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

Manuel Rivas - The Carpenter's Pencil
Volker Ullrich - Hitler: Volume II: Downfall 1939-45

Abandoned Sheila Heti’s Pure Colour halfway through. Actually enjoyed the first section which seemed grounded and captured something of how small but good life could feel before the internet. But it started unravel when she starts writing about the protagonist’s dead father’s spirit being “ejaculated” (her phrasing, uses it several times) into her body just after his death. And then a whole section where the protagonist turns into a leaf. Yes, a leaf. Awful.

I think every Lethem novel up to, say, 2007 is very good or very interesting.

I finished Asimov's SECOND FOUNDATION, and thus the FOUNDATION TRILOGY (1951-3). It makes a change for me to get through a major trilogy in a month, though it could be said that these books are not very long and are mostly quick to read.

The Hard SF element increases - more about Galactic navigation and about brain scans - though at the same time, the science increasingly becomes fantastically neurological or, in effect, about telepathy, and thus perhaps not so 'hard' after all. Unsure whether this is a good development but it's central to the direction of the trilogy.

Curiously there is an aspect of 'detection' to the whole story, viz 'where is the Second Foundation?' with a late scene in which one character after another puts forward a theory. Asimov did write a lot of detective fiction and I think the rationalism of that genre crosses that of his SF.

The 'gender representation' aspect improves: the granddaughter of the heroine of vol II is a major protagonist in vol III. This lets Asimov play out some very awkward bobby-soxxer domestic comedy material (these things seem unchanged, 50,000 years in the future, from the early 1950s), but overall he does at least show himself able to imagine women (and girls) doing things, which is a change from vol I.

The entire scheme and outcome would seem to be shadowed by a kind of moral question, basically: what are the ethics of a scenario in which protagonists are not acting on free will but actually directed by others' telepathic powers? Curiously this isn't really raised as an ethical question, though 'the free will to make our own mistakes' vs 'lack of free will achieves perfection' would seem to be the kind of ethical dilemma that Asimov could trundle around in a dialogue for many pages. There is thus arguably something sinister about this happy ending.

Asimov wrote 4 more novels from 1982 to 1993. I'm interested in these but don't think I should feel compelled to read them given that the trilogy was left complete for 30 years. The Asimov I would most like to read next is THE CAVES OF STEEL.

I will complete this post by coming full circle and noting that Arcadia's experience of dislocation and yearning among the ruins of Trantor, quite late in Vol III, seems one of many precursors to that of Pella Marsh on the Planet of the Archbuilders in Lethem's GIRL IN LANDSCAPE (1998).

Rereading Pere Goriot for the first time in 30 years.

Finished some chapbooks, and in my covid convalescing, also finished Emily Abendroth’s large book, Sousveillance Pageant. It is composed of interconnected chapters that are more like lyric essays, relating to surveillance culture, carceral systems, capture, and the way bodies are interpellated by these systems. Moving and infuriating in parts, particularly when relating the protagonist’s relationship with her incarcerated brother, and very funny in parts, too. Recommended for those interested in those subjects.

Started Kornbluth & Pohl, THE SPACE MERCHANTS (c.1953). A nice old pulpy (1960s?) edition. First impression: a SF-nal MAN MEN from the early 1950s? Sounds good.

Rereading Pere Goriot for the first time in 30 years.

I just read this for the first time last year. What struck me most was the amount of time it took him to die.

I finished The Worst Hard Time. I toyed with the idea of making a pun on 'harrowing' but nothing clever enough came to me. Also, as a book, it was quite harrowing in the emotional sense. Goddamn it's one ugly piece of history.

I think my next will be Convenience Store Woman, Sayaka Murata, which I just brought home from the public library along with four other titles. Between those and unread books I own it's nice to have lots of options.

Reading Stacy Szymaszek’s The Pasolini Book and just ordered the new Ruth Wilson Gilmore, which I shouldn’t have done since I don’t have much dough at the moment, but oh well.

I finished "My Struggle Book 4" by Knausgaard, so only 2 more to go for me in that series. I guess I buy the hype. I find them very rich and compelling. Its probably a good thing he saved the material in this book for the 4th volume, because I don't think he would have gotten such favorable attention if he had started with this one. It covers just one year, more or less: the year after graduating high school when he was working a teacher in a junior high in northern Norway. There is less of a distancing perspective to give us a respite from the company of the protagonist, and the protagonist of this section is not very likeable: a reckless binge drinker, humorless, sex-obsessed, and with the brittle defiant pride of a young man with something to prove. Scarcely a female character is introduced without describing her physical characteristics in specific terms. His obsession with sex is purely one-sided. Yet despite these distractions, the book works its careful, methodical magic.

Now I'm reading "The Idiot" by Elif Batuman, also a coming of age novel with some similarities in theme, but very different in execution and effect.

1/3 into The Custom of The Country by Edith Wharton. If it's another 300 pages of Middlemarch's Lydgates go NYC, I'm not sure how much I'll enjoy it.

That's a helluva description.

I know right :) I love Middlemarch obv but Undine is - so far - a dead ringer for Rosamond and a novel just about her would be a tough read.

Would it? Off the top of my head I think that sounds good!

want to reread Eliot's Middlemarch and Wharton's The House of Mirth, I read them in the distant past and remember that I liked them but not much else

I finished Convenience Store Woman. It's a short, easy read. In bed this morning I was trying to figure out what I thought about it. It was pretty clearly intended as a satire and it worked reasonably well on that level, but the trick with satire is an audience who's in on the joke, who knows just how much the author is distorting and exaggerating in order to make the usual seem unusual and grotesque. The author and audience all share the same social and cultural frame of 'normal' and the satire is something of an 'in joke'.

But I'm not Japanese and this put me at a disadvantage in sussing out how the author was deftly using that shared cultural material to get her effects and make her points. My lack of deep familiarity with the details of daily life in Japan (mainly Tokyo) made some of the exaggerations less humorous. What was written to be funny to a Japanese felt merely odd or puzzling to me. Yet, I liked the book.

After tussling with it for a bit, I've concluded that this satire from an unfamiliar culture 'worked' for me as an American because it had an additional mythic quality that went beyond cultural satire. The extreme simplicity of the narrator's voice accentuated this quality. And like most good myths, it contains questions that can't be answered and prompts thoughts that can't be concluded. Pretty good for a novella.

Does anyone have strong opinions about Emily St. John Mandel?

Checked out today:
1. Carlo Rovelli. There are places in the world where rules are less important than kindness.
2. Patrick Modiano. Family record.

But next up is a translation of three novel(la)s by Tove Ditlevsen. Yay for Scandinavian novels, which should be their own genre.

Scando Lit: search

Reading Kevin Killian’s SHY for the first time, finally felt ready.

Xxp I read Emily St. John mandel books when they come out and I think they’re broadly fine but I do not have a strong opinion about them and I’m a little surprised how successful they are.

I read the Modiano in February -- pretty good.

i loved paul takes the form of a mortal girl, really crisply written, its sudden shifts into the allegorical really spellbinding, but fundamentally a straightforward narrative about a queer shapeshifter discovering himself through his relationships. i don't necessarily love feeling like i'm looking into a mirror when i'm reading but it really did feel like i was seeing a way more sexually-awakened version of my college self, especially when the characters had endearingly pretentious conversations about music and theory. also the sex scenes were all hot :)

now returning to the cusk outline trilogy with transit and already every sentence is like a fist exploding through my brain it's awesome

xp I think Emily St. John Mandel is almost always readable and quite likable as a writer if that makes sense; sometimes it's just nice to read a fairly talented writer who doesn't strike you as a terrible person. But the only book of hers that's made a lasting impression on me is Station Eleven, which I loved in a qualified way. I thought it was a bit slick and facile and could have done more with its characters, and yet I still found it quite beautiful and moving and I keep returning to it. One of those books where there are a lot of obvious criticisms to make, and yet the things that work about it work well enough for me that I don't mind the rest.

I feel about it a bit like I feel about the Jackson Browne song "Before the Deluge," which it resembles imo: I'm not a big Jackson Browne fan in general, and "Before the Deluge" has its cheesy moments, but then you get to "When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky," and all is forgiven.

Tend to agree with Lily Dale that that novel feels slick and facile. It felt immature and disappointingly shallow to me.

Can pandemic/disaster novels be less slick and facile to be accepted as science fiction, or are they being judged according to different criteria? There was another novel called Severance by Ling Ma. Does anyone have comparisons or comments on the genre (and what saves it or makes it worthwhile to read despite the immaturity)? Is science fiction obviously satire?

or intentionally

Rereading Père Goriot for the first time in 30 years.

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, May 12, 2022

Père Goriot feels like a distant memory. I have recollections of reading it for a book club meeting in 1998, but haven't thought about it since

As ever with Balzac it's his way with bric-a-brac, the meanness of people, the attention to Restoration politics.

There are disaster novels like THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS which are interesting and thought-provoking, though possibly lacking in some qualities of other books.

STATION ELEVEN seems to be a different case because it seems to try to be literary in a way that much SF didn't use to do. I'm not sure that it entirely succeeds.

Ballard's disaster novels would be a different comparison.

I haven't read SEVERANCE.

Some great SF is satirical - Robert Sheckley for instance - but not all SF is satirical.

I started watching the tv series of Station Eleven it does seem a tad white liberal which is a shame cos it does have a pretty diverse cast.
I'm about 4 episodes in and watching a los=d of other things at the same time.
Found a cheap copy of the book which is sitting around teh flat somewhere. I read an interview in teh guardian with teh writer which made reading things by her sound positive. But I have a load of other things to read.

Currently getting further into that book on Soldaten which is really interesting and has a very scathing view of the run of teh mill soldiery from Germany in WWII. I was wondering what else was like this about other soldiers. Think Mark baker's books Nam and Cops may touch on some things with some similarity. & would think there may be more things from Vietnam talking about War crimes etc. Probably true of later wars that the US have been involved in. NO idea of other armed services around the World but don't think anybody in a situation like taht is 100% driven by a clear morality.
THis is good though, pretty difficult reading if you're remotely squeamish

1/3 through THE SPACE MERCHANTS. The first third is like Don Draper in the 23rd century - tremendous. Then suddenly it changes - he is kidnapped and wakes up having been given a new false identity. This is not so promising. Feels like the Don material had much further to run before being cut off.

There is an indigestible preciousness about Mandel's writing that seems like a very specifically Canadian MFA style to me (speaking as a sometime Canadian resident). It's this overreliance on whimsically poetic "good sentence writing" over the top of plastic characters and embarrassed plotting. As you read the book, you can imagine it being written by a smartly dressed young person in a coffee shop.

That said she wrote short time-travel story for Slate, that I remember really enjoying. It was also precious but satisfyingly well-plotted and less self-conscious.

Tend to agree with that assessment by poster Chuck Tatum.

the pinefox, you might like severance. it's thematically a little similar to jonathan lethem's the arrest, which you moderately liked iirc? but it's much better imo.

station eleven feels more obviously middle brow scifi melodrama (not sure what this means), like a realist cloud atlas?

also requested for check out which should be an alternative to purchased: Three Californias by Kim Stanley Robinson and a book by Kelsey Ronan (I think her debut novel)

I am intrigued by the NYT review of Simon Kuper's Chums and the persistence of class in the UK, which seems distinct compared to elsewhere in Europe, and this is not intended as a criticism, but a point of interest, perhaps worth saving, except for the cost

Poster Caek, yes, again I tend to agree with that view of S11. I think I like CLOUD ATLAS though!

i liked cloud atlas too! i don't think i mean it as an insult. more an attempt to characterize her goals/"target audience"?

I'm reading City of Nets by Otto Friedrich. If you'd given me a precis - a history of Hollywood in the 1940s, through vignettes of the likes of Louis Mayer, Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Howard Hughes, Hedy Lamarr, alongside capsule biographies of the major films and writers - I'd have chewed your arm off to read it. But somehow the episodic style, with anecdote running into gossipy vignette, renders everything glassy and flat and I find I'm struggling for purchase. I'll persevere.

Just started Fatale, Jean-Patrick Manchette, in the NYRB reissue. Even after a few pages it's apparent that this crime noir will be somewhat ott. It's also another short one, under 100 pages.

haven't yet read any of them, but i've gotten the impression that all of manchette's crimes are ott

Yep

also: rad

Think so far I’ve only read The Prone Gunman tbh, although I bought a few others.

Amit Chaudhuri - Odysseus Abroad
Annie Ernaux - A Woman's Story
Kenneth Irby - Catalpa

Currently reading Dasa Drndic's EEG and Maria Stepanova's In Memory of Memory.

zak m— Irby is one of my favorite poets, if you ever want to nerd out about him let me know— one of my prized books is a copy of one of his late chapbooks, warmly inscribed to Gerritt Lansing. I’ve even written a little about my favorite poems of his, from the short book To Max Douglas.

ah, cool, thanks, zak and tabes. I was going to ask for a poetry rec.

Alfred, unfortunately Irby’s best stuff is really only available in the enormous and pricey collected, but if you look around Abe or Bookfinder, his smaller press books and chaps are widely available and often pretty cheap (and also beautiful objects).

I adored Catalpa, but I'm probably not articulate enough to describe it. I read it as unapologetically musical and conversational. Observational and descriptive, where observational includes landscape, reading, history, introspection. 1970s California + Midwest, "age of explorers" colonial violence & hubris, family history, Coleman Hawkins... So it's referential, but doesn't read as a string of cherry-picked allusions (thinking about our internet era writing hatched in the shadow of wikipedia or whatever).

I sometimes find the big collections intimidating, and the original context feels meaningful -- I read it as an interlibrary loan, though, so I didn't have dig around.

Glad you liked it— it is one of my favorites of his. It’s a really quite arresting example of early eco-poetry that seamlessly moves from the literal soil to the glacial movements that caused that soil to be there to the colonial machinations that sullied that soil and so on. Few come close to it, imho.

Here’s an interesting squib about it from poet Andrew Schelling: https://jacket2.org/article/kenneth-irby-and-catalpa