Lilacs Out of the Dead Land, What Are You Reading? Spring 2022

my pitch for that band is little bob story

Ha, never even heard of them but they seem to fit the bill.

I guess it can have a narrative function, as with films - the narrator hears people talking in a foreign language, but doesn't know what they're saying, and nor does the monolingual reader, thereby building suspense, or identification with the fictional protagonist.

Wonder if someone can make a bad joke about a French band that is the equivalent of Status Quo.

Ça plane pour moi.

Pinefox, pinevixen

I looked up one of the first long Latin sentences at the beginning of that book and had a lot of fun doing so. Wonder if I should post my results here or start another thread or maybe just revive one of the three extant ones about Latin.

mihi labitur!

(technically belgian but)

ego rex lecti sum!

(i think this project deserves its own thread)

xpost my ereader has French, Spanish and English dictionaries built in, which is handy when reading, say, Cormac McCarthy What ereader is that, koogs? Does sound handy.

and German, Italian and Portuguese

it's a kobo. Clara hd, but the firmware is common to most of them.

you still have to look things up a word at a time but it'll give you the gist.

Okay, off we go: Qui prior egressus est, Iacobus Rufus erat: A thread for all things Latin

>>> I looked up one of the first long Latin sentences at the beginning of that book

Which book? Do you mean THE NORFOLK MYSTERY? I hope so.

I finished THE NORFOLK MYSTERY. The Latin phrases continued to the end, still often untranslated and not understood by me. I note that while this is broadly frustrating, it need not be all bad. There is something to be said for a varied linguistic texture, escaping monolingualism and encountering other languages, to be sure. Still, I'm not sure that dropping in endless phrases from a language that almost nobody knows is a very effective aesthetic strategy.

The main thing I add about this novel is that the series, THE COUNTY GUIDES, while at some level detective stories, seem only partially engaged with that generic project. There is a crime or a murder, it is solved, there are interviews of a sort (though these usually under the guise of research for the County Guides). But I don't think that this novel would fare very well by the rules of the Detection Club, as it doesn't really present coherent evidence or sufficient clues for the reader to solve the mystery before the detective does. Generically these are novels half-engaged in the detective genre, which are also historical novels (pastiche to a degree, also with in-jokes and things that mean more to later readers) and, in a relatively gentle way, comedy. Their other big feature is to contain tons of information; they are to a large extent a celebration of the multitudinous world of fact.

The Champs Elysees... It's like that pond a British novelist talks about, at the bottom of which, in layered deposits, lie the echoes of the voices of every passerby who has daydreamed on its banks. The shimmering water preserves those echoes forever and, on quiet evenings, they all blend together.

This is from Flowers of Ruin by Patrick Modiano but do any of you know what British novelist he's on about?

(...if any - it would hardly be uncharacteristic if this just turned out to be an evocative reference to nothing)

I don't. I suppose it could be an evocative reference to nothing, or it could well be a genuine reference to a not very well known novel that not many of us have read or remember.

Nice image but it strikes me that passers by wouldn't be daydreaming on its banks and that people daydreaming on its banks would be doing so silently. (No idea either.)

i finally finished season of migration to the north. i'm a little flabbergasted tbh. it's hard to know what to say about it, other than i can't stop thinking about it. one thing is don't recall ever reading a novel so compelling.

I had never heard of that book until now. Sounds like an essential read.

it's wild. beautifully written. accomplishes this feat where it's "about colonialism" but winds so deep into it that the subject disperses into i don't even know what, a subterranean network of images and events? all of these different intractable relations.

William Shakespeare - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Antonio Moresco - Distant Light
Juan Carlos Onetti - The Shipyard
Antonio Di Benedetto - The Silentiary

The Silentiary is the 3rd book of Di Benedetto's fiction to be translated alongisde Zama and a book of his short stories (Esther Allen is translating one more of his 'trilogy' which will come out next year). I loved Zama very much and this is probably even better. Di Benedetto might've sharpened his concision and directness just a touch, in this tale of a man's battle against man-made noise. The one review I've read (in the Nation) cites Kafka and Dostoevsky but the writing is very different, there isn't a battle against a bureaucracy (though his enemy cannot be fought against: you either endure or fall, and you can guess what happens). I finished it alongside a re-read of Onetti's Shipyard (also published in the early 60s) and this is Latin American literature at its best. The narrator goes back to the town he left long ago, he is offered to manage a Shipyard but its just a thread to hang the various torments of the mind which Onetti's prose takes you through. Both are short, intense, with Onetti having more 'plot', and if they are doing a sort of existential crisis I can tell you no one at that time was doing it better. A great time to be alive, it is not. For the reader, it is.

I also read Moresco's Distant Light, the only novel by this Italian writer to be translated (he apparently went onto write a Pynchon-y book that hasn't been translated yet), and this is like a well written episode of the X-Files. A man in a small town is walking about and finds a spot of Distant Light. Night after night, which he traces it all back to a child who is living on his own, is a good cook and goes to Night School. Its fun. Then onto another of Shakespeare's plays.

>> i finally finished season of migration to the north
> I had never heard of that book until now

me neither. but less than 3 hours later i was recycling old copies of the Guardian Review and someone mentioned it in her favourite books.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/22/leila-aboulela-books-that-made-me

Started In Dubious Battle, my first Steinbeck novel since high school.

Finished a few smaller things, also finished Prynne’s new Snooty Tip-Offs. Trying to decide whether to read poems or a novel next, think I might go with the latter and read Dissipatio H.G. by Guido Morselli. Anyone read it?

Patricia Highsmith, Deep Water
Alice Oseman, Heartstopper (v1)
Emma Healey, Best Young Woman Job Book

Oh, I also began What Was I Thinking? by Jalal Toufic, but I am reading it slowly, section by section.

Just to get away from fiction for a bit, I've started reading a book on the influence of geography on geopolitics, Prisoners of Geography, Tim Marshall (2015). I picked it up on a whim for $3 at the charity shop. I know nothing about the British author, but I'm finding his tone somewhat annoyingly neo-con. He treats national leaders as if they are automatons programmed to obey some kind of national 'will to power', so instead of simply stating the strengths and weaknesses created by Russia's geography, Mr. Tim confidently asserts Putin has "no choice" but to control Ukraine.

However, after I filter out that sort of toxic nonsense, there is some interesting info in the book which I hadn't known or else hadn't considered from a geopolitical perspective. I'll probably stick with it and just hate the author as I do.

I can't help with the reference but have to concur (I think) that the images are striking. I've only read the three novellas that were published after the prize and remember the suitcase from the first and the coat worn indoors from the second, and those images make me want to revisit them.

Isaac Asimov: FOUNDATION & EMPIRE (1952).

The second in the FOUNDATION trilogy. I always thought this stuff would be vast and stodgy. It's actually a trio of relatively slim volumes, written in an SF magazine style that flies by. Once again we leap decades forward in time, and read of an encounter between the Foundation and the central Galactic Empire. It's getting more into space-opera vein than the first volume, less anthropological or sociological. A point that keeps occurring to me, which I may have said before, is: why does no one ever argue that STAR WARS was partly based on Asimov?

One other reflection: though Asimov is projecting far into the future, he remains rather liberal humanist. I mean: his future humanity continues to do things similar to what humans have historically done, up to c.1950. They govern, dominate, conquer or are ruled. They trade and seek financial advantage, and trade tends to develop civilization and contact. They form religions, as ways of assimilating things they don't understand. All this may be a very reasonable extrapolation. I just note how universalising it is as a projection of what humans have been like up to the 20th century.

In a way Asimov's galaxy curiously lacks alterity. The people are like us - though always with odd names (like Star Wars). There are no aliens yet (no spoilers if they turn up later). There are robots - but not in these books (I'm aware of how much and how well he writes on robots elsewhere).

It's all reassuringly enjoyable.

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/118019

^ Asimov on Star Wars

fwiw i was disappointed in the Foundation trilogy having heard such good things about it beforehand. i will stick with the robot books.

Reading Guido Morselli’s Dissipatio HG. Quick and harrowing!

are you reading the italian?

(apologies for interrupting) I am reading A Promised Land by Barack Obama. I stopped in the middle several months ago and found it easy to pick up again. He is an engaging writer. Also, that there is a partially known ending to recent history gives it a storybook quality that is somewhat reassuring: for better or worse, the past is over and done.

Soldaten Sonke Neitzel and Harald Welzer
book based on a cache of tapes recorded of German Army POWS in WWII that were discovered decades later. Shows what the man in the street in German uniform actually thought, epistemology of an average person under that regime like. I was telling somebody about its existence over the weekend and realising i hadn't read it. I thought it was something important to be aware of so trying to get it read . But its my current bathroom book so not sure how long that will take.

Augusto Boal Games For Actors and non-Actors
radical theatre theorists book on methodology ,. He was applying the theory that Paulo Freire had been devising for education .
I can see where a tone deaf white priviliged idiot running a parochial local theatre group dedicated to his thought could go very wrong with trying to apply this especially if one is being extremely sdelf congratulatory about how one is doing so.
So while i think it is important material I also think one has to be careful how one does apply it and there has to be some basic thought always constant. One is not supposed to see oneself as being the all-knowing and I think the group I was in contact with who were supposedly applying it weren't very self reflexive. Just white liberal, arrogant and therefore not really applying this but a negative version of it. Bleurgh, Would love to find a group with a better handle on it, has left a very bad taste in my mouth .

mookie, I'm reading the new-ish translation on NYRB classics.

ah, cool -- i have a copy but haven't gotten around to it

I can't help with the reference but have to concur (I think) that the images are striking. I've only read the three novellas that were published after the prize and remember the suitcase from the first and the coat worn indoors from the second, and those images make me want to revisit them. What book is this?

SUSPENDED SENTENCES
Three Novellas
By Patrick Modiano
Translated by Mark Polizzotti
213 pp. Yale University Press. Paper, $16.

the reference in question being the memory pond thing Tim was asking about upthread

Suspended Sentences is the source of the passage I was asking about.

the wild shore - kim stanley robinson, felt like minor KSR. less interested in the stuff he's good at (wonky politics stuff) and more interested in the stuff he's bad at (characters)

the little drummer girl - le carre - extremely minor le carre! hearing tradecraft described at great length and in punishing detail is boring. still had the odd magical description though.

small things like these - claire keegan - extremely well done domestic novella about abuses by the irish church

the verge - patrick wyman - made insufficient effort to write and arrange ideas in a more booklike way than he does for his podcast, and as such pretty hard going

crying in h mart - michelle zahner - made a huge impact on my wife, and i can see why, but ehhh.

small town in germany - le carre - absolute banger

cormac mccarthy - child of god - short and incredibly bleak.

this is how they tell me the world ends - nicole perlroth - well-reviewed book about the history of infosec/cyber. extremely and credulously pro USA. says things like "Atkins was something of an anomaly among the mostly male, testosterone fueled coders she managed. Most had a deep distaste for authority. They buried their heads in code by day, and lived vicariously through virtual role playing games by night", despite being written recently, not in 1990.

patrick o'brian - post captain - reread. absolute banger.

arthur c. clarke - rendezvous with rama - meh

toni morisson - sula - very good! (also short)

invisible bridge - rick perlstein - the watergate stuff was great, but the second half (ford and ford vs jimmy carter) was a bit of a slog.

well-reviewed book about the history of infosec/cyber. extremely and credulously pro USA. How do these go together? How does her description about resentful testosterone heads buried in code fit 1990 but not today? Haven't read it but now curious.

it's extremely Voice of the Reasonable New York Times in its politics, and the description of hacker culture rings false throughout. the example line is like a line from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine (1981) or from a local news piece about surfing the internet ca. 1999.

(soul of a new machine is a great book, btw, highly recommended, but it's also 40 years old, and i wouldn't expect it to describe google engineers ca. 2020 accurately)

the little drummer girl - le carre - extremely minor le carre! hearing tradecraft described at great length and in punishing detail is boring. still had the odd magical description though.

Yeah that was a slog. Read it in anticipation of the Park Chan-wook miniseries (one of my fave directors) and by the time I'd finished it I couldn't bother to watch the show.

I watched the TV programme of that novel and didn't greatly enjoy it. The one positive was the use of the Institute of Education, Bloomsbury, as a setting.

i finally finished season of migration to the north. i'm a little flabbergasted tbh. it's hard to know what to say about it, other than i can't stop thinking about it. one thing is don't recall ever reading a novel so compelling.

― the cat needs to start paying for its own cbd (map), Friday, April 29, 2022 3:41 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

yaaaaaay i love this book! i teach it every year and this year my students did not love it, so i am extra-glad you did. it rules.

Read it in anticipation of the Park Chan-wook miniseries (one of my fave directors) and by the time I'd finished it I couldn't bother to watch the show.

haha yes me too!

it's extremely Voice of the Reasonable New York Times in its politics, in what respect? Examples? Also, how has code head culture changed so much? Less male-dominated and/or better attitude? Hope so, but haven't heard that.

the author presumes good faith and good intent from all US govt sources throughout, and seems like a bit of a mark for russiagate related conspiracies.

the sentence i quote is just lazy facile superficial cliched writing about tech. it's such bad writing that i wrote it down. there's a kernel of truth here in the way lazy facile superficial cliches often have a kernel of truth. (except "testosterone fueled", which does not mean male-dominated in common usage and seems like an editing mistake tbh.) but it's a book about the culture of the infosec community, so you might expect it to contain richer and subtler ideas than the evening news.

best guess at the meaning of code head culture: has trimmed beard spends more time on facial hair than code uses words like gnarly wears black long sleeve t-shirts
best case image of code head culture: writes clean code understandable by anyone and with expertise according to constraints that take into account those served and the culture itself

(deeply regret the implicit assumption (viz. facial hair) that the term applies to males)

the culture itself meaning what counts among savants of the culture according to existing constraints