Sounds good!OMG xpost Hickey now pre-channeling Gilead, still ca. '69 or so---I promise not to live-blog story by story (maybe)
― dow, Saturday, 11 December 2021 19:05 (two years ago) link
re Family and Friends
Elena Lazic@elazicWow. Brookner’s acerbic view of human nature never feels exaggerated, but the scale here makes her brutally perceptive remarks seem more grounded. Characters are shaped both by crucial moments, and by habits they mindlessly slip into over time. Brutal and a perverse joy to read. True?
― dow, Monday, 13 December 2021 02:23 (two years ago) link
Finished Mark Francis Johnson's 'Poor Fridge,' without a doubt his best and most devastating book of poems yet. Now onto his 'Treatise on Luck,' which is an earlier and much more wildly experimental work. He's a poet who's built a world for his poetry to inhabit, but which we never get a full view of— instead, we're treated to glimpses, suggestions, and hints that we're in a future world very much like our own, but with a lot more water, as well as strange, baroque class relations...as well as a fair amount of 19th c. British poetry. Really weird, really interesting poet... and I'm not just saying that because he's a friend.
― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Monday, 13 December 2021 19:02 (two years ago) link
Bertolt Brecht: THE BUSINESS AFFAIRS OF MR JULIUS CAESAR.
― the pinefox, Tuesday, 14 December 2021 09:38 (two years ago) link
Would anyone like to recommend a book for me to give my sister? Looking for a female author published in 2020 or 2021. Her tastes skew dark, sardonic humor. Orphans, tragedy and art are areas of interest.
― ma dmac's fury road (PBKR), Tuesday, 14 December 2021 13:27 (two years ago) link
i haven't read a nicola barker since 2007's darkmans but she roughly fits that rubric (and i am sovereign came out in 2019)
plus there's an a.m.homes short story collection from 2018 (which i also haven't read lol): days of awe
― mark s, Tuesday, 14 December 2021 13:36 (two years ago) link
Read the first couple of chapters of Sister Carrie by Theodore Dresser last night after having had it sit around the flat for way too long. The prose is delicious and the observations even better
― Stevolende, Tuesday, 14 December 2021 15:02 (two years ago) link
That's interesting -- when I last read him Dreiser's prose struck me as his weakest strength. He excels at cohering a plot around situations as terrible and inevitable as breathing.
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 14 December 2021 15:04 (two years ago) link
i started 'the luminous novel' a while ago, got maybe a third through it. the misogyny is off-putting, there's a casual cruelty about it that i found unappealing. i liked the stuff about early 2000s computers and some other bits and pieces. i'll probably go back and finish it at some point, but i was a little disappointed with how torpid it was after i read some positive reviews of the translation
also read gwendoline riley, 'my phantoms', which i really enjoyed - brilliant portrait of a bloke (the protagonist's dad) who loves puns and bad jokes and nasty, hectoring behaviour in the early part of the novel, v much reminded me of [REDACTED] from my wife's family, and i liked the rest too
and the new sarah hall, 'burntcoat, which was ok. i know a lot of people rate her prose but to me its consistent, enervated luridness means everything hits at the same level and it becomes stew-like, glutinous.
i'm gearing up to read bernadette mayer, 'midwinter day', a true masterpiece. i read her book 'utopia' a while ago, very sad and beautiful
― dogs, Tuesday, 14 December 2021 15:24 (two years ago) link
Looking for a female author published in 2020 or 2021. Her tastes skew dark, sardonic humor.
Otessa Moshfegh? I haven't read "Death in Her Hands" but was published in 2020 and seems to fit the bill.
― o. nate, Tuesday, 14 December 2021 16:34 (two years ago) link
That or... Summerwater by Sarah Moss (sardonic tragedy), Second Place by Rachel Cusk (sardonic art)
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, 14 December 2021 16:38 (two years ago) link
Honjin Murders, japanese locked room mystery. told very conversationally. apparently there are 50+ more, almost all of them untranslated. (wikipedia: 77 total, 4 in english)
Anna of The Five Towns, was like gaskell but set in the potteries. would've like more pottery tbh. last page threw me for two separate reasons.
Slaughterhouse V reread.
― koogs, Tuesday, 14 December 2021 17:20 (two years ago) link
Thanks for the recommendations on Barker, Homes, Moshfegh, Moss, and Cusk. She's read several of Moshfegh but I don't think she liked the last one. Will check out the others.
― ma dmac's fury road (PBKR), Tuesday, 14 December 2021 17:51 (two years ago) link
Been a while, but I recall thinking the notorious Dreiser style was serviceable enough in xpost Sister Carrie, despite some outbursts of editorializing (and yeah the plotting seems inevitable and "O shit!" in equal measure). He was a newspaperman after all, got a lot of good material that way; also, while he was still on the farm, his older sisters would sometimes visit from Chicago Frontier Babylon, where they were set up by older men of means. Good descriptions of parts of Chicago as they still were 70-odd years later, when I visited, and still were in a Dreiser doc ca/ 2000, prob still are. I read this, w "shocking" bits restored, also Jennie Gerhardt, about kind of an alt.. bird-in-a-gilded-cage Carrie (not too stationary, a good social tracking device), and 12 Men, portraits: all three in an LoA omnibus. What else should I read by him?
― dow, Tuesday, 14 December 2021 18:19 (two years ago) link
Talking about journalists turned writer I listened to the current Backlisted yesterday which is about pete Dexter's book Deadwood. I listened thinking it had some tie in to the tv series but apparently at least nothing acknowledged. Sounds like something i need to read though.
As to what else you need to read by Dreiser i couldn't tell you it's taken me a few decades plus however long it's sat around teh flat to get this far. I think I may have had him cited as an influence on Kerouac back when I was reading up on things like that, him and Nathaniel West and the early 20th century Thomas Wolfe of Look, Homeward Angel fame. I thik i did read bits of both Nathaniel West and Thomas Wolfe in the late 80s. But probably need to revisist
― Stevolende, Tuesday, 14 December 2021 18:32 (two years ago) link
i'm gearing up to read bernadette mayer, 'midwinter day', a true masterpiece. i read her book 'utopia' a while ago, very sad and beautiful― dogs, Tuesday, December 14, 2021 7:24 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
― dogs, Tuesday, December 14, 2021 7:24 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
She's the absolute best, who are you, let's be friends.
― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Tuesday, 14 December 2021 20:48 (two years ago) link
I finished Treason by the Book, Jonathan Spence, about a peculiar set of events that revolved around a conspiracy during Qing dynasty China (ca. 1728-32). The multiplicity of characters and places involved, the level of details recounted, and the inescapable cultural strangeness of late imperial China for modern westerners, taken all together make this a difficult sort of book to read. Yet, its very foreignness is its central attraction.
The author understood how challenged his lay readers would be to enter this world and he did an admirable job of smoothing the difficulties as best he could. This is definitely a niche book that explores a curious byway of history. Not for everyone.
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Tuesday, 14 December 2021 20:50 (two years ago) link
Trying to decide what's next: a newish book by a friend, or a book by the odd experimental poet Hugh Tribbey, who publishes mainly through POD and obscure online journals, and seems to have spent his entire life in smalltown Oklahoma.
― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Tuesday, 14 December 2021 20:55 (two years ago) link
the turn of the screw (& other stories)
― no lime tangier, Wednesday, 15 December 2021 04:39 (two years ago) link
Several things bought and started.
Soldaten Sonke Neither & Harald Welzer the collection of German POW conversation showing their epistemology etc. Supposed to be pretty harrowing. Casual talk of killing civilians etc. Based on transcriptions made at the time.
Ngugi Weep Not ChildMy dad knew him from them lecturing at the University of Nairobi in the late 60s.Think I need to read a load of his work.It being good and all.
Also got another bell hooks out of the library.Sisters of the Yam.
― Stevolende, Wednesday, 15 December 2021 07:24 (two years ago) link
Also Arthur Miller Echoes Down Th e Corridora collection of essays spanning about 50 years I'm now in the late 80s/early 90s . he's worried about what teh meaning of German unification post the Berlin Wall coming down is going to mean after living at the time of teh holocaust, been with Harold Pinter at an ambassador's house where Pinter has wound up insulting the ambassador and had to leave and thinks the 2 should pair up to shake things up.Good collection of essays and it has taken me way too long to get through. I think I borrowed this late summer last year.I think I've just discovered a much longer set of his essays on the library system which I might look into. That and the rest of his prose, I like his writing.
Audrey lorde Anthology The Cancer Journalsbeen meaning to read her for a while. Hope i can get hold of a copy of this and another couple of her works cheaply. keeping my eyes peeled while i'm in charity shops and local remaindered ones etc
Still reading Another Tuneless Racket by Steven H GarnerJust read him talking about John Foxx era Ultravox! and interested in picking some up
― Stevolende, Wednesday, 15 December 2021 10:18 (two years ago) link
I've been reading Helen Dewitt's short story collection "Some Trick". I was looking for "Last Samurai" but this was the Dewitt they had at the library. Seems to be a mix of more recent work and some stories from her Oxford student days in the mid-80s. Some stories are more commercial (one was published in Harpers) and some more formally experimental. I generally skim a bit when she delves into post-structuralism, higher calculus, or breaks out the Latin or French, so I'm probably missing a bunch. The more commercial stories are fun - the pace is zippy, the tone knowing but playful. She writes a lot about authors or artists occupying a zone of semi-celebrity not unlike her own, and the gentle absurdities of dealing with publishers, fans, etc. who have a strong relationship to the work but in a very different way than the author.
― o. nate, Wednesday, 15 December 2021 15:54 (two years ago) link
Went with my friend Ted's book, 'AN ORANGE.' It is sort of an inheritor of the New York School---> New Narrative continuum of gossipy, philosophical work that is disarmingly casual while doing some very heavy lifting. I like it, tho it isn't "my thing" poetically.
― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Wednesday, 15 December 2021 17:33 (two years ago) link
Time Will Darken It by William Maxwell
― youn, Wednesday, 15 December 2021 21:18 (two years ago) link
the anomaly, herve le tellier
― mookieproof, Wednesday, 15 December 2021 21:21 (two years ago) link
Anna Kavan - IceGerald Stern's poems.
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 15 December 2021 21:30 (two years ago) link
― youn, Wednesday, December 15, 2021 4:18 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
i love this book!
― horseshoe, Wednesday, 15 December 2021 23:53 (two years ago) link
whats up table. i'm a bit of a poetry dilettante, but i love bernadette mayer. i've been making my way slowly through the complete ted berrigan this year too, spent a few pleasant weekend afternoons with a few beers and his poems
i have also started reading alison rumfitt, 'tell me i'm worthless', which i haven't found too much to like in yet, but it's early days, and i started james baldwin's 'another country', which is wonderful
i've been dipping in and out of 'intersecting lives', a joint biography of deleuze and guattari. i always thought guattari was the 'weird' one, but now i'm starting to think it was the other guy, deleuze
― dogs, Thursday, 16 December 2021 10:20 (two years ago) link
Deleuze? A weirdo? No way!
― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Thursday, 16 December 2021 20:49 (two years ago) link
Ha, anyway dogs, that's cool that you're into Bernadette's work and have been reading Berrigan. Do you dig Notley, Berrigan's wife at the time of his death? She's great, still alive, too. Here's one of her more famous ones: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50834/at-night-the-states
― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Thursday, 16 December 2021 20:50 (two years ago) link
I finished Ted Dodson's 'AN ORANGE,' and think I'm going to go with Hugh Tribbey's "EF Zero" next
― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Thursday, 16 December 2021 20:55 (two years ago) link
My next book is The High Window, Raymond Chandler. It was selected specifically to be easy reading, because I've been agitated and discouraged lately and I need something entertaining and soothing.
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Thursday, 16 December 2021 23:05 (two years ago) link
I think Backlisted did an episode on that one.
― Lily Dale, Friday, 17 December 2021 00:08 (two years ago) link
The High Window is the densest Chandler I think. The Backlisted episode is a good one.I'm reading Jo Ann Beard's The Boys of My Youth. Good enough to feel like I've read it before.
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Friday, 17 December 2021 20:42 (two years ago) link
Aimless, you might also try John D. MacDonald's The Empty Copper Sea: Travis McGee is trying to defend the good name of a friend or acquaintance, but gets as down on himself as he does the slow destruction of Florida by citizens-denizens, who seem as oblivious its and their own decline, for the most part: may be more neurotic than Marlowe, regarding himself as an over-qualified "beach bum," which can affect his behavior, uh-oh. Pretty entertaining.
― dow, Friday, 17 December 2021 21:18 (two years ago) link
as oblivious *to* their own decline (incl. ethical) I meant
― dow, Friday, 17 December 2021 21:21 (two years ago) link
can we talk about backlisted
― coombination gazza hut & scampo bell (wins), Friday, 17 December 2021 22:01 (two years ago) link
QI is a dismal product... miller really comes across as sort of a blowhard or two, like your nightmare of yourself down the pub (and I can't imagine wanting to look at any of his books)... & there is this clubbiness I can just barely stand, really the opposite of the alleged parasocial value of podcasts (I am glad I am NOT friends w these people!)
and yet I do like it a fair bit
― coombination gazza hut & scampo bell (wins), Friday, 17 December 2021 22:04 (two years ago) link
I basically agree with all of that. It's beyond parody - the clubbable enthusiasm, the lack of any sort of critical acumen, the endless line of posh voices presented as diversity - and I battle with myself for listening to it, but I've found lots of great things. I read The Year of Reading Dangerously so you don't have to.
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Friday, 17 December 2021 22:12 (two years ago) link
I'm reading Jo Ann Beard's The Boys of My Youth. Good enough to feel like I've read it before.
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Friday, December 17, 2021 1:42 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink
i bought a copy of this for my girlfriend as a christmas present, it is truly the greatest
― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Friday, 17 December 2021 22:14 (two years ago) link
xp yeah I think I'm just into hearing genuine enthusiasm about books bc I am somewhere between their critical largesse and the reflexive assumption that everything is shit you see elsewhere. also I've never been to an ilb fap. Just wish one time someone would yell "waterstones is a shit chain that doesnt pay a living wage" during one of their reveries
― coombination gazza hut & scampo bell (wins), Friday, 17 December 2021 22:25 (two years ago) link
Tried an EP of backlisted once and couldn't hate it enough but I find book people who just talk books and nothing else hard going.
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 17 December 2021 22:54 (two years ago) link
Chinaski and Brad, have you read The Fourth State of Matter, the essay by Beard?
― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Friday, 17 December 2021 23:25 (two years ago) link
If not get ready for a big gut punch. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/06/24/the-fourth-state-of-matter
― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Friday, 17 December 2021 23:26 (two years ago) link
Oh wait, it's in that book. Christ it's good.
― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Friday, 17 December 2021 23:27 (two years ago) link
If the rest of her writing even approaches that I should probably order a copy.
― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Friday, 17 December 2021 23:28 (two years ago) link
It's in the book Table and what led me to it. I swear I read about it on here but it might have been somewhere else. An extraordinary essay.
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Friday, 17 December 2021 23:29 (two years ago) link
Xp - yep!
i also bought the book bc the fourth state of matter blew my mind. it's all great
― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Friday, 17 December 2021 23:33 (two years ago) link
Also just finished the high window - quite dense but I find it easier-going than the big sleep (too chaotically plotted) and the long goodbye (one of my favourite books but a hard book to write straight through)
I’m an unqualified fan of backlisted and pay for their patreon (which includes an **even more sel-indulgent** free extra fortnightly podcast). I’m not blind to (or un-annoyed by) their cultural blind spots and chummy self-satisfaction as presenters, but I find them both very entertaining company, and they’ve led me to a lot of good books, just like ILB
― Chuck_Tatum, Saturday, 18 December 2021 00:28 (two years ago) link