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

All I've so far read of her Collected Stories is fine, and often see very affordable second-hand copies listed here and there.

Violet Kupersmith - BUILD YOUR HOUSE AROUND MY BODY

really liked it but didn't understand it.

I did have the radical idea (at least for me) that I could stop reading it and pick up something more enjoyable. Once I might try that instead of bending to my usual anxiety about sunken costs.

I've done this a fair bit in recent months and it's playing with fire tbh, once you allow yourself to do this once you get far more demanding of instant gratification and end up with dozens of half read books.

I am reading Georges Simenon, MAIGRET TEN UN PIEGE / MAIGRET SETS A TRAP (1955). I have not read Maigret before. I like detective fiction and this is very much the sort of thing I would like. It is easy to read and I am enjoying it. Quite possibly I will go on to read lots more.

However, I am unsure ... how good it is.

For one thing it seems to bear little resemblance to the classical detection paradigm in which there should be a range of suspects and a lot of clues for the reader to consider. The 'puzzle element' is apparently lacking. That doesn't make it bad, just possibly removes one set of pleasures. But as I have not finished the novel, perhaps I am wrong in this particular assessment.

The writing can be confounding in that it will elide one scene or moment to another - Maigret is in his office, then in the corridor, then in a bar round the corner, in the space of a couple of sentences. The author uses lines of dialogue to interrupt his narrative accounts of thought and action, and they seem in effect to wake us up in a new location.

The writing is plain. That can be fine, but it can also seem ... clumsy? And yet, one immediately says, this is a translation. So is it a bad, clumsy translation of something that was originally elegant? I doubt that it is actually a bad translation. I suspect, rather, that French has something (elegance, indeed) that easily gets lost in translation.

The book seems like it can easily be read in a day. I like this. Quite probably next year I will read more in this very extensive series.

From my understanding, Maigret books become richer and more fulfilling as one reads more of them. A professor friend of mine was obsessed with him a few years ago and read everything that had been translated, says it was an excellent experience.

I finished Christa Wolf’s last piece of fiction, ‘August,’ a lovely novella that engages with a simple
man’s memories of his experiences in a post-WW2 German tuberculosis sanatorium. Like all of
Wolf’s writing, it is psychologically incisive, rather beautiful, and deeply sad. I love her work, truly think she’s one of the greats of the past 100 years.

I’m getting ready for a reading of Bernadette Mayer’s ‘Midwinter Day’ on the 21st, so am catching up on chapbooks from a number of poets until then.

NB this is coming from a guy who never cares about the mysteries anyway but for me Maigret is all about the vibes, what kind of booze he orders at the local café and such.

Talking Pictures in the UK is showing a Maigret series from the 60s on saturdays iirc. seems like an odd mix of french settings and english actors (i'm only taping them because Pauline Boty is in one)

You can also catch Rowan Atkinson as Maigret in a series of recent tv films!

Or, you know, go to the source and watch Jean Gabin as same.

In the two Maigrets I read he seemed to solve the cases based entirely on the physiognomy of the suspects.

Lots of crime stuff lately:

Jo Nesbo - The Bat

His first Harry Hole novel, and was surprised that he started off by placing his Oslo detective in media res in Sydney, Australia. And then he stays there for the whole novel. It’s pretty interesting in some ways, with some awkward stabs at Aboriginal issues not quite covering for the somewhat rote serial killer plot, which differs from some others by being a little unpredictable and more absurd and with one wild Grand Guignol scene two thirds of the way thru. It has an unfortunate lead female character who serves as both idealized dream and ultimately a sacrificial lamb and I’m kind of over these types of characters who exist to merely die and give the lead dude some future trauma to work through. Not a bad book, I think Hole just exists in this story somewhere uncomfortably between Kurt Wallander and Jack Taylor, minus the compelling pull of the former’s grim devotion to his work and the latter’s pitch-pitch black humorous avenging angel-as-private detective-as-secret list making ILXor. I’ll check out the followup novels, looks as if the next one sees Hole in Thailand, I assume he makes it home at some point.

Charlotte Carter - Rhode Island Red

Better is this one, about a busking sax player who has an on-off boyfriend, and finds herself mixed up with a busking undercover cop, a failed gangster obsessed with Charlie Parker, a very angry not-undercover cop, and various others in pursuit of the mysterious title object. It’s a little rough around the edges, but it’s a quick read and has a very resilient and tough and occasionally unabashedly thirsty central character trying to make her way through a world a very shitty dudes. This is the first in a trilogy, recently reprinted (I read a beaten-up library copy.)

Donald Westlake - What’s the Worst That Could Happen?

Always love this guy’s books, whether as Westlake or Richard Stark. This is, so far, really hilarious. Dortmunder in the first scene tries to rip off a wealthy, terribly despicable media and real estate baron who happens to be home when he’s supposed to be away, and the guy decides to take an almost-hilariously inconsequential ring from Dortmunder, claiming to the cops that it’s his ring. Dortmunder, whose girlfriend just gave him the cheap brass thing because she didn’t want it (and had just received it as a meaningless gift in her least favorite uncle’s will), gets extremely angry about this unfair turn of events and decides to wreak thieving vengeance upon said baron, who has now become also hilariously obsessed with the ring as a symbolic token of his glory. Still not halfway through but seems to be a totally peak comic crime novel.

I am looking for recommendations for a book for my sister for her birthday. Must be a female author and preferably someone younger than 50. She loved Moshfeghe's first couple of books but didn't like the last one. Liked Sally Rooney's first couple of books. She did not like Patricia Lockwood at all. Immigrant stories, orphans, and dark humor are areas of interest.

Any recent Ali Smith.

xxpost, Omar, that last one sounds great! All three appeal to me, thanks.
Agree w all these takes on Maigret. Re: translations, I've read that, having lived in the US fpr several years and becoming more attuned to English, Simenon decided that all of his books needed re-translation, and so it came to pass--concluding fairly recently, because he wrote so much.
I may have been lucky to start near the end of this process, with A Maigret Trio, the original subtitle of which was something like Three Novels Never Before Published in The United States, think this was in 1972 (there's also a 1994 edition: English and Frence in one volume) In these stories, protagonist and author are entering their last professional decades, starting in the late 50s or early 60s. Increasingly resistant to/avoiding change (mostly the former via the latter, with as little exertion as habit and professional demands will allow).
He keeps encountering reminders of his early life, mostly unwelcome. Indeed, in the first novel, Maigret's Failure, he considers his personal distaste for an old acquaintance (now known as The Meat King to tabloid readers: the bullying son of the village butcher is a tycoon, who prevails on M.'s boss's boss's boss, the Minister of the Interior, for concierge service from this reputedly good police detective, once the smart kid, son of the swells' stewart, who later flunked out of college and started over as a beat cop, pounding the pavement in the City of Light---and here they are, together again!), and such associations, to have affected his decision-making---nobody else, incl. the tabs, seem to think that, but what do they know.
His feelings, including those about suspects, always, at some points, come to grate against his great preference for detachment and routine, but they also make him a better cop. And sometimes just a more enjoyable one, though the routines are dope too: as one female reviewer observed. his wife feeds him "like a toddler," and he has to drink his way through certain stages-locales, also hang out at or near crime scenes, though so far always missing the perp's violent return ("You should have seen this place an hour ago, Boss!") Part of his procedure, of course.

*Maigret* is increasingly resistant to change.dunno about author.

Intan Paramaditha - APPLE AND KNIFE

collection of short stories set in Indonesia, some based on Indonesian folk tales. A couple of weak ones but also a couple that I think will stay with me a v long time.

I'm reading Fitzgerald's *Tender is the Night*. I'm sure someone has already done this, but I'm intrigued as to how you could map this onto *The Waste Land*. Locations sure (Zurich, Lausanne) but also the terrible air of decay and dislocation that runs through it. The central wound may be different (broadly, WWI vs Zelda's tragedy) but the sense of dissolution is palpable.

It's impossible not to measure it against the Gatsby, of course. Is it as *good*? I don't think so. It has the sighing sentences that pull you up short, but the dissolution isn't just thematic: it lacks the Gatsby's focus and concision.

I wrote my eleventh grade term paper on The Waste Land and images of decay in Gatsby!

Would read!

Me too!
Chinaski, have you read Calvin Tomkins' Living Well Is The Best Revenge? If you haven't, it's about Gerald and Sara Murphy and their whole scene & zone, crucial to Tender Is The Night. The 2013 edition (published by MoMa, but used copies can v. very cheap) has a lot of photographs and a section with Gerald's paintings, which, even though smaller in reprocution of course, look excellent to non-art-expert me.

I'm reading Fitzgerald's *Tender is the Night*. I'm sure someone has already done this, but I'm intrigued as to how you could map this onto *The Waste Land*. Locations sure (Zurich, Lausanne) but also the terrible air of decay and dislocation that runs through it. The central wound may be different (broadly, WWI vs Zelda's tragedy) but the sense of dissolution is palpable.

I've read it seven or eight times. I go from admiring the casual lope of the Rosemary section to hating the horribly overdone homophobia and being amused by Fitzgerald working overtime to turn Diver into some kind of Magical Presence because he can organize beach parties and minister to his ailing wife.

Any recent Ali Smith.

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, December 19, 2022 1:08 PM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Thanks Alfred. I ordered Artful, it sounded like a possible winner.

Just finished Assembly by Natasha Brown. A short novel - just over 100 pages - if you want a book that gives an idea of the psychological violence of everyday racism (and sexism, but mostly racism) you couldn't do much better.

Chinaski, have you read Calvin Tomkins' Living Well Is The Best Revenge?

I've read it seven or eight times. I go from admiring the casual lope of the Rosemary section to hating the horribly overdone homophobia and being amused by Fitzgerald working overtime to turn Diver into some kind of Magical Presence because he can organize beach parties and minister to his ailing wife.

Yeah, the homophobia, the creepy gaze all over Rosemary. I was reading Diver (in that section at least) as a form of self-aggrandizement but I guess 'magical presences' - particularly men - is Fitzgerald's stock in trade.

I finished MAIGRET SETS A TRAP. It didn't have a huge twist. At the end a particular crime had probably been committed by one of two people and one of them effectively confessed. The other crimes were committed by the one person the police had arrested. Thus there was very little uncertainty, choice of possibilities, pondering of evidence for the reader. The investigation was quite linear and the reader followed along.

This is definitely a case of the 'police procedural'. I have been unsure whether the PP is a very different subgenre from others, but in this particular instance the PP story dispenses with the classical norms of detection. I suppose that the PP is also about teamwork and multiple police, and this novel has that. Probably reading several Maigrets that becomes part of the appeal.

I realised that I own Paul Morley's YOU LOSE YOURSELF, YOU REAPPEAR, on Bob Dylan, and thought I should start reading it. Thus far it is abstract, talking in general terms about all Dylan's work in the same way. I think it would be stronger if it becomes more specific and shows an understanding of how Dylan in 1962, 1972, 1982, 1992 etc are all distinct and belong to cultural moments that can be finely drawn. But I am not particularly hopeful that it will do that. It seems more likely to keep saying 'Dylan showed what he'd been up to, and where he was going, or where we were going, in 2012, as he had done, in fact, in 1962, except that not many people were paying attention then'.

Yeah, the homophobia, the creepy gaze all over Rosemary. I was reading Diver (in that section at least) as a form of self-aggrandizement but I guess 'magical presences' - particularly men - is Fitzgerald's stock in trade.

― Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski),

I still admire the thing. It's interesting how it anticipates The Razor's Edge but in reverse: Diver doesn't seek enlightenment, he goes from debauch to debauch.

Must be a female author and preferably someone younger than 50. She loved Moshfeghe's first couple of books but didn't like the last one. Liked Sally Rooney's first couple of books. She did not like Patricia Lockwood at all. Immigrant stories, orphans, and dark humor are areas of interest.

Maybe Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli? It’s got immigrant stories, orphans and some dark themes, though maybe not so much dark humor.

I finished Tender... tonight in the pub. I wonder if going from debauch to debauch is as good a form of enlightenment as any other.

xp thanks for the recommendation

Bora Chung - CURSED BUNNY
short story collection. sci-fi/magic realism. p terrific if sometimes grotesque. in particular found 'the head' ' the embodiment' and 'snare' truly remarkable.

Cursed Bunny! Bad Bunny! Sounds promising, will check thx

I suppose that the PP is also about teamwork and multiple police, and this novel has that. Probably reading several Maigrets that becomes part of the appeal.

Re Simenon - I haven't read any of the Maigrets (police procedurals not really my thing) but have read plenty of his "romans durs" which are mostly magnificent ("Dirty Snow" would be a good one to start with) and I read most of them in French and can confirm that his French is pretty plain and workaday - I think I read he deliberately restricted himself to a vocabulary of 2000 words - so it's not just the translation making him sound plain. Apparently he wrote his novels in 10 days flat!!!

Which means there are some novels that took me longer to read than it took him to write...

Somehow that reminds me of this: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/10/nyregion/how-to-be-the-fastest-puzzler-in-town.html

Reading Dave Rimmer’a 1985 book on Culture Club and new pop, “Like Punk Never Happened”, just reissued with a Neil Tennant introduction. It’s terrific, like a feature-length gossipy Smash Hits feature, but somewhat more thoughtful. Huge fun. As a Smash Hits writer, Rimmer seems to have had access to every key player from the early 80s uk pop scene.

It's so wonderful.

I remember that book from hours spent in the music aisle at the bookstore, plus the title of another Culture Club biography, When cameras go crazy.

I finished The Gate, Natsume Soseki. It abounds with the kind of wistful melancholy that the Japanese have elevated as the hallmark of their national aesthetic. Even the main character's sojourn in a Zen monastery at the conclusion of the book solves nothing, and leads nowhere. He simply floats through a sorrowful world, getting brief glimpses of beauty, peace and happiness, all of which are transient and leave no lasting traces.

I'm now re-reading Wild Animals I Have Known, Ernest Thompson Seton. It's a series of portraits of various individual animals, a wolf, a crow, a rabbit, a dog, etc. which succeed in conveying them as vivid personalities, with their own characteristic quirks and personal dignity. A kind of proto-animal-rights book, but written in 1898. I first read it when I was about ten years old.

I’d never thought of wistful melancholy as being particularly a Japanese hallmark, but I must admit you made me want to read that book.

Choi Jin-Young - TO THE WARM HORIZON

what an incredible book. loved loved loved it. superficially treading similar ground to 'the road' post apocalyptic world , survivors journey across country etc but the whole tone seems v different.

originally published in Korea in 2017 with the English translation coming in '21 it charts 3 sets of Koreans fleeing across Russia after a worldwide pandemic has resulted in 100,000 deaths in one day in Korea alone with 500,000 on day two. I never cry at literature or while hearing songs but I kinda wished I could while reading parts of this. At times unbelievably sad and at others wonderfully uplifting, the central romance between Jina and Dori is beautifully realised.

1/4 through Paul Morley's YOU LOSE YOURSELF, YOU REAPPEAR. Unsurprisingly PM doesn't have new facts or research about Bob Dylan. He must stake all on his ability as a distinctive writer to respond to Dylan. To a degree he gets away with it. He does still have the ability, here, to generate one surprising twist of phrase per page. But I think he makes a mistake in writing so generally, from his memory of Dylan - the same memory we all have - rather than eg: putting the records on, one by one, and writing a detailed, spontaneous response to them. That would be more worthwhile.

He quotes few of Dylan's words. He would say this is because he is focusing instead on Dylan's voice. That's not a bad idea. But he doesn't really follow through on it. He states that Dylan has many voices, at least 15 or so, but he doesn't always explain clearly how one yields to another or how they differ. How *is* the voice of ANOTHER SIDE OF BOB DYLAN different from the previous LP? Or how is that of BLOOD ON THE TRACKS different from STREET LEGAL? To explain this you'd simply need to ... listen. I think Morley doesn't do enough listening to write this book.

I was thinking, Morley has another 280 pages to fill here and I can't quite see how he can do it, just drifting in the same manner. And yet, c. 1/3 through, he started to redeem it, by doing the one thing that he does better than anyone else: writing about Paul Morley.

He talks about how the fanzine he made c.1975 had Dylan on the front, and how he spent the next 30 years unsure whether it should have. Here at last we touch the Morley world of bathos and clowning and the book comes more alive.

If you wanted to read Paul Morley on 2020 lockdown time, you get that here also, pp.141-151.

He's also some what good on the striking quality of BLOOD ON THE TRACKS, though he again doesn't go into songs much. And he praises the piano playing of Paul Griffin, specifically for his playing on songs that ... don't have any piano on them (p.126).

Out of interest, have you read his Tony Wilson bio, Pinefox?

For a second I thought you were referring to Little Wilson and Big God.

I have not read that book yet, no. I would like to read the hardback which has an attractive cover, not the paperback which has a needlessly horrible cover.

Morley's rate of producing books has accelerated extraordinarily -- what is it, about 5 big books in the last 10 years?

I have to hand it to Morley, somewhat: he has raised the ante in this book and found things to say when it seemed he wouldn't.

He writes at some length about 'murder most foul', 'tempest', then 'I contain multitudes' - and connects them to JFK et al.

He quotes Dylan very little and I just found myself wondering a very simple thing: is he not allowed to quote Dylan? Is that why he just paraphrases lyrics and mentions song titles?

I can see why that could happen in some cases (cf Faber's supposedly fierce copyright protection), but it doesn't seem true of Dylan - who gets quoted at length all over the place (and who Jonathan Lethem once said had never refused a request for a sample).

One other relative virtue with this book: Morley is more literary than usual and does a somewhat creditable job of keeping up with literary references. His comparison of Dylan with Brecht is genuinely good, showing an intuition for Brecht's character and attitude. He also shows his reading of Borges, and cites Whitman, Shakespeare and others. You could call it standard stuff but most of Morley's work hasn't really been as literary as this; I think he's made a slight extra effort on that front and it's worked OK.

R.J Smith - Chuck Berry
Ali Smith - Companion Piece
Dan Jones - The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England

Ha you are reminding me that I too read the first third of this book, earlier this year, but I never picked it back up. I was expecting something like the Bowie book where you read it in 2 or 3 big bursts (much as the author wrote it, I suspect) and you just sort of get carried away enjoying the sound of PM’s voice (much as the author &c) — but it did feel a tad more considered, or “literary” or whatever. Might go back to it over the holiday.

I also had much the same thought as you viz making Dylan’s voice the focus is a great hook, someone should actually write that book

Morley has slightly surprisingly gone on to write at length about Duluth, MN.

I suspect that Morley visited MN to write this, but also suspect him of copying lots of facts from Wikipedia and random websites, as he did for THE NORTH.

Morley who can be so canny and cunning a writer also becomes plaintive and naive when trying to write about things like the Great Depression and how it made life hard, for people, which was difficult.

Morley does also refer to the musical GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY (c.2017).

I retain my suspicion that he is not allowed to quote from Dylan's songs.

Surely the 'fair use' doctrine would allow Morley to quote Dylan's lyrics, so long as the quotations were brief and used to illustrate points in his critical appraisal of Dylan's work.

dylan sold his entire catalogue of songs to universal a couple of years back: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/arts/music/bob-dylan-universal-music.html

so even if his lyrics were much quoted in the past this may have entirely changed: the permission-giver *was* the artist -- who may indeed have exhibited a great liberality in this area in the past -- but is now merely a large corporation that doesn't give a fvck abt critical examination (except as a profit-making device) (they may have made it impssibly expensive)

the process for clearing samples rests on a difft mode of copyright, so the one being easy (or otherwise) has no real bearing on access to the other: again dylan may well have encouraged it (for reasons of aesthetic politics as regards his own attitude to the availability of song?) but this isn't directly germane to the situation with lyrics quoted on the page

xp -- fair use is not very generous and would be pretty limiting if you really want to dig around