Bonfires In The Sky: What Are You Reading, Winter 2021-22?

Back to Brecht on Caesar.

Earthlings, Sayaka Murata - As in Convenience Store Woman, the protagonist of this is a woman confused and frustrated by society's insistence on trying to force her into a life trajectory, in terms of career advancement and marriage. But society is considerably more scarring here - the protagonist is subjected to emotional and sexual abuse - and fittingly her attempts to escape its clutches are far more radical. Things get really grotesque by the ending, which could be Murata reacting to CSW's international best seller status by going "oh yeah? well see if you can enjoy THIS", though of course there's also a long tradition of this kind of grotesquerie in Japanese literature (Tanezaki) and cinema (Takashi Miike could do the film version). A hell of a trip, either way.

Captains Of The Sands, Jorge Amado - Amado kept showing up in my end of year polls and considering that I've read almost no Brazilian literature I figured I should at least dip my toe into its biggest beast. These are chronicles of the lives of a group of homeless kid criminals in Bahia; considering it was written in 1937, I'm surprised by how hard edged and explicit it gets, totally in line with modern films on the subject like Pixote. As in that film, there are clear references to homosexuality, and while it is portrayed as a vice, it's just another one that the kids indulge in alongside purse snatching, knife fights, etc. and justified along the same "society is to blame" lines. It's pretty amusing/depressing that when the (well intentioned, inefficient) priest tries to get the kids to stop engaging in buggery on moral grounds they just laugh at him but when he changes tacks and says that it is "womanly and not worthy of a grown man" the leader immediately forbids it. Also always fascinated by the fluidity of religion in Brazil - some of the kids are catholic, some believe in African orishas, some combine the two integrating European saints into an African pantheon. I'm about two thirds in, right now a pandemic has hit Bahia (inescapable!), and it is described as an African god unleashing his wrath on the rich inhabitants of the city, but alas they are vaccinated, how could the god have known of that? And so the plague hits the shanty towns instead.

Janet Malcolm - In the Freud Archives.

i read clark coolidge's 'the crystal text' a couple of years ago which i liked a lot. i should read more. i have a copy of a book of his called 'space' that looks good

i got andrew durbin's 'skyland' for christmas and managed to read most of it at my in-laws while they watched rugby and then finished it the other day. very enjoyable little book - perhaps it has some of the issues in contemporary fiction that i usually don't care for - blankness of the protagonist and their relationship to place, history, nature - but this was breezy enough to get away with them and with just enough grit in there to offset some of its more indulgent sections (the basic plot is the protagonist goes to a remote greek island in search of a portrait - which might not exist - of hervé guibert)

i also got the duras collection 'me and other writing' which i've only dipped into, and don mee choi 'hardly war', which i haven't quite been in the mood for yet

i finished alison rumfitt's 'tell me i'm worthless' and i can't understand all the plaudits this is getting (i've seen people calling it a state of the nation novel about britain, or about england specifically - i mean, everyone knows england is terrible, i don't need to read a novel to tell me that, or at least i felt like this novel never got much beyond just telling me it's terrible). a lot of it seemed sloppily written and uneven, some appealing moments and some insight, but overall a miss for me

Coolidge is a GOAT as far as I'm concerned...

I like Andrew but think his writing is meh.

"i also got the duras collection 'me and other writing' which i've only dipped into"

This looks fantastic!

8 Detectives,Alex Pavesi. The premise being that in the 1930's a mathematician wrote a book of short stories hiding within them the simple rules that all crime stories follow. Then he disappeared. ffwd to the 1960's and an editor revisits them and thinks they contain clues to a real unsolved murder. the problem I'm having so far is that the short stories as revealed, and then critiqued as paired chapters seem unremarkable and mundane. So far they're all pretty crap, but I'm not sure if that is intentional or not and if the greater mystery will hold more interest. I will finish it, but for now someone has put in a request for one of my other library books so had to get cracking on that.

The Woman In The Purple Skirt, Natsuko Imamura. Now this is more like it, 50 pages in a and rattling along, have no idea where it's going, though presumably it's somewhere other than an remarkably odd case of stalking.

George Schuyler Black No More
Got this today because of a lack of communication with a librarian I was trying to get teo renew a couple of books I had rebewed too often to get renewed online.
I'd listened to a Backlisted on the book a few weeks back and ordered it as an interlibrary loan.
A satire on teh subject opf race by a maverick contemporary of the Harlem Renaissance . It has a basic premise that is inherently racist so has a transgressive nature of did he really go there and yes he did.
Actually set up seems to be a black ne'er do well gets stricken by a racist white woman who turns him down flat when he asks her to dance so he goes off and guinea pigs a new cosmetic technique where he becomes a caucasian.
I've read the first couple of chapters which are quite compelling, writing is pretty good.

bell hooks Sisters of teh Yam
Taking care fo oneself as part of an activist lifestyle.
Looking at the influences on a black female activist at the time>
I'm finding hooks to be a really interesting read. & keep wondering what I was doing at the time these things were coming out and if I knew anybdoy who was actually reading her at the time of release. 2005 I was getting involved in the ShellTosea campaign which was largely white outside of me. But I think this was not exactly an early book by her.
Finding I can read her pretty quickly but am trying to read as much of her as I can.

A Little Life has a new cover judging by the copies that arrived in store this week, and it is without doubt the worst cover I have ever seen whilst at the same time being an incredibly on the nose assessment of the novel therein.

just finished the long secret. beth ellen is the best character ever

and Mama Jenkins!

scene on the beach with the fried chicken + fanning herself with Bible

Finished House of Mirth, but have nothing to add to what I already said. I just started Blues, by John Hershey (who also wrote Hiroshima and A Bell For Adano). It consists of a series of dialogues about fishing and is transparently modeled upon Isaak Walton's Compleat Angler, right down to the highly artificial language of the interlocutors, who are named Fisherman and Stranger, instead of Piscator and Viator. The tone hovers between pleasantry and pedantry, but the latter tends to overpower the former. Luckily it is short and offers me a change from Yet Another Novel.

Wharton is an all-timer. I'm afraid to re-read it for fear of hyperventlating.

The back cover of my Penguin edition calls House of Mirth "a black comedy", which I think completely misreads it. Maybe someone thought the title was meant to convey that message to the reader. Wrong!

My current book is Paradise Reclaimed, Halldor Laxness, an author I've greatly enjoyed for the most part. So far this one features much drily humorous dialogue and definitely qualifies as a comic novel. However, this being Icelandic literature, there's bound to be a large measure of darkness interlaced with the humor.

Just finished the Anita Loos anthology of the 2 lorelei Lee /Dorothy books . Wasn't sure if I was gooing to go through Gentlemen Marry brunetes cos iI don't think it's as good as Blondes. Then had it in my hand in bed this morning so went through it.
They're bot pretty light reads but I do think they are pretty funny especially Blondes.
Would love to read teh memoirs even if tehy are like 40 years later, I think Loos has a lot of style.

Been reading several books at the same time like reada chapter or 2 put the book down read a chapter or 2 and then change over again.
Spending a coupl eof hours before I go to sleep and again when I wake. Maybe lie down in the middle of the day cos I've been feeling lousy for weeks, did just get a negative covid test this weekend.

Also still reading Cruel Britannina by Ian Cobain
history of Torture in teh Uk since teh 2nd world war. Now on renidtion and outsourcing.
Quite interesting, might read some more on the subject

The History of The White People Nell Irvin Painter
Black female author traces the idea of race back to the classical world and follows it up to th epresent day. So farr I think I'm still in Rome./ Interesting to hear this week's Media-Eval podcast to hear that there is a supposedly somewaht popular rumour that the Roman Empi9re was invented by the church in the 15th centyury. This weeks episode showed teh flaws in this idea , kind of interesting to have it so destroyed i guess.
But thsi book by Painter is really interesting.

Back To Black Kehinde Andrews
One of his earlier books that he wrote New Age of Empire asa bit of a prequel to.
Currently reading about Pana Africanism and the West Indies.

Black No more George Schuyler
Satirical work by 30s black author about a process taht allows black to become white and what the ensuing chaos would be. p[retty transgressive i guess, Definitely funny.

Of One Blood Pauline Hopkins
early 20th century science/speculative fiction by black female writer positing the discovery of a high tec black civilisation that has lain underground for centuries. Like a proto Wakanda .
Part of a great anthology of Black Science Fiction that has a lot of early stuff as well as much more recent. Wil grab this if i get a chance to get my own copy. One of teh Flame Tree Collection anthologies.

The iNconvenient Indian THomas King
Canadian novelist looks into the relationshgip between settler colonial power and teh indigenous peoples that were there when they originally arrived,. He's looked at teh way that the indigenous are represented in various media. I had no idea that Will Rogers was an Indian just one taht didn't look the way that White society wanted to look at Indians, while tehy did seem to be happy to have him portray a cowboy.
It's a good read and one i had recommended in a few places.

Finished Prynne's collection of wisdom, "Apophthegms," and today will finish Kate Soper's 'Post-Growth Living,' with which I have some serious issues, but is provocative and interesting nonetheless. Also dipped my toe into Frank Kuenstler's "LENS," a vanishingly rare book that is dense and playful and which I don't think I'll ever really "finish," since its structure sort of defies easy front-to-back reading

Fave scene in Long Secret was at the nightclub, when Harriet’s mum discovers the ex-girlfriend isn’t quite the foe she imagined. Also HTS having “the worst goodreads page of all time” as mentioned is very otm but

Ignore my but

I finished Bertolt Brecht's THE BUSINESS AFFAIRS OF MR JULIUS CAESAR.

A historical novel, written c. late 1930s, about Caesar's rise to power in Ancient Rome. It's only about 2/3 finished with BB's notes indicating what else it would have said (a bit like reading Fitzgerald's for THE LAST TYCOON). The work is very incongruous in a way, that BB in flight from fascism should devote so much time to such a detailed account of an ancient period. Yet, as the editor is keen to say, one assumes that it had contemporary resonance with him - not that one can see direct parallels with the Third Reich in the novel as it stands.

The formal construction of the novel is noteworthy. It's framed by a biographer, 20 or 30 years later, researching Caesar's life -- so, a kind of CITIZEN KANE approach, which you might also liken to Conrad (embedded narrators). A couple of interviewees reminisce about Caesar, but most of the narrative comes from the biographer's reading of the diaries of a slave who was also somehow senior in Caesar's household. I suppose this resembles, say ... the discovery and inclusion of the diaries in THE SWIMMING POOL LIBRARY - and there must be innumerable other such cases where a document is embedded in this way.

The slave's narrative is curious, almost literally queer, as it contains much angst over his relations with his male lovers. The only extensive treatment of homosexuality in the whole of Brecht? - and treated totally matter-of-factly.

The overall effect is 'revisionist', turning a great man into a more sceptically observed figure - primarily by emphasising 'business', seeing everything in terms of finance. Politics, law, military, empire, all here are financialised. Yet it doesn't exactly debunk Caesar entirely, rather showing him to be an operator, an extraordinarily fluid, chameleon figure who can alternate between high politics, demagogic rhetoric to please a rebellious crowd, or a military campaign. He's an immensely talented politician, I suppose. I was reminded of Tony Blair. He's not necessarily diminished by the narrative (depending how big he was to start with), but is seen in very material and contingent settings.

There is an argument that the book overlaps slightly with Walter Benjamin's thought of the time, eg: his use of the image of the Roman Triumph (procession) in his 1940 Theses - the Triumph is also a key theme in the later pages of this book.

Interesting. From my reading of Roman history I'd say Julius Caesar saw no difference between the political, military and financial aspects of his career. He would have viewed all of them as thoroughly intertwined and equally necessary components in his personal pursuit of power.

Captains Of The Sands, Jorge Amado

This sounds pretty interesting. I'll check it out.

Since my last update I finished "The Friend" by Sigrid Nunez. I thought the beginning and ending were strong, but in the middle it kind of drifts. The middle section is a bit like Nicholson Baker's "The Anthologist" in terms of lack of plot motion, but somehow it doesn't feel as free-flowing and natural. The ending is a nice little formal twist that causes you to reinterpret everything up to that point. After that book, I read "Fog" by Miguel de Unamuno. Most of the book is kind of a romantic farce/philosophical joke, with an older, wealthy, educated, but comically naive anti-hero falling for a rather more shrewd young piano teacher. The book's sense of humor reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut. The ending brings Unamuno's more morbid preoccupations to the fore in a somewhat jarring but memorable way. I've started off 2022 by attacking the longest book in my to-read pile: "Living in the End Times" by Slavoj Zizek. So far, so good.

I thought I'd warm up a bleak Sunday with the fourth of Derek Raymond's Factory novels, I Was Dora Suarez.

For anyone that doesn't know, the Factory novels are a series of neo-noirs set in the cesspit of Thatcher's Britain and fucking hell are they scabrous and bleak - and Dora Suarez is at another level entirely in terms of the violence and depravity on display. I think it's debatable as to whether Raymond goes too far with the graphic descriptions of murder and debasement but there's no denying the gut punch of the book or the odd, almost Old-Testament fire of his avenging nameless detective.

I only remember Ken Bruen talking him up so I figured it must be something like that.

I'm plodding through The Corner that Held Them but I'm afraid I haven't been transported into its world. The nuns are interchangeable, I can't picture what they look like, whether they are tall or short, thin or fat, even how old they are, and I can't feel for any of their cares or concerns, even when they were half dying of the plague. I can't even picture the landscape despite being more familiar with Norfolk than I would like. I guess I'm just about interested enough to not abandon it, and despite not connecting with it the writing is fine, being strangely fond of geese I liked it when one character was described as being as clumsy and majestic as a goose.

Dora Suarez has been on my dad's bookshelf since the 80s and I've always been curious, sounds like a fun summer book.

I felt similarly about TCTHT - like one of those meals where every bite tastes the same. One of those books I enjoyed, and you could probably pick a page at random and find something spectacular, but I put it down mid-way because I felt like I had the gist to the point of punishment.

first book of the year, which I hope to finish either today or tomorrow, is Wollstonecraft Shelley's The Last Man, which is a future-plague novel (though the future resembles the 19c in almost every respect). The plague doesn't show up until the midway point, which is an interesting decision -- I think the idea was to establish the glories of the world about to be depopulated and degraded, but she rises to her talents so conspicuously as soon as there's devastation to be detailed that it's hard not to say "what this book needs is more plague"

the paragraphs about how people really didn't figure they'd be the ones to get sick are, y'know, kinda hard to read tbh

I was thinking there was a tie in with Dora Suarez and Gallon Drunk. They released an lp called I Am Dora Suarez and then it looks like james Johnston did a spoken word thing with the author and Terry Edwards

Ledge, Sir Ralph and some of the now-minor nuns become very important and interesting as you move through.

xpost, yeah, all the ongoing intrigues, dreams, wars, everything just---fades away--and The Last Man is walking around, as everywhere becomes nowhere, maybe...not as much a philosophical concern as being in shock, maybe? Passing beyond words, precedents, mile markers of Europe and Reality, his own kind of Grand Tour---

Roots, Radicals & Rockers, Billy Bragg's reportedly very exhaustively researched history of Skiffle.

About two-thirds into Paradise Reclaimed and it has certainly evolved into something far more complex and mythic than a comic novel, while still retaining its wry outlook. This stuff is why I love Laxness.

Just finished Lolita, and was impressed by how the momentum of Kubrick's simplified movie plotting also and first drove through the ever-fertile, multiplying details of first-person narrator Humbert Humbert's looping obsessions, incl. observations and all other personal histories, now becoming a closed circuit in his final testimony, celebration and too-late remorse, as the penny, having occasionally dropped, becomes something he can't shake lose---but, when it's finally published, only when they're both dead---which he ultimately visualize as in the far, ethereal, finally fittingly high-class, European-style future, far from wild-at-best/most useless to him, though usually seedy, sometimes poignant America (he's acknowledged he knows better, but this is one last flight of mad cultivated outsider arty magical thinking).
I do think his badness came across unmistakably in the film anyway, also that Delores, as in the novel, eventually became one of the sanest characters, in terms of officially acceptable rational self-interest: contacts him one last time, only because needs money for husband's decided-on relocation of growing family (she is "hugely pregnant," Humbert can't fail to tell), for better prospects. But the film does leave out most, not all, of her earlier moments of seeming utterly lost, draining into visible resignation in at least one image that novel Humbert can't shake (there's one instance of the stuck penny), in between tantrums and zings and mood swings.
Movie and book also both (though necessarily more implicit in former, like so much else, re censorship) led me to the thought that her rational self-interest, expressed through risky contact, implying some desperation as well as boldness and calculation, comes from being groomed by and observing Quilty and Humbert, both very organized around and feeding the through-line of pursuit and possession, more than/over and around moments of gratification---it's all about The Big Picture, to use the title of an informative Tv series of that era.
The book would be unbearable without this drive, riding in and peering out of Humbert's head.

Ok, I can’t parse this at all, is this book or film or what? Both?

Also, I would like to hear you explain more about “rational self-interest” as this is not really what I took from it, at all.

(Movie should have had a super at the end revealing her end, as it does his, cause makes it look like she came through all that, and she's gonna be fine, or at least survive, however messed up she might prove to be [in the novel, Humbert sees that the 17-year-old expectant wife is already starting to remind him of her messed-up mom]: like, what happened to her was not so bad after all---might be the possible interp which censorship inadvertently left the door open for, once again also inviting a kind of perv justification, as has happened before and since)(Kubrick has been quoted as saying he might not have made the thing if he'd known how hampered he'd be by this kind official meddling, but it does gain by not spelling so many things out, incl. some of the novel's scenic plotting x commentenary does seem to go way too far into the weeds, whenever the erudite emigre author's shadowing of his narrator veers toward imitative fallacy of compulsive density, though not fatally)

I'm comparing book and movie. "Rational" in terms of I need stability, I need this young husband who is interested in a better life for both of us and our child, I need money for this kind of stability, Humbert bribed me on the occasions when I made him think he had to, I think he may give me money again. but I won't let him have his way with me this time (though he does succeed in financially motivating her to tell him about her disappearance, also backstory of that and what happened between then and now, which disclosures she first refuses: consciously or not, she also succeeds, much more than she ever did as his stubborn sex-slave--though the mutual success of the last transaction leads to the end of both characters, at least in the book.)

He would likely die of a heart attack either way, but otherwise not in prison, with this book his only outlet.

I just now finished the novel, so comparing how it seemed to having watched the movie.

the momentum of Kubrick's simplified movie plotting also and first drove through the ever-fertile movie camera as "third person," novel's narration first person, gyac.

Right ok, I didn’t understand the relevance of discussing one of the adaptations itt.

you're really a barrel of fucking laughs, aren't you, gyac.

Sorry I might have opinions about my favourite book?

Sorry I was confusing. What's your take on the novel?

In any case I did drop and leave this thread pet snippily (concerned with trivial matters like the husband potentially having pneumonia, you know).

I don’t find the rational self-interest point one that really strikes a chord with me tbh. It’s because I think the whole construct is really dependent on the veil being pulled over the eyes of the reader through Humbert’s narration, the part where the teacher tells HH that Dolores is “immature” for her age and implies that she’s developmentally stunted for reasons we the readers know…that is not a child acting with agency in any sense of the word apart from the clumsiest sort of self protection.

I haven’t seen the Kubrick adaptation for a long long time, hated the Adrian Lyne one because it seemed to me that that adaptation focused on the wrong interpretation of Lolita and was overly sympathetic to HH, but again, I haven’t seen that one in about fifteen years.

It’s not uncommon for people who have been abused to keep in touch with their families or even to still love them in a fashion, so I guess that’s why your explanation sort of pulled me up short - I didn’t even understand it as something worth particularly noting.

xpost, yeah, all the ongoing intrigues, dreams, wars, everything just---fades away--and The Last Man is walking around, as everywhere becomes nowhere, maybe

it's honestly incredible -- a super-modern effect, after the very VERY 19c vibe of all the preceding 1/2 of the book

Sorry I was confusing. What's your take on the novel?

Yeah, I should have been careful with that. The rational self-interest bit just applies to when she finally writes to him and he goes to see her, how she comes across via his perception and retrospective account in his manuscript.

"Rational" in terms of risky, limited options.

Myaybe I shouldn't have used Ayn Rand's favorite term, speaking of the 50s! But it fits, in limited way.