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

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.

it's honestly incredible -- a super-modern effect, after the very VERY 19c vibe of all the preceding 1/2 of the book
I got this from her father's Caleb Williams too! Although that one has a fig leaf ain't-mad-at-the-class-system bit at very end, contrast actually just kind of enhancing what has come before, like screen version of The Magnificent Ambersons.

The conscientious young Caleb has unaccountably offended a gentleman, who won't let him leave the British Isle. which becomes very much like this big greasy rambly boarding house, and he can't figure out how to make amends.

Roma Agrawal Built
architect talks about the considerations for designing buildings. I first came across Ms Agrawal on the Xmas University Challenge series i think, wondered if she was the writer of Sway, then if she was related. i looked her up and saw she had a couple of books out then ordered thsi asan interlibrary loan. So far it is pretty fascinating. First chapter is talking about load and other forces that need to be chanelled through a building constructiion to make sure it remains upright. She starts from talkingf about an early 20th century situation where a bridge in Canada was built too heavy thereby putting even more pressure on itself to stand and wound up snapping and collapsing while still under construction.
So this seems to be a really good popular science book. I was looking for something that would explain a lot of this stuff i think.
Anyway, really good book so glad i came across it. Will probably look for her other one afterwards.

Carl Sagan Demon Haunted World
Famous scientist writes about teh popular misconceptions and folk devils he has to deal with. he starts by talking about his childhood and what influenced him there. Then starts the main book talking about a taxi ride with a conspiracy theorist taxi driver who enthusiastically comes up with a number of misconceptions about things like the existence of Atlantis and fun things like that. I'm still in the first chapter so not sure where else he's going at the moment. So9mebody was making a lot of references to this book in a podcast I was listening to a few months ago I think so hope this isn't the 2nd copy I've bought. Turned up for a couple of Euro in a local charity shop anyway. Have been trying to think which Podcast it was, possibly behind tHe bastards or one the presenter does.

The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution
Eric Foner

An authoritative history by the preeminent scholar of the Civil War era, The Second Founding traces the arc of the three foundational Reconstruction amendments from their origins in antebellum activism and adoption amidst intense postwar politics to their virtual nullification by narrow Supreme Court decisions and Jim Crow state laws. Today these amendments remain strong tools for achieving the American ideal of equality, if only we will take them up.

re the discussion above between poster gyac and poster dow:

I share gyac's tendency to bafflement here for, in my case, the very mundane reason that dow's posts tend to be written in a way that I cannot disentangle. They often don't seem to have paragraphs. They often seem to contain very long sentences which in turn contain abbreviations or personal code.

It's possible that poster dow is a brilliantly insightful reader of literature but that this does not come through to me, because of my difficulty with this poster's way of formatting their thoughts on screen.

Like most readers, btw, I think that LOLITA is a masterpiece; though I think that I wouldn't relish reading it again now.

Having finished Brecht, I returned to Alasdair Gray's UNLIKELY STORIES, MOSTLY (c.1983, but this is an edition from c.1997). I have owned this book for well over 15 years, have read the two major novels either side of it, yet had never really made the effort with most of these stories. This proves an odd omission, for the first few stories are very short and thus easy to finish. Gray here is in a mode of the fantastic, fabulous and darkly allegorical. Longer stories await later in the book.

Lanark has been sitting in my library, unread, for about 10 years.

It's long and dense and often dour! It's frankly not easy to get through - I'm inclined to say.

It's a book that I feel very glad to have read, but I wouldn't particularly want to face the task of reading it for the first time.

Yet I'm sure that many readers find it easy and rewarding. It may be a sign of my own limits that LANARK seems tough going for me.

Like most readers, btw, I think that LOLITA is a masterpiece; though I think that I wouldn't relish reading it again now. Me neither. That's why I was relieved to discover, right away that the book had the momentum, the drive, of the film, right from the beginning
Without the momentum, it might be an unbearable read---it's already claustrophobic enough, being in narrator Humbert's head like that, but he's hellbent on giving us the Grand Tour of his heart, like George Jones, so things never get too dense for too long, though there are so many impressions of people, places, things, some of them nearly interchangeable, except that's part of the author's effect: Humbert struggling through the sea of faces, in his purpose-driven life. (But what the hell was Nabokov's purpose in all that with Rita?)

Speaking of drive, wonder if anybody has ever compared these views of pre-Insterstate America with the ones in On The Road? Wonder what Kerouac thought of this book, if anything. He might have enjoyed all the French (in which he wrote some pre-fame novels, fairly recently published for the first time, I think.)
If you have any questions about what I was trying to say, pinefox, anybody, let me know thx.

I agree, poster Dow, about the claustrophobia, and the parallel with ON THE ROAD.

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.

― oscar bravo, Tuesday, January 4, 2022 5:32 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

8 Detectives Turns out there was a reason the short stories were dull, not a good enough reason for the pay off to be anything other than mundane and derivative unfortunately.

The Woman In The Purple Skirt was absorbing and didn't really go where i was expecting it to go or anywhere really but not sure that's a bad thing. disquieting.

Currently reading The Plotters, Un-Su Kim. South Korean John Wick but funnier so far. 100 pgs in and loving it but still trying to get an idea of the wider society that exists outside of the protagonist and his associates.

Re-reading Brossard's 'The Blue Books,' her trilogy of experimental novels about/around political radicals and lesbians in 1970s Montréal.

Xpost

I wrote an undergraduate essay way back in the 20th century titled Windscreen, Silver Screen, TV Screen: On the Road in Astral America, comparing experience of driving/perception in On the Road, Lolita and... White Noise. I doubt it was v good :/

I'd like to read it! In his afterword, Nabakov says he haaated people taking it as a European critique of American culture, and he also lashes out at (says someday somebody will get wise and take a hammer to)"topical trash," meaning Balzac, Gorky, Mann, so I'm guessing he wouldn't have much use for On The Road. Did not live long enough to check out White Noise, but might have deigned to take a look at DeLillo's 1973 Americana, in which a Madison Avenue hipster takes a national road trek with a movie camera, catches a lot of good talk, but sure is a lot, and tending to monologues---I still remember some witty moments, incl. back at the office, but gets pretty dense. The author has since said that the less he thinks about his early books, the happier he is, but it's worth checking out (grab a coffee to do so).
Oh yeah, Humbert and the American scene: gradually he stops pouncing on each little flaw of each little person, many of them familiar stereotypes of that era, from other American lit and movies with a satirical or tongue in cheek quality (though he does take great satisfaction in finally telling off a couple of stuffy pests). The more he lets himself become aware of his own shortcomings, to put it mildly, the more he seems to accept his surroundings, trudging toward murder and his testimony. Even comes to see, along the way, where Delores should be, should have never left, not with him. Duh devil

I took the book back to the library as soon as I finished reading it, wanting to be done with it, but now it seems to be why I've started thinking about an old Randy Newman song, "Have You Seen My Baby?":
"She say, 'I'll talk to strangers if I want to, I'm a stranger too.' "

finished the Audre LOrde Compendium this morning.
THat was Cancer Diaries, Sister Outsider and A Burst of Light. Enjoy her writing so wish I had discovered her earlier. Shame this set is no longer available. Would be good to dip back into it. Well I think it may be available individually.
Now need to read Zami

I finished Time Will Darken It. Now I am reading The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois. In the former, I like the "textbook" (adept) use of point of view, particularly at the beginning and the end, to contrast with the primary perspective of the narrative, which still remains satisfyingly opaque.

I've started in on The Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu. It is still setting up its premise (which has taken 65 pages!), so it's premature to draw any conclusions about anything, yet. Preliminarily speaking, it seems to me very 'centrist' sci-fi, by which I mean it feels designed to please readers who read sci-fi almost exclusively, but some of what reads to me as clunky awkwardness might be attributable to the difficulties of translation from Chinese to English.

I think I saw that on the shelf of one of the charity shops i was in yesterday. I was thinking about Cartesian duality and fun things like that when i saw the title.

the duras book i mentioned earlier ('me and other writing') is very good, but i would only recommend it if you're already all in on the extended durasniverse. she says a lot of stuff i disagree with, but says it with such intensity and conviction (but a conviction that can be overturned or compromised a second later) that it's always compelling. the title essay, 'me' is the best example of this, but there's also a longer diary piece which is up there with her best fiction imo, and in fact closely resembles some of the later fiction and films like 'agatha' and 'l'homme atlantique'

i also read eva baltasar 'permafrost' which is a newish translation. a good companion piece to the duras, very voice-y, irascible narrator; a fun read

i started reading the collected kenneth patchen. there's a bit of youthful jauntiness to the early poems, which can be a little off putting, but i mostly get the sense that he was very fearful when writing, but didn't really know what to do with the fear - that sense of everything not being quite right makes the poems still feel quite contemporary despite some of the self-consciously poetic register he's working in

Duras wrote so much I’ve barely made a dent in it over the years but yeah, her voice never fails to interest.

Alasdair Gray's story (1970s I think) about 'The Great Bear Craze' in England in the 1930s is remarkable - a piece of agreeable, readable whimsy which also works as a remarkably convincing political allegory today.

'The Crank That Made the Revolution' is also a very canny, zany, comic yet serious take on the industrial revolution.

On to the stories in the middle of the book: Kafka and his treatment of (Chinese?) empire a big, acknowledged influence.