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

Palaces For The People How TO Build A More Equal & United Society Eric Klinenberg
book looking at the importance of social infrastructure in society. I caught a webinar with the writer last week and ordered the book through interlibrary loan and it came through on Tuesday. For some reason it got issued to me but somehow not officially checked out , not sure how taht happened. I got home and it was still showing up as arrived. I forgot it was in my bag when i was in another library and the buzzer went off when I left. Took it in to check it out officially todayl.
Anyway, enjoying it . He covered a lot of what I've read in the talk last week but it is in more depth here. Talking about the importance of libraries as social hubs etc and the other dimensions tahn it just being a place for borrowing and reading books.
I found out after ordering it that I have a book he cowrote with Aziz Ansari called Modern Romance which I picked up a few weeks ago too.
I'm about 1/3rd of the way through this and enjoying it.

Michael Lewis The Fifth Risk
his look into the various strands of govt run agencies etc and why and how people took jobs there . Very interesting. Source book for Adam Conover's teh G Word where he looks into the same subject matter now, this book was triggered by trump coming to power without a transition group which was a break in tradition about how things were handed over. & I think has had a widespread consequence which is hopefully being overcome.

Hermann Burger - Brenner

This is a novel but there is very little dialogue, its more like a set of recollections of the narrator's life (based on the author, this was published in the late 80s, it was set to be a quartet of books but he only completed one hundred more pages of the 2nd book before he died by his own hand) set to the page. It avoids being Proust -- as it lacks the panorama-like views, and there aren't any developed characters bar the author's inner monologue -- and it also avoids being Bernhard as it has a very resigned mood without the anger and humour. Its someone writing at the very nervous edge of their life.

What it does get across is that post-industrial, central European, rich society. One of business, cars, lush-ness - he plays the son of a family of cigar makers, and the book is full of digressions on the cigar (as much as Melville talks about whales) - contrasting it with a poverty of spirit, of nervous wrecks at the end of their lives, but one of which is transmitted in that cool style. But mastering prose doesn't mean you've mastered your life. In the end you do run out of pages.

One of the best things I'll read all year but I wouldn't recommend it unless you heard about it from somewhere else.

"Being Here is Everything" (2016) by by Marie Darrieussecq (tr. Penny Hueston 2017), which is a beautiful and melancholy life of the painter Paula Modersohn-Becker, drawing heavily from (apparently plentiful) documentary sources. Her story skips by in a few relatively simple strokes and is pretty good at laying out various obstacles and indignities suffered by Becker in her too-brief life. I think the book wants me to be more interested in Rilke than I am, and he looms large-ish, I guess at least in part because the documentary sources by and about him are certainly plentiful. It's good.

― Tim, Friday, 29 July 2022 bookmarkflaglink

She is great. I really like The Phantom Husband, heard of that book and will try and pick it up sometime.

I finished Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. It thoughtfully addresses the moral problems it posed, but the morality which had relevance in this world was fairly commonplace and that which dealt with novelties like humanlike androids had little relevance outside of the imaginary confines of the story. On the other hand, it didn't need to be profound for it to be entertaining and that was enough for me.

I've been reading "The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge" by Rainer Maria Rilke. Its a longish, continuous work of prose fiction so I guess it meets the definition of a novel, though it has only the very loosest notion of plot. More a loosely connected sequence of reveries. It has a blurb from Elizabeth Hardwick on the back cover, and if anything it reminds me a bit of her novel, "Sleepless Nights". There are some very lovely passages in the Stephen Mitchell translation.

Noted both of those (was already interested in the Hardwick, after reading New Yorker profile, but this association is a good reminder). Thanks.

Where we stand:class matters Bell Hooks,
still working through whatever of bell hooks books i can get my hands on . This has been on request for months buit sitting i a warehouse connected to a library elsewhere in teh county. I was told a few months back taht it would eventually get to me and finally had to get somebody rung so it could actually make its way to me.
So I'm halfway through it and its bell talking about her poor upbringing and class in America. So quite memoir based but tying in to comment on societal structure.
I'm enjoying it anyway.

Nikki Sixx The Heroin Diaries
a recent acquisition of a book I have seen around for a few years. Quite interesting and scathing, watching somebody's heroin addicted dodgy behaviour being noted by himself , now with commentary from those he was hanging around with. That means band members, family and friends 20 years later.
Found it cheap and it was something I thought might be an interesting read. Now seeing what his musical tastes were so obviously Motley Crue must be a band worth checking out, yeah?

The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra - He is a good writer, and it will be a pleasure to read the rest of his books. I am only partially through the first story (cursory reaction: need to think about characteristics of totalitarian regimes vs. "free" societies in science fiction or social satire; short stories should probably be read through without a break).

I'm starting into Black Wings Has My Angel, Elliot Chaze.

Always been curious about that one.

It certainly starts out strongly.

I love Black Wings Has My Angel!

yeah great book

Just finished, and loved, Tehanu. It seems like one of the greatest ever examples of a book that's deliberately, perversely, in opposition to what its readers might have expected -- but that turns out to be the perfect approach.

Yes, high five!

Currently reading Alan Garner's Red Shift, I can see why it's so acclaimed but it's not quite working for me. Tom in particular is, well, quite annoying. Yes he's only a teenager and has every right to be but that doesn't make it easier to read.

I finished Joseph Conrad's NOSTROMO (1904) - a remarkable, rich novel, which becomes exciting.

I started James Rebanks, ENGLISH PASTORAL (2020) - a non-fictional book about sustainable farming.

I seem to have been reading Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake for as long as it would take to build a crumbling Gothic castle.

Gavin Lambert's The Goodbye People.

I started listening to Rachel Kushner's book of essays (or is it a memoir?) The Hard Crowd, read by the author. The first piece (about the Baja motorcycle race) was such a distilled universe, I need time to process it before I go any further. I hope the remaining pieces reach the same heights, and at the same time I sort of don't because it would be exhausting! But she has definitely earned a new fan.

Also I really want to listen to the motorcycle piece again with my mom

Allan Jones Can't Stand Up For Falling Down
Melody Maker scribe then editor and founder of uncut magazine's anthology of anecdotes about dealing with various musicians etc.
Quite good if you like this kind of thing.

I have owned multiple copies of Gavin Lambert's The Slide Area in multiple houses over multiple decades, but never actually read it... perhaps I should

Finished a few books over the past few weeks, including some chaps (most notable being by a young Indigenous writer to watch out for, Hataałiinez Wheeler). These included:

Rabih Alameddine, The Wrong End of the Telescope
Piero Heliczer, a purchase in the white botanica
Steve Malmude, The Bundle: Selected Poems

The Heliczer was super interesting from a poetic and cultural standpoint— he was a schizophrenic who collaborated at times with Warhol, Gerard Malanga, George Whitman, the Schneemans, etc. He fathered children all over the world. And his poetry was often quite good— a fine mix of concrete and abstract language congealing into sort of dream-like, surprising poems. Worth checking out.

Also the Alameddine was great, he is one of our best living novelists as far as I'm concerned— The Wrong End deals with a trans woman doctor who goes to the island of Lesbos during the Syrian refugee crisis in 2015. It's wrenching but also episodic, and thus pretty easy to read.

Oh yeah---had forgotten name & title, but your description of Alameddine's novel reminds me: some intriguing reviews, all favorable.

Been reading Brazilian (Giovana Madalosso), Catalan (Jaume Cabré) and Portuguese (Mário Zambujal) authors, but none of the books I read have been translated into English so have nothing to contribute here.

Just put myself through a re-read of The Information by Martin Amis for reasons I can't quite fathom. It is very bloated and not very good.

Moving on to either Luke Cassidy's Iron Annie or Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan, which comes highly blurbbed by Anne Enright and given that I've spent much of the past few months reading (and pretty much loving) everything Enright has published I might opt for that.

recent reads:

Sarah Schulman - After Delores
Sesshu Foster - World Ball Notebook
Elfriede Jelinek - The Piano Teacher
Adolfo Bioy Casares - The Invention of Morel and Other Stories

& just finishing up Rafael Chirbes' Cremation

I am reading A Good Little School, about Jefferson County (Colorado) Open School. It's an "alternative" school that I had the good fortune to attend back in the 70s. It's still going. Their educational approach is remarkable. The book is written by an educator and takes a professional approach, with lots of input from students, staff and parents (which is very consistent with the school's philosophy). Not for everyone, maybe, but it's an examination of a way of educating the whole person that could/should serve as a model.

zak, did you like the Foster? i think he's incredible

Yes, he's one of my favorites! City of the Future (in particular) is one of the books I am always trying to convince people I know to read.

How is the Chirbes?

I picked up 'World Ball Notebook' in 2017 on a whim at a lovely shop in SF, was completely blown away, and have read a book of his ever year since then, including the novels— I had some trouble stomaching Atomik Aztex but it was worth it in the end, plus my copy was inscribed (twice!) to some old friend of his who taught at Berkeley and passed away.

I read most of Atomik Aztex stuck in an airport -- appropriately claustrophobic and bleak and grotesque. I'm glad I read it, but it's not one I return to like his others. Almost an opposite reading experience.

I have mixed feelings about Chirbes' Cremation. It's the first of his I've read and I may try another. The late-stage capitalism in post-Franco Spain context is not something with which I am familiar, and some of those setting details are engrossing. It's a character study: dense internal monologue chapters alternating between different characters, mostly members of one family, intertwined perspectives, and I ended up liked the ambling, pace ("understated plot," maybe). Has some *underworld* plot elements and stock tropes that I found a little too prestige TV for my tastes.

I finished Black Wings Has My Angel last night. It was like a master class in how to write a crime noir novel. The narration is carefully pared down to a series of vivid, highly concrete details, through which the story takes on a kind of hyper-realism. That approach also allows the story to incorporate lots of (male) fantasy elements about sex, violence and alcohol while retaining its vivid sense of realism. It's a neat trick and this one was of far higher quality than the run of the mill "booze, bullets & broads" crime noir.

Afterwards I read about the first 60 pages of Eve's Hollywood, Eve Babitz. She is obviously a natural-born sensualist, a self-dramatist and a romantic, but all that fits perfectly with her being a child of Hollywood insiders (on the 'talent' side of the business, not the 'investor' side) and so the overall effect charming rather than annoying.

I finished reading James Rebanks, ENGLISH PASTORAL (2020). It comprises 3 parts: one describing life on his grandfather's old hill farm; one describing new, industrial / agribusiness practices; one describing what the author is now trying to do with the farm - which is focused on creating spaces for wildlife.

The main message is that industrial farming, chemicals, homogenization, efficiency, etc, which have produced more food and made it cheaper, have been bad for the land, for wildlife and plants, and are not sustainable. I am highly sympathetic to this view and glad that this farmer has reached it. However, I am not sure that he squares the circle in terms of marrying sustainability to productivity. That is: if we agree to drop the pesticides etc and become more traditional, diverse and nature-friendly, won't farming be less productive and will it be able to feed people?

Perhaps it will. He talks of the importance of local food. Again I am sympathetic in principle. Perhaps in fact the issue is cost. Perhaps sustainable farming *can* produce enough food, but it would or should be more expensive. Then, of course, many people would say that food is already too expensive - especially the way prices are now going up. It is probably a grim irony that food prices are now rising but not for the good reasons that this farmer would like them to.

I am quite convinced by this farmer's account of how good his new farming is for nature. I support him. I worry that even these good efforts will be overtaken by things far beyond his control, like climate breakdown.

The book is mostly well written, sometimes 'poetic' about nature, and makes its arguments convincingly. The rhetoric can, though, be more repetitive than it needs to be, and the book thus probably could have been slightly shorter than 280 pages.

That is: if we agree to drop the pesticides etc and become more traditional, diverse and nature-friendly, won't farming be less productive and will it be able to feed people?

One possibility is that slow food production could be larger proportion of GDP: more could be devoted to producing essentials carefully.

I am enjoying the mordant gallows humor in The Tsar of Love and Techno. It is strange to think that some part of it takes place in the 1990s and early 2000s, which may sound like ancient history for some posters. There is a time warp to living in Siberia and one related perhaps to COVID and its fallout.

In KSR's Pacific Edge, everyone (in OC) can have a vegetable garden rather than a swimming pool in their backyard.

To address the question of affordability, I think the ideal would be global informed subsistence farming and sociocultural intelligence and government policy to favor local consumption and doing without where temptation is socially constructed. Information on farming practices could come from many sources.

it's also important to remember that as food options have grown in western countries, so has the amount of energy needed to transport those goods to stores. simultaneously, food waste has grown to be an immeasurably large problem.

Related to what youn notes is the fact that the spectacle of *excess* and *abundance* is also socially constructed, and can be changed— what if people began rejecting out-of-season produce as wasteful and shitty, because it is? No one needs strawberries year round!

Representation Stuart Hall.
seems to be a course text book but is filled with comment on the act of Representation from hall and various authors he has selected.
I find the subject pretty interesting, it covers/overlaps several other disciplines I'm interested in Semiotics/linguistics etc etc
I think I may have got myself stuck with too many thick books for the time of year. A bit hot to engage with things as deeply as i would like. But looking forward to get further into this.

finished Michael Lewis the Fifth Risk
Which I have come across other media tied into. I'm remembering the ending subject of working out drift on shipwrecked etc objects/people at sea from a couple of places from a couple of years ago. Listening to so many podcasts etc that I'm not remembering exactly what came from where from a couple of years back. Just that it presumably did tie in to either this book , which came out in the wake of Trump taking over and misusing the government departments, neglecting them, understaffing them etc etc either this book or the person talked about in it.
Adam Conover has used the book as the source for his latest tv series The G-Word which was also pretty interesting.

Think I am either going to read The Book of V: Opening Pandora's Box by Catherine Blackledge which I inherited fro a girlfriend 16 years ago but never finished or go into I Am Damo Suzuki which again I started but didn't finish this time about 2 years ago.

I read Andrew Holleran’s Kingdom of Sand for my book club, and almost everyone hated it when we discussed it (these are all gay men). They thought that he hadn’t progressed psychologically from the adoration of beauty and the homosexual self-hatred he wrote about in 1978’s Dancer From the Dance, his first and most acclaimed novel.

It really seemed to strike a nerve. It was about the slow diminishment of the narrator’s life as a single gay man in his 60s moving to rural Florida to take care of his dying parents, and about his sexual encounters involving bathrooms and adult bookstores in rural locations (which was definitely a thing for gay men in the past), and I think people thought it was too focused on loss of dignity. Well, of course it was, that was what it was about.

“One of the great appeals of Florida has always been the sense that the minute you get here you have permission to collapse.”

“There is a delicate undercurrent beneath get-togethers among singles on holidays that mingles the comfort of having a friend to relieve your isolation with the realization that the two of you have nobody else.”

It was a story that ruminated and circled back so many times to his isolation and sexual frustration that it was hard to get bearings on where you were located in the narrative. But I liked it, it was kind of funny, was very honest about where he was coming from, and was a realistic portrayal of a particular historical subset of gay men

Andrew Holleran is now 79, so pretty old, and I think that this story is about his generation. Edmund White is even older, 82, and writes and talks about the same stuff

I have appreciation for both White and Holleran, but it’s always because of their early achievements

What are their best books?

I think for Andrew Holleran it’s Dancer From the Dance from 1978, and for Edmund White it’s A Boy’s Own Story from 1982 (the first in a trilogy that included The Beautiful Room Is Empty and The farewell Symphony)

they are period pieces, though

I started Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A STUDY IN SCARLET (1887): the first Sherlock Holmes story, in fact a short novel.

A reminder of Dr John Watson's past as a surgeon to the army in the empire; and Holmes also is first encountered at a medical school. In fact for good or ill I've found myself reading this slightly through the lens of the first episode of SHERLOCK, with, yes, Benedict Cumberbatch.

I find the novels generally uncharming and overextended -- it's a shame that Hound of the Baskervilles is so well-known, as the mystery is too obvious and the book as a whole is quite dull. "Sign of Four" is the best -- there's a jaunty penny dreadful vibe and the flashbacks are more fun.

(As such Sign of Four kind of works through the lens of Young Sherlock Holmes)

What are their best books?

― dow, Thursday, August 11, 2022 10:21 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I think for Andrew Holleran it’s Dancer From the Dance from 1978, and for Edmund White it’s A Boy’s Own Story from 1982 (the first in a trilogy that included The Beautiful Room Is Empty and The farewell Symphony)

― Dan S, Thursday, August 11, 2022

I've been on a White kick. His memoir about reading is lovely, and his last few novels, though minor, are delights. I'd say start with Our Young Man.

As for Holleran, he wrote a slim novel about melancholy and Washington DC and Henry Adams called Grief; one of the decade's best.

> A reminder of Dr John Watson's past as a surgeon to the army in the empire

afghanistan as well, which suited the tv updating

must've seen a hundred versions of HoftheBs but i still couldn't tell you the reveal. maybe i should read it and it'll finally click.