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

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

security seems to have traditionally been ranked low in the hierarchy that exists within this amorphous culture (viz. the respect shown sys admins ... I don't think the culture includes mathematicians ... )

Things I have been reading, an inconclusive list:

NANA - Ai Yazawa.

I don’t really read much manga in general but I loved Yazawa’s Paradise Kiss which a good friend recommended me and have been reading the back volumes of Nana on and off for a few months. (There’s a lot of it!) Two young women, both called Nana, meet and end up as housemates in Tokyo. Nana K is sensitive, flighty and vaguely ridiculous; Nana O is a tough no-nonsense type who is a talented singer who dreams of stardom. Despite this cliché beginning, the story expands and unfurls and grows. More characters, more tiny events that build the picture piece by piece. I’ve never cared for the art style much but it’s useful in illustrating the many expressions in this story. And I love her lineart and detailing. The story, of the particularly intense relationships you form in your early twenties (and particularly those with other women) is familiar and sad and I read like five chapters every time and I still leave gaps cos in the back of my mind I’m aware that it’s been on hiatus since 2009. Anyway, love this very much.

The Club & People Like Her - both Ellery Lloyd

From time to time I like to read some trash, ok, basically most of the time. These two novels are both by the same husband and wife couple and one is about a thinly veiled Soho House murder mystery (I loved this a lot and read it all in an evening) and the other is the story of an influencer with a murderous stalker. The characters are sketched - this is very much plot driven work from start to finish - but that’s fine, and I found them both very easy to read and a good palate cleanser. Strongly recommend for travel reading.

Red as Blood - Tanith Lee

I’ve read these before but they are still fantastic reading - Lee’s retelling of classic fairy tales across the ages and genres is great and can always snap me out of any lull. Like all the good retellings, Lee leans on the creepiest elements of the original stories - the Pied Piper taking all the children, princesses being dispatched to new lands with their husbands that they barely know, what it means to sleep for a century. Anyway, strongly recommend this collection as always, the reissued cover is fucking appalling and gives you zero indication of the quality of the stories.

Cool, can always use more variety around here, and thanks for reminder for me to check Tanith Lee---btw, was thinking that the xpost Brad Watson novel Miss Jane is a happy example of male author writing from POV of female central character (also does some of that with other characters, including men), good for your thread about that.

xpost "testosterone fueled", which does not mean male-dominated in common usage and seems like an editing mistake tbh.) Seems like it pretty much is assumed to mean that, at least in American common usage.

I love Nana also. What I know about manga you could write out twice on the back of a postage stamp but Martin Skidmore wrote about it here: http://freakytrigger.co.uk/wedge/2010/02/comics-a-beginners-guide-girls-comics/ and I bought in. The hiatus hadn’t lasted long when I was ripping through it, I had every expectation of new issues emerging :(

I miss Martin Skidmore too. Quite often things crop up I wish I could ask him about. Information I can get elsewhere but I miss his taste and the pleasure of having him tell me about stuff.

Oh Tim, thank you for this link, and I love that you love it also. I never knew MS but he seemed a nice sort from what everyone says about him.

I feel as if I could happily watch them together in their flat, at the table in the bay window, forever.

Go Went Gone, Jenny Erpenbeck. Not sure where it's going but already feel gently scolded for my comfortable life.

I don't know much about manga either -- this podcast has been fun to dip into and is relatively podcast-banter-free: https://www.mangasplaining.com.

Ah, I listened to the episode on there about Helter Skelter, and it was great! I learned a lot about it, like the fact that the nudity was hugely controversial in Japan (and some of it was technically illegal, being uncensored where it normally would be iirc?!) It still won awards in Japan though, so that clearly didn’t matter much. I thought of this before the last ILB FAP actually beside I went to the Courthauld beforehand and was reading notes on paintings about controversial nudity - anyway, can second the recommendation based on the one episode I listened to and recommend Kyoko Okazaki always, ofc.

I'll check that episode out!

Unrelatedly I believe one of the hosts, Chris, was the model for Wallace in Scott Pilgrim

read THE CARTOGRAPHERS by peng shepherd. fucking awful

its central conceit, which apparently some reviewer called 'borgesian', is obvious and trite. every plot point is both telegraphed and then beaten into the ground just in case we missed it. the characters act in completely absurd ways and the plot ultimately makes no sense

worst novel i've read in years, which is the kind of shit that happens when one is up all night

Chip Zdarsky on this episode illustrates Sex Criminals, which I really like (and am behind on). I really enjoyed listening to him talk about the art.

mookieproof have u considered reading nhl fic josei manga

I couldn't help wanting to read a sample of The Cartographer's after your post, and it definitely has a touch of the Lanchester about it