Bright Remarks and Throwing Shade: What Are You Reading, Summer 2022?

was gonna update this thread to say i’m reading the marbled swarm by dennis cooper which is both vile and hilarious and then got confused by all the podcast talk

Marbled Swarm is a great departure for him, but it’s one of my favorites of his

Glen Matlock I was A Teenage Sex Pistol
Quick read, thought I'd give it a shot in the wake of Pistol. Still need to read teh Jones version.
Not sure about chronology since he has teh band already mostly formed while Malcolm is away trying to manage the New York Dolls. John hasn't joined but the previous line up is playing a lot .Need to check that out, when Sex started and how it ties in with that Red Patent Leather era, Cos might assume that NYD was before.

Anyway it's an interesting quick read

Jorge Luis Borges Total Library.
I had just read the piece on the various translations of 1001 Nights this morning when i got a podcast on Folk Stories from Gone Medieval which overlaps. Quite a coincidence since it overlapped & I could have read the Borges any time over the last 20 years, think that was the latest edition of the podcast though
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1xuUNWYWRNvRT6OZFgwBkW?si=e624ae87ec104389

Another podcast with Katrine Marcal that I just noticed on seeing it was about the wheeled suitcase which she talked about on the other pdcast I sent a link to. I found out that her book Mother of invention is in the local library so may get it this week
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6VOYopbeE6BvTbKy8BRF7m?si=88f21963938a475f

Also not sure why I didn't add in that I had got to the section of Lenny Kaye's Lightning Striking on the London Punk scene when i found out that Glen Matlock book had come in. I'm just up to the point in Matlock where he's about to leave. Got as far as Kaye talking about their (Patti Smith) London debut in Lightning Striking. Quite enjoying both. Though Matlock shouldn't be slagging off the Slits really should he?

not beatley enough for glen's tastes iirc

just finished - "things we lost in the fire" by mariana enriquez/just started - "the man who saw everything" by deborah lwvy & "bringing the war home" by kathleen belew

oops that's "bring the war home" not "bringing..."

Took two George Moore books from the obscure, unread stacks of the library. Started THE UNTILLED FIELD (1903, later revised). Could be a long trek. Irish peasant tales. Moore's preface (after a later rewrite) spends almost all its time claiming that his book inspired J.M. Synge's career. Probably false, and if so, an irresponsible use of the space. This is fairly characteristic of Moore, as far as I can see.

hunting among old issues of the LRB for something quite different i came across this amusing and somewhat sceptical review of a book abt george moore: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v18/n11/e.s.-turner/the-staidness-of-trousers

Thought my days of reading 500+ page systems novels were over, but nevertheless just completed and really enjoyed KS Robinson's MINISTRY FOR THE FUTURE. Not sure it worked as a novel as such - in some ways the relationship between the scurrying Mary and the PTSD Frank seemed as tangential as that between Clarissa and Septimus in Mrs Dalloway. Also not sure the riddling jeu d'esprit interchapters written from the perspective of a photon or a carbon molecule really worked - just highlighted that KSR isn't TRP and will never create a Byron the Bulb. But funnily enough I did enjoy the whole geo-engineering infodump aspect - on glacier draining, ocean staining, stratospheric aerosol injection etc etc. Feel a little better informed and briefly felt a phantom twinge of potential optimism that meaningful action could still take place (admittedly with the proviso that the novel posits a 20million people death event before anything starts happening).

Now onto Tove Ditlevsen's COPENHAGEN TRILOGY...

Xpost, that LRB Moore piece surely demands a poll on best description of GM:

• an over-ripe gooseberry
• a great big intoxicated baby
• a boiled ghost
• face has the look of a broken egg-yolk
• looks like a drowned man, taken out of the water
• an intoxicated mummy
• a boorish goat
• old pink petulant walrus
• a very prosperous Mellon’s Food baby
• vague, formless, obscene

Insofar as KSR seems interested in problem-solving, to the point that he can even inspire optimism, he would seem to be an interesting revival of a Golden Age SF "engineer paradigm" that was about such a can-do attitude of ingenuity.

John W. Campbell Jr, July 1969:

"If SF doesn't deal with success or the road to success, then it isn't SF at all. Mainstream literature is about failure, a literature of defeat. SF is challenge and discovery. [...] We're going to land on the moon in a month and it was SF which made all of that possible."

I am reading Murder at Teal Pond, which is a true crime story about the murder of a young woman in upstate New York in the first decade of the century. I think it was recommended to me on Amazon and heavily discounted. Supposedly, it's the crime that inspired Mark Frost, of Twin Peaks fame (he spent his summers up there). It's a fascinating case but the co-authors just aren't good writers. The book has the kind of plodding pace I associate with Dick Wolf TV productions. I'll see it through because I am interested in how it turns out (they claim to have figured out the crime), but it's kind of a chore.

Sorry, Teal's Pond

I finished The Oregon Trail. My only additional comment is that Parkman got very obsessed with shooting bison and spends an inordinate amount of time writing about it. I'll choose another book soon, but in the meantime I'm reading a few F. Scott Fitzgerald short stories. Last night I read 'The Diamond as Big as the Ritz'.

Have you read butchers crossing aimless? They shoot a lot of buffalo in that.

I've had my fill of buffalo hunting for this year.

picked up Mother of Invention this afternoon. Had finished I was a Teenage Sex Pistol so took that back.
Read part of 1619 this morning as well as another bit of Lightning Striking. ^& bits of several other things last night but finding too many things with too many endnotes going on. & wasn't in the mod for that.

Done my weekly walk around charity shops so got another stack of things I want to read.

Finished The Wild Shore, the first novel included in Three Californias. Science fiction as one might imagine from Mark Twain with place names and details from known places for some readers for additional interest and pause.

i read the first section of MINISTRY FOR THE FUTURE and it was absolutely harrowing, jfc

it did not make me want to read another several hundred pages about bureaucrats creating hope, though, no matter how much i wish that would actually happen

There is quite a lot about righteous Indian terrorist cells too, tbf.

MFTF is good, but this line about KSR's interests is in full effect in it, for better or worse:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/31/can-science-fiction-wake-us-up-to-our-climate-reality-kim-stanley-robinson

"A typical Robinson novel ends with an academic conference at which researchers propose ideas for improving civilization. He believes that scholarly and diplomatic meetings are among our species’s highest achievements."

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1YtYPjk0YxwAh4tCeDySeY?si=573630c11e62418c
Listened to City Arts talk by KSR this afternoon as i walked around

It's intriguing that KSR wrote a whole book on PKD (think it was his PhD thesis?), as Dick seems to have been so temperamentally different.

Then again it may not be so intriguing - I once looked, too briskly, at the book, and it didn't look that distinctive. But maybe if one really knew KSR (which I don't) as well as PKD (which I do), it would come alive.

Dick seems to have been so temperamentally different

well tbf was he not fucked-up quite a lot of the time

This is a pretty good discussion about PKD featuring KSR and Lethem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcaQmNyxGPs

TLDR: KSR appreciates the realism (ie novels about regular joes scuffling through SoCal life in unusual circumstances, rather than space operas) while Lethem digs the fucked-up surrealism.

I guess I should read PKD next.
Hello, doo rag.
I think earlier I meant to write "for giving pause." (I think a negative effect of not speaking regularly is forgetting how expressions sound.)

I know he wasn't the inspiration for Kilgore Trout (I think that honor goes to Theodore Sturgeon), but he pretty well exemplifies the type: a terrible writer with great ideas.

Actually, I'm not sure he could be called a "terrible" writer, but much of his material was obviously written under the influence of amphetamines.

I found the Great Outdoors (and just outdoors) passages in The Wild Shore and Green Earth (one-volume mixdown of Science in the Capital) to be refreshing in themselves, as well as conveying what's at stake, and what will outlast us, in some forms. Hope to read this new one:

Kim Stanley Robinson first ventured into the Sierra Nevada mountains during the summer of 1973. He returned from that encounter a changed man, awed by a landscape that made him feel as if he were simultaneously strolling through an art museum and scrambling on a jungle gym like an energized child. He has returned to the mountains throughout his life—more than a hundred trips—and has gathered a vast store of knowledge about them. The High Sierra is his lavish celebration of this exceptional place and an exploration of what makes this span of mountains one of the most compelling places on Earth.

Over the course of a vivid and dramatic narrative, Robinson describes the geological forces that shaped the Sierras and the history of its exploration, going back to the indigenous peoples who made it home and whose traces can still be found today. He celebrates the people whose ideas and actions protected the High Sierra for future generations. He describes uniquely beautiful hikes and the trails to be avoided. Robinson’s own life-altering events, defining relationships, and unforgettable adventures form the narrative’s spine. And he illuminates the human communion with the wild and with the sublime, including the personal growth that only seems to come from time spent outdoors.

The High Sierra is a gorgeous, absorbing immersion in a place, born out of a desire to understand and share one of the greatest rapture-inducing experiences our planet offers. Packed with maps, gear advice, more than 100 breathtaking photos, and much more, it will inspire veteran hikers, casual walkers, and travel readers to prepare for a magnificent adventure.

Hello doo rag, I am reading a horror novel called Totem by David Morrell, the creator of 'Rambo'. It has a cool embossed cover - I wonder if there are any embossed cover collectors/completists out there, I would like to see their shelves.

After Daybreak: The Liberation Of Belsen Ben Shephard
picked this up in a charity shop recently and have had it sitting around near teh computer. So started reading it yesterday.
Have read the Introduction and prologue so far;. They've talked about the set up for how the camp was liberated which was not something I was familiar with as it seems that it wasn't as much a result of a progressive advance in area taken at a point when it was absolutely clear which direction things were going, or at least not as i take it. Seems like it was contested ground and german forces allowed Allied to take the area to prevent spread of typhus but I need to check into that further.
Author also talks of how this was not a perfect success medically as it could have been and how people going into the liberation of the camp went in under prepared for what the medical situation was going to be and therefore didn't have the results they should have. Says something about the loss of another 14000 people over teh couple of months between initial liberation in April and the June of taht year. Which means teh camp must have been larger than I was picturing it. Massive numbers.
I can see this book is going to be a heavy read for various reasons but I think I need to read it.

Mpther of Invention Katrine Marcal
Swedish wriuter looks at influences on why certain inventions weren't take up for a long time after they were invented and first marketed. Looks at the gender divide being one major factor and people not thinking certian things will be taken up thanks to the influence of toxic masculinity or whatever it was called at the time.
Currently I'm not sure how much I like the tone but subject matter is interesting. Written in Swedish and then translated to English I think. May grow on me but not sure . So far only read the first chapter the one on wheeled suitcases. Have heard about that and the next one on how electric cars wound up being overly associated with women which meant they didn't get as fully explored as possible at the time. That and how batteries etc weren't as good at the time. Would think that if they had not had teh association some bit so tec would have developed faster.
BUt do come on it is so much more masculine to have to crank the car each time and not have something effeminate like a roof on the vehicle.
I say heard cos i listened to a few podcast interviews with the author

Lenny Kaye Lightning Striking
currently still in London punk but also transcribing discography and bibliography.
I hope the book is better proofread by the next edition . Seems to carry over to discography and bibliography too.

Poster Piedie Gimbel's PKD video sounds very interesting indeed.

re "regular joes scuffling through SoCal life in unusual circumstances"

Lethem has written a large amount about PKD and sometimes *does* talk about this as an aspect of PKD - though I'm unsure if what is meant in this case is PKD's scuffling SF characters or his scuffling characters in the non-SF, realistic fiction which I haven't read.

The best Lethem line on this (I quote loosely from memory) is "in stories written way into the 1970s, characters fix their cars at weekends, carry briefcases, send interoffice memos and worry about making alimony payments, even when they've already emigrated to Mars".

Heh, "unusual circumstances" is a good euphemism for matters far more unusual and circumstantial than moving to Mars (although that could figure in).

It would be great if somehow the influence of literature and popular fiction, science fiction in particular, could change perceptions of growth to make slow growth coveted, much as one does not want a good novel to end, and to buffer the effects of changes in rate of growth so that the changes are least noticeable to those who have the least to lose. Is science fiction nostalgic?

I am reading The Gold Coast now. It's a bit strange that SKR writes about all of these: military industrial complex; Beach Boys aura; old time OC orange and lemon groves, goats, cows, sage, etc.

I am very much looking forward to PKD. I hope Lethem and PKD got to meet in their lifetimes.

Also, the experience of architecture and design, from strip malls to "AI" enabled homes and places of commerce.

It won't please xyzzz and others, perhaps, but I'm on a Prynne kick— re-read his 'Oval Window' in first edition which a bookseller friend gifted me, then two recent chaps. His poetry remains tremendous and strange.

I hope Lethem and PKD got to meet in their lifetimes.

Lethem hoped that too, but no, they didn't.

Table - I don't care 👍

i also like prynne for the strangeness (tho i imagine i am missing a lot, i am tbh a bit too impatient to get the most out of poetry somehow)

addinbg: i am generally disappointed in the writing about him: even ben w4tson (who tbh i wd hope wd know better) tends to treat it as merely the opportunity for crossword puzzle decoding and thumbs-up for the good politics, but nothing more than this

i am not even sure what more i do want from it? just something richer and in keeping i guess

I haven't read Prynne in anything but dribs and drabs. Thanks for the push.

I finished ASTOUNDING and THE CAVES OF STEEL as described here

Thread of Wonder, the next 5000 posts: science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction 2021 and beyond

and I now slowly read George Moore's THE UNTILLED FIELD. Not yet convinced that this is very good writing.

Alfred, if you don’t want to spring for the collected, the NYRB reissued ‘The White Stones’ a few years ago, it’s an early work but gives some nice indications of what comes later.

As far as what to expect from him— tbh, his late style is so varied that neither do I! I just find it fascinating that a poet in their eighties can continue to pump out poems that take such a range of formal (if not necessarily stylistic) constraints.

For example, we have ‘Orchard,’ which is a poetic abecedarium of tree-growing fruits.

Then there’s ‘Otherhood Imminent Profusion,’ which injects a Romantic strain of legibility into his work, which has always been consumed by “the ontology of difficulty.”

There’s then ‘Snooty Tip-Offs,’ a 360-page book of mostly couplets and quatrains that seems to be mimicking limericks and sing-song forms of the past while using the most bizarre language possible.

Add about twenty more book and chapbooks and all of this has just been published in the last few years. Yeah, I’m a fanboy and admit it, but really, his recent production alone is astonishing…and that much of it remains interesting makes it even more so.

Mark S, have you read Luke Roberts on Prynne? A useful review is linked to here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet-books/2019/08/luke-roberts-reviews-recent-work-by-jeremy-prynne

I also highly rec the Paris Review interview feature— a really interesting view of the man and his work.

cheers!

Reading Amis's The Green Man and getting bored.

It's that depressing state when you're not enjoying a book, but you've already invested so much time, you might as well finish it

It's very short (175 pages) but teeny type. The book itself is quite funny in parts, a well-plotted mystery, lots of memorable lines and memorably horrific moments, but it's not really my thing.

This was from Amis's right-wing loon phases AFAIK but he's unexpectedly strong at interrogating that looniness - I've never read Amis (Kingsley) before

If you are a writer and also teach, how do you feel about what you do in these roles? Can they maintain their independence and freedom? How can we preserve this?

I have some thoughts on your question from my own angle as a poet and educator, youn, but I'm in a bit of a runaround today. Still, keeping your question in mind, as it's a good one!

After spending an evening reading essays by Jorge Luis Borges, I stuck a toe in the waters of Hadrian the Seventh, Frederick Rolfe, as a candidate for my next book, but in the first dozen pages the powerful egoism of the author is so evident it suggests full-blown narcissism, and I'm not sure I can stick with it.

Reading Amis's The Green Man and getting bored.

It's that depressing state when you're not enjoying a book, but you've already invested so much time, you might as well finish it

It's very short (175 pages) but teeny type. The book itself is quite funny in parts, a well-plotted mystery, lots of memorable lines and memorably horrific moments, but it's not really my thing.

This was from Amis's right-wing loon phases AFAIK but he's unexpectedly strong at interrogating that looniness - I've never read Amis (Kingsley) before

― Chuck_Tatum,

Aw! I liked it -- one of his best. I'd have suggested Lucky Jim as a starting point. A lol every page and a half.

I remember liking it too! I might have to get on this Prynne train once I’m done with Ulysses, which I suspect will be next WAYR thread