The (S)word in the Autumn Stone: What Are You Reading, Fall 2022?

That's what I meant, I mean.

If anybody wants to change the title, it's okay by me.

i don't care about the title, but this entire process is fully established as aimless's thing and one should wait for him to either make a new thread or abdicate the role

and he hasn't done the latter

B-but I've done it several times, so have Chinaski and some others. Take this one if you want it, Aimless, all good.

My main complaint is that it’s much too long, but then again we’re all readers here, so whatever!

Reading Wanda Coleman and some others at the moment.

this entire process is fully established as aimless's thing

nope. check the stats, mookieproof. it's a team effort.

okay man!

I'm far enough into Les Misérables that I think I'm officially "reading" it. Good so far.

Seeing by Jose Saramago - enjoyable but more whimsical, less profound - and less depressing - than Blindness.

The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt. A novel comprised of diary extracts, interviews, and the like, about a female artist, exasperated that her work is taken less seriously than that of men, who decides to hide her work behind 'masks' of other male artists. Brimming with philosophy, psychology, history, as well as imaginatively drawn characters.

Second Place by Rachel Cusk - I'm half way through, not sure if it's a serious study of a very thoughtful woman or a comic piece about a pathological overthinker. Maybe the ambiguity is intentional. Where the Outline trilogy was full of fascinating and often profound glimpses into other people's lives and thoughts, the narrators thoughts here are often opaque or cryptic - to me anyway - but not in an off-putting way, I want to figure them out.

It's remarkable that JLC started as a detective writer, in effect.

I think much spy fiction, certainly including JLC, is very close to detective fiction anyway: there's usually a mystery with lots of twists, and the noir vision of a fallen world where everyone's out for themselves and any moral man will be driven to despair fits like a glove to Cold War realpolitik.

Robert Arthur, ALFRED HITCHCOCK AND THE THREE INVESTIGATORS IN THE MYSTERY OF THE VANISHING TREASURE (1968).

This one features an invasion of Gnomes.

to me -- as a bit of a JLC sceptic (three good books tops) -- i do think it's interesting that he realised he had something with smiley as a character like right away (ie in call for the dead, his first book) and so wrote a folloow-up presumably feeling (i) that ordinary spy fiction didn't quite suit this character in the role he envisioned (or wouldn't interestingly sustain several books in the mode of call for the dead) a and (ii) maybe tec fiction could! he could dispense with one set of conventions and drag out another!

so he immediately switched to a gentleman-amateur whodunit and tried it out and evidently (equally immediately) decided that no, tec fiction wasn't going to be it (he's right, it's not one of his three good books) so he then straight went back to spy fiction and gradually fashioned a new mode of it where this character as he envisioned him could be successfully central (for at least one great book = tinker tailor; with actually a longtail aftermath of increasingly tiresome entries but by then he'd blocked himself in)*

smiley's roles in the spy books before TTSS are i guess a useful fashioning of backstory but it's not really of consequence that it's smiley undertaking them except as a token in a broader world-building (the circus)

*ok i do quite enjoy smiley's people as a sequence of setpiece scenes (and toby has good stuff in it) but it's sentimental fan service at best (even the toby stuff if im really real abt it) plus karla's daughter is a classic jlc dud (he can write women but if they approach any intensity of damaged sexiness that right there is his achilles heel)

i am so pleased you are reading the THREE INVESTIGATORS books pinefox, even if it means you are probably not better yet -- get well soon!

Thanks Mark S, I greatly appreciate your last post.

I have one more THREE INVESTIGATORS on the shelf which I may yet manage.

But why do you think A MURDER OF QUALITY is not good?

I think it is excellent except in that I am not certain that the murder mystery quite adds up. The surrounding description etc I find very fine.

It is funny that Smiley is in THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD (the next book), but in a supporting role. Very curious for an author to do that with his main creation.

I've always liked the thought of Hitchcock being called away from setting up a shot on eg Topaz to help out the Three Investigators with the case of the stuttering parrot.

I am sure that I have read the Parrot one, which is flagged as next at the end of TERROR CASTLE. But I don't seem to have a copy of it anymore.

The Hitchcock Introduction to VANISHING TREASURE is truly desultory. But the lady with the Gnomes is supposed to be a friend of his.

it's 20-plus years since i read a murder of quality so i don't remember anything beyond a general impatient disappointment and no wish ever to reread it, even when it came time to reread all the smiley books (which are very variable)

if i hazard a partial guess i am out of the sympathy with the milieu it's set in (tho this doesn't for example set me off with christie or sayers) and i am never terribly invested in the fine clockwork of the precision of a good whodunit itself, but both of these arise from the shape of the wider genre and not of the book itself. and tbh i would generally say i am fine with the wider genre, even if i come at it from a slight angle (i don't really care who dun it)

but most of my books are packed up right now so a diagnostic reread will have to wait

On milieu: the milieu, ie: the old private school, is alienating, and this could put a reader off -- but it becomes very clear that JLC is at odds with this, rather than promoting it. His satire of the vicious snobbery is quite direct.

One tic that worked well for me was a schoolmaster repeatedly telling Smiley something about the school's rituals and adding 'of course, you probably know this already' - ie: assuming the fame of his own institution. JLC doesn't comment on this but lets us observe it. I have been in slightly similar conversations myself, when briefly stepping into unfamiliar cultural zones like this. Like Smiley I nod and imply, as far as possible, whatever they want to think.

Oh my god can we PLEASE keep the tedious back and forth conversation about detective and murder mystery books to their own thread

I’d rather read people’s thoughts books on this thread than stupid back and forth about thread title (and also people simply naming what books they’re reading, put some effort into it, would you).

Anyway, what the fuck am I reading? A question I am constantly asking myself atm.

Giant Splash: Bondsian Blasts, World Series Parades, and Other Thrilling Moments by the Bay - Andrew Baggarly. Nonfiction about a sport I knew fuck all about until a couple of months ago is it, apparently. I read part of Baggarly’s other book about this Giants side, Band of Misfits on Google books one night I was having difficulty getting to sleep - side note, do not read about baseball when you’re trying to get to sleep, you might end up getting into it accidentally - and ordered it from my local shop; I’ve been reading this one while I waited for it to come in. It’s a lot more dense and serious in tone than what I’ve read of BoM but very useful.

You can tell how much the author loves the side. He breaks up quotes from players and managers with questions of his own, either contemporaneous or answered in follow up paragraphs. There’s plenty of colour and he’s frank about the various sides’ failures and jubilant in their triumphs. Each chapter is dense with info, you can’t read this all in one sitting, but it’s so far been an immensely rewarding read. They’re an interesting team to read about not just because of the group of players but because the stress they put their fans and themselves under with the combo of strong pitching and often inadequate run support.

A day later, broadcaster Duane Kuiper continued to ruminate on all the unbelievably wasted opportunities in the 1–0 loss—including a leadoff triple from Nate Schierholtz in the eighth inning—and he opened the telecast with a quick recap. Then he stared into the camera and used the only word he could to summarize the situation. “Giants baseball,” he said. One beat. Two beats. “Torture.” It was a one-word slogan that struck a chord with fans. For the remainder of the season, TORTURE signs dotted the ballpark. When the Giants lost, they lost in excruciating fashion. And when they won, it was almost never a comfortable blowout.

Yeah, classic sportswriting quote. Will look for that at library.
Speaking of JLC for a sec, think it was caek who recently mentioned A Small Town In Germany as "a banger."

Pinefox, I'm sorry, I didn't handle that well. Hope you're feeling better.

Think I'm gonna put in a request for (shorter, more seasonal) thread title in several hours, if no one else has.

It's fine, dow.

Robert Arthur, ALFRED HITCHCOCK AND THE THREE INVESTIGATORS IN THE MYSTERY OF THE VANISHING TREASURE (1968).

This one features an invasion of Gnomes.

― the pinefox,

I bought a bunch of those paperbacks used on Amazon at the start of the pandemic.

Did you read them?

I know them of old, but it's so long ago that any plot surprises are now fresh to me.

They don't really have the pleasurable value of reading an adult detective novel, though they do carry part of it, as a basic structure: a mystery or crime; clues; suspects; a false trail before finding the right one.

They also strike me as a precursor to, or contemporary with, SCOOBY-DOO, ie: it's very close to "unmask the mummy and it turns out to be the sinister janitor".

I read them in elementary school. I liked the small inversions -- the kid with the glasses is NOT the leader or the smart one. I liked the junkyard with the hidden entrances. I liked Jupe and his deductive skills.

I think he only has glasses in the illustrations! Well, in the two volumes I've seen so far.

I was absolutely fascinated by the Three Investigators when I was a kid. I dreamed of living in a junkyard like Jupiter Jones.

he kid with the glasses is NOT the leader or the smart one

Right! Instead, it was the kid who labored under the moniker "Baby Fatso" from his child star days.

I dreamed of living in a junkyard like Jupiter Jones.

a sublime sentence

Jupiter Jones finally got what he wanted when he was cast as Jon Hamm's wife in Mad Men.

Three Investigators books share some of the same Californian sea breeze and sunshine ambience as the Lew Archer books, so I can see the connection in pinefox's reading. Aside from yes, Scooby Doo, it's the same mise-en-scene as in West Coast shot serial TV shows - all that good daylight shooting time, but murderous too.

well put lol

Yes, good post Ward Fowler.

Again, Hollywood itself is also a connection. In THE BARBAROUS COAST they have a fight in the middle of a film set, and Lew Archer later thinks critical thoughts about Hollywood, which he then sends up as "deep thoughts". In THE THREE INVESTIGATORS they travel to a studio where Hitchcock has a bungalow, and the first novel revolves around a silent-era star who is still using his old props and costumes.

Haven't yet heard about Mark S's relation to the THREE INVESTIGATORS series, something I look forward to.

After months of being very intrigued by it, I am about to start Sean Thor Conroe's Fuccboi.

Speaking of JLC for a sec, think it was caek who recently mentioned A Small Town In Germany as "a banger."

i looked it up. it was apparently "an absolute banger".

certainly better than murder of quality. i don't get a lot out of mysteries generally, but i don't remember MOQ striking me as a particularly good (or bad) one. the cultural critique struck me as a little ... broad? iirc. lacking subtlety.

I’d rather read people’s thoughts books on this thread than stupid back and forth about thread title (and also people simply naming what books they’re reading, put some effort into it, would you).

― barry sito (gyac), Monday, September 26, 2022 4:07 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Okay.

The Wanda Coleman book— a collected poems from late 60s to mid-80s— is strange in that there is the hum of Black Arts movement writing in it, but because Coleman was based in Los Angeles rather than NY, there are some different cadences and focuses in the work. A lot less spiritual consciousness thematics and much more about daily struggle of being a poor Black woman artist on the ground. It's also quite different than some of the poems being made by other Black female poets from this time, such Audre Lorde, Pat Parker, and June Jordan. More unpredictable and loose. I'm glad to be reading it.

I loved the Three Investigators when I was a kid - along with the Hardy Boys books, they fuelled hours of idle sleuthing and fence climbing.

(Seeing as we're having a navel-gazing day: is the capitalising of the titles of books some unspoken rule from days past or just a quirk? It's like being poked in the eye.)

Capitalization of book titles is right there in The Rule Book, on page 37, if you'd like to consult your copy, under: Proper names, capitalization thereof.

back after a protracted period of work, mainly to say Diego Garcia by Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams is a very good, perhaps surprisingly good book. The narrator is a 'we' comprising a he and a she writer, proxies you assume for the actual authors, drifting in Edinburgh, suffering from a form of hypersensitised post-GFC and creative anomie. Periodically the narrative will bifurcate into a double-columned page, when they are apart from each other. The actual subject of the book is the forced expulsion of the Chagos Islanders in 1965 as part of the creation of a US Air Force base on the Mauritian island of Diego Garcia, among others, and the last British colony, The British Indian Ocean Territory.

I don't really feel the yoking together of these two worlds should work. at all. but it does. it's very well written for a start, with a strong sense of material surroundings and a sentenceless, fluid prose style. the popular culture references are extremely on point - it feels like a v ilx novel, in some respects. Music, drink, creativity, sadness, anger, politics, the quotidian, conmingling.

One half of the we is Mauritian, which provides part of the connection. But in general, the notion of sagren – Sagren, to the Chagos refugees, signifies a mix of nostalgia, desperation and overwhelming sorrow – a sickness for home so intense it can be lethal – and anger, of being dislocated in a time of 'Emergency', of the state of the two narrators, and the Chagossian they meet for a short while on the streets of Edinburgh, come together to present a sense of the current state of things:

The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the state of emergency in which we live is not the exception but the rule.

The Chagossian, who gave himself the name of Diego, left his various items of baggage in a pub - Sandy Bell's for anyone whose been there, a very good bar, I recollect - and they put it into a trolley with a bosky wheel to try and take it back to where they live, so they can find him and return the bags.

And then Diego goes and leaves his bags he says. Maybe he feels lighter without them. Think about the effort of me pushing you she says, think about this journey home.

It seemed to describe the minute to minute difficulties of being a migrant very well, in quite a surprising but natural way. A lot of the book is like that.

I'm only a third of the way through, but yeah, recommend it.

a return to a previous conversation as well, because i read a load of other wimsey novels and i must disagree with mark s when he says that wimsey's irritating manner is part of how he detects. honestly *everyone loves him*. yokels defer to his 'bungho' bullshit, women of all classes relent and unbend at his natural talent for being very wealthy and relaxed about it too, oafs, boors and criminals obviously don't get it, but yes, otherwise, the most beloved man in the british isles.

otoh, the early novesl are *shot through* with bleak and alarming expression of PTSD from Wimsey and others, including self-immolation from one character, and a naked, stark fear from Wimsey, whispering in the middle of the night, when he's thrown back through overwork into the WW1 trenches in his mind. i think in many respects it was mainly his courtship of Harriet Vane I despised mainly.

i also picked up The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen, on recommendation from an ilxor, and very psychologically intense and beautifully written it is too, right in the middle of WW2 with very brilliant depictions of character and behaviour. I put it back on the shelf, because i'd only been waiting for something else, but i'm going to need to pick it up again soon. it seemed remarkable.

Bowne and Taylor have been my major discoveries of the last four yeasr.

*Bowen

the quality of the writing is of a different order - in both, though the force and intensity of the bowen really took me aback at the weekend. not just the quality of sentences as such, though v much that, but the quality of insight and observation.

there is an an extraordinarily generous - though not always kind - range and subtlety of emotion on display, and dramatically active.

actually in The Heat of the Day it’s the level of sexual anger, connivance and antagonism at play that is really striking.

Damn, still need to read her novels--The Collected Stories stayed amazing alll the way through its many, many pages (I read the edition with royal blue cover and dumbo intro; current one has John Banville in front, who is very likely better, almost has to be). She was b. 1899, teen prodigy telling it here right into late 60s (cigs got her Feb. '73, when she was still 73). I'd rave on, but have done so on several previous WAYR?s which that collection took me through.

Speaking of WWI's lingering effects, was thinking about that this weekend, reading a study which projects the decimation of Russia's mass-mobilized workforce, based on what's already happened in earlier Ukraine campaigns (so maybe a conservative estimate). Thinking about its effects in 20s and 30s, through Depression, for instance. And that brief mention in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, as how Brodie got that way, at least in part: raised to believe that serving a wife would make sense of everything, but then either Johnny didn't come marching home or was damaged goods, likely enough.

serving *as* wife

Tastes don't have to square, tabes, and I'm surprised you keep insisting on it. Sort of the point of taste.

Some people have it and some people don't. The table is like Le Bec Fin of ILB.

Bono can only hope that everyone who voted in U2 - Songs of Innocence POLL will go out and buy his book.

While we are on the subject of autobiographies of musicians, I'll put in another plug for Debbie Harry's book, Face It. It's very readable and entertaining, and her voice comes across as authentic. I'm still laughing about her David Bowie anecdote.

Some of the SONGS OF INNOCENCE songs and titles do figure in the very early chapters of SURRENDER (the little I've read), because much of that LP is a deliberate, perhaps strained, attempt to sing about early life, Dublin c.1970s.

I'm also a reading walker! it's pretty unsafe tbh but sometimes it's just the thing. it's funny when I'm reading some giant book but I do it anyway.

here's me this year:

The Last Man, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Home: New Arabic Poems (anthology), Two Lines Press
Tales of Hoffman, ETA Hoffman, tr. Hollindale
Real Easy, Marie Rutkowski
Homecoming, Magda Isanos, forgot to note translator
Post Exoticism in Ten Lessons, Lesson Eleven, Antoine Volodine, tr. Mahaney
Bardo or Not Bardo, Antoine Volodine, tr. Mahaney
War and Peace, Tolstoy, tr. Briggs
Leeches, David Albahari, tr. Elias-Bursac
Bartleby & Co., Enrique Vila-Matas, tr. Dunne
Obscure Destinies, Willa Cather
Bloodlines, Melissa del Bosque
Go Tell It On the Mountain, James Baldwin
Another Country, James Baldwin
The Invention of Morel, Adolfo Bioy-Casares, tr. Simms
The Good Conscience, Carlos Fuentes, tr. not listed anywhere in early paperback ed.!!
The Union Jack, Imre Kertesz, tr. Wilkinson
The Judgment of Richard Richter, Igor Stiks, tr. Elias-Bursac
After the Banquet, Yukio Mishima. tr. Keene
The Islamist Phoenix, Loretta Napoleoni
Ways of Going Home, Alejandro Zambra, tr. Mcdurell
The Art of Flight, Sergio Pitól, tr. George Henson
Detective Story, Imre Kertesz, tr. Wilkinson
A Brief History of Portable Literature, Enrique Vila-Matas, tr. Bunstead & McLean
The Devil's Home on Leave, Derek Raymond
Destroy, She Said, Marguerite Duras, tr. Bray
The Journey, Sergio Pitól, tr. George Henson
Introduction to Emptiness, Guy Newman
The Autobiography of Phra Ajaan Lee, tr. name illegible in my notebook
The Master of Knots, Massimo Carlotto, tr. Woodall

I'll probably finish By Bus, the truly delightful book by Erica Van Horn I'm presently reading, tonight or tomorrow, and then tomorrow I'll fret about whether to read a super short book in one day to get one more in, or start in on something ambitious.

Wonderful year in reading for me. Music and literature, as magnificent and eternally new to me still as they were when I first discovered them as a child.

otm

A Brief History of Portable Literature sounds intriguing. Was it as charmingly entertaining as the blurbs make it sound?

it's good, and sometimes seems more than good, though Bartleby & Co. is richer, I think

thx

War and Peace, Tolstoy, tr. Briggs

The Good Conscience, Carlos Fuentes, tr. not listed anywhere in early paperback ed.!!

The Last Man, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

at the risk of being all morbs

Please use the receptacle provided: What are you reading as 2023 begins?

I usually post a link to the newest WAYR, but I figured there might be some 'clean up' on this needed for the ongoing discussions on this one before 2022 officially ended so I put it off a bit.

Ursula Le Guin -- S/D, etc.

The Whole New Yorker Raymond Carver Thing

for xmas i was given THE FALL OF NÚMENOR (by various tolkiens and others), written up here: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series

I'd like to be able to comment on that, Mark S, but haven't read this stuff properly since THE SILMARILLION when I was ... 13? I feel that I set myself rather an unnecessarily difficult and dreary challenge in that instance. I did read it all. I should have focused more on just properly reading THE LORD OF THE RINGS.

The comic book (c.1990?) of THE HOBBIT is very good.