his time he was pretty unique.

all the books I’ve read and finished so far this year:

Alan Hollinghurst - The Swimming-Pool Library
Stefan Zweig - Letter from an Unknown Woman and Other Stories
Alba de Céspedes - Remorse
Mikhail Lermontov - A Hero of Our Time
Ousmane Sembène - God’s Bits of Wood
Gesualdo Bufalino - Night’s Lies
Amitav Ghosh - River of Smoke
Amitav Ghosh - Flood of Fire

The de Céspedes book might be my favorite so far. Sadly, none of her English-translated books are in print, and her other books are tough to find if you’re trying to avoid the Amazon juggernaut.

Do you use Bookfinder, dr? I know it's owned by Amazon but at least there you get some options that aren't.

I'd say both the Lovecraft adjacency and the pomo are aspects of the same thing: dude was a bit of an autodictact and as such consumed literature without any high-low genre-literary prejudices; that's a pretty cliched stance in 2021 but for his time he was pretty unique.

Yeah, that is one of Pynchon's calling cards, but its interesting seeing a writer doing that in a pre-postmodern time 30 years earlier.

Fizzles: of the ones I’ve read and you havent mentioned I’d recommend Built on Sand by Paul Scraton- expat life in Berlin, rather moving iirc - and the Percival Everitt “I Am Not Sidney Poitier” which is angry and funny. You could probably have my copy of either of those, mind.

I think Hold Tight is the best thing I’ll read about grime. “How The Light Gets In” is slight and fragmentary but cracks that scabby ruin feeling of hung-over self loathing very well, while not really being about hung over self loathing.

I want to read the Scovell with the rose window on the front and I have a feeling that the one about Car Parks might be a laugh.

I finished the collection "Early Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald". These stories are taken from the years 1917-1922, so from his Princeton days to stories he wrote after his initial fame from "This Side of Paradise". There is some overlap with the 1922 collection "Tales of the Jazz Age". It seems he appeared on the scene with precocious style, narrative talent and psychological insight (he wrote all of these in his 20s). Many stories are about fleeting though vivid moments of extreme happiness followed by a long twilight of accumulating disappointments large and small. Interestingly this seems to prefigure the arc of his career. His trademark themes of class, sex, money and the undercurrent of tragedy are already present in many stories, but there is also quite a range here, from screwball comedy to gothic drama, satire and proto-noir.

Read a lot of scattered poetry this week, including some John Weiners and Jack Spicer, as well as two new-ish JH Prynne chapbooks.

Started "To the Lighthouse" by Virginia Woolf. I was assigned in once for a college humanities course once but only skimmed it, for the most part, and bounced off the long and winding sentences. God knows how I managed to say anything intelligent-sounding about it in the discussion section. Still not an easy read, but managing to digest most of it this time around.

Forging ahead to Bloomsday.

― the pinefox
Have you ever taken the Bloomsday tour? I'd like to, if it's good.

Which also provides a good reminder that a summer 'what are you reading' thread is in order.

I needed something propulsive and comforting, so I'm on what is becoming my biennial re-reading of Jonathan Raban's Coasting. Raban is best when he's running from something (which is most of the time) and here he's trying and failing to escape the gravitational field of the UK as he spends four years orbiting the main islands in his boat. Like lots of boys of his generation, there's a sense that Raban is always dealing with the trauma of boarding school and the boat becomes a little like an extension of that milieu - down to the library he assembles the and gross figurehead of Thatcher he puts up in the galley.

I'd forgotten that he meets Paul Theroux halfway round. Theroux is writing his own 'what's Britain really like?' book (The Kingdom By the Sea) and it's a weird and intense meeting, neither wanting to reveal too much. (I forget if Theroux mentions Raban in his book. I'd assume not.) There's a also a cute meeting with Larkin in Hull.

Anyway, I always come for the descriptions of the sea and the dreams of escape; there are few who do those better than Raban.

We discussed TO THE LIGHTHOUSE here a year or two ago, but I'll just repeat the view, both my own and fairly standard, that it's a magnificent masterpiece.

I don't know if there is one 'Bloomsday Tour' but I have extensively visited the Dublin locations of Ulysses, on Bloomsday and other days.

I've heard of that book before, Chinaski - it sounds remarkable, especially the Larkin episode which I didn't know about.

We have a summer thread now, thanks to dow:

Buffalo Moon, What Are You Reading In The Summer Of 2021?