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

Claire Keegan - Small Things Like These
Darryl Pinckney - Busted in New York and Other Essays

Youn, I feel like Pond is one of the greatest books by a British writer from the last 10 years. Don't really think of it as a short story collection though - more a very ruminative, meandering Beckettian novel...

Yes, it seems like Pond might turn out that way, and I wonder if the lines between the short story and the novel are beginning to blur. I used to think it was a sign of weakness not to be able to control point of view to convey plot with one character, but it seems to be a technique frequently adopted now (cf. Jennifer Egan), and the disjunction in perception is often worth it, but I wonder ...

I really liked Pond.

At the time I said this:

Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett. Collection of short stories. Good, I think. Interior monologues in domestic spaces, with a careful awareness of the mechanics of interiority, the circling round a thing, the unusual snags of feeling and recognition by which thought progresses or insight is gained. The elliptical and non-cliched nature of thinking and feeling. Someone said that she was similar to Jen Calleja, but i don't get that at all tbh, in fact Pond reminds me more in some ways of Gerald Murnane, an understanding of how to get to the profound from the repeated mundane and quotidian, and how the unusual or genuinely strange is actually part of that fabric.

The effect to me is a little like trying to catch an elusive thought that seems to have whisked away just before the moment you were aware of it, but which you feel has insight. Sometimes you find it and can look at it, most of the time it flits away without any sense of what meaning or importance it may have had. CLB is adept at catching them.

Your posts are making me want to revisit and see whether I still agree with myself. I think the plural, unachored viewpoint is something that works here, though I’m sure it can be abused or fail quite easily with less skilled writers.

Interesting to consider writers with floating points of perspective - Jon Fosse? Murnane (not character but point of observation), Soobramanien and Williams? - all doing different things but the point of view is protean, not fixed to identity, in some way.

Uwe Johnson - Anniversaries (part 2/4) and loving it so far. Johnson manages this continuously time-shifting novel, where its 1933-45 and 1968 with some skill, and you are constantly on your toes as he shifts time and characters. He is as attentive to space and people as Balzac and he only breaks Gesine's reading of the New York Times once to go over a piece by Hans Magnus Enzenberger (who died a couple of months ago as it happens) in the NYRB to criticise 'intellectual' anti-Americanism, but the novel itself is more diligently going through the same questions, as Gesine reads the goings on in Vietnam-war era America and lightly contrasts with Nazi Germany. Crucially there are no judgements, despite precocious Marie's (Gesine's daughter) protestations that there is innocence and guilt, that a side must be picked. But Gesine (and Johnson) understand that it is in the process of histories re-tellings and livings that something more is happening. What is that? I can't tell, another 800 pages of this novel to go.

In between part II and III I also finished/read the following as a 'break'.

Bei Dao - City Gate, Open Up. This is a poet's memoir of his family, time, country, with lots of rich detail of the food, smells, friendships struck and forgotten. There is a lot of bloody history here, again, as Mao's cultural revolution gathers pace as adulthood is coming. I love the telling of it though, the prose is so good. It has the poet's concentrated speed of telling.
Yoko Tawada - Three Streets
William Shakespeare - King Lear

o jeez: Claire Keegan? Is she good, is she piercingly sad-beautiful as some say? Might be too much for me right now if so---

small things like these is great

so is foster but at the end i put it down with tears in my eyes thinking it was almost a mean trick to write something so heart-rending.

I finished The Third Horseman, Wm Rosen. Can't say I'd recommend it. It's one of those helter-skelter books that can't settle on its subject matter and does a poor job of staying focused. A lot happens, but you never learn much about any of it.

Started reading Le Carré's The Looking Glass War after finishing a couple of heavy reads (Underworld and Sound and the Fury). Really fun. The prologue is thrilling.

Anthony Powell - From a View to a Death
Laird Hunt - Zorrie

I still want to read THE LOOKING GLASS WAR, before any other le Carré.

That prologue (the one in the Baltic airport, right?) is great!

Alfred, what did you think of From a View to a Death? I think it’s prob my favourite of the pre-Dance novels. Unobtrusively tragic and damning at the end as well as being v funny generally.

That prologue (the one in the Baltic airport, right?) is great!

Yeah that's the one!

Alfred, what did you think of From a View to a Death? I think it’s prob my favourite of the pre-Dance novels. Unobtrusively tragic and damning at the end as well as being v funny generally.

― Fizzles, Saturday, January 7, 2023 2:27 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I've only read one of those slim things, but this one's a hoot so far.

sounds right!

New Year has been taken up with the return of Prynne reading group, and I'm about 1/4 of the way through Clark Coolidge's 'SOUND AS THOUGHT,' a collection of poems he wrote in the mid-80s. It's quite good, an oft-overlooked entry in his ever-expanding œuvre, though it does feel a bit less momentous that either 'SOLUTION PASSAGE' or 'THE CRYSTAL TEXT' which came immediately before.

Otherwise, I'm reading a LOT of plays, because I'm teaching an American Playwrights class and need to brush up/reacquaint myself with my syllabus.

The Five Hallie Rubenhold
Feminist author tries to show the lives of teh 5 recognised victims of Jack The Ripper. Attempts to stop them being very limited entities who really only exist around the bloody deaths. Shows that their own lives were pretty messy in doing so. But they did need to have a reason to be in a run down area to meet their ends.
I'm not so hot on the speculation bits where she is saying 'she must have .....' which is a habit throughout the book.
Shame cos I enjoyed bits of this and did like the idea behind this. I may read some more by Rubenhold and see if that is a habit of hers elsewhere. NOt a trope that seems to fit too well in a history book. I thought she was a better writer from what I had heard prior to reading this. Oh well.

Alfred, what did you think of From a View to a Death? I think it’s prob my favourite of the pre-Dance novels. Unobtrusively tragic and damning at the end as well as being v funny generally.

― Fizzles, Saturday, January 7, 2023 2:27 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I've only read one of those slim things, but this one's a hoot so far.

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, January 7, 2023 2:38 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

sounds right!

― Fizzles, Saturday, January 7, 2023 2:45 PM (yesterday)

Maybe I should've guessed a key supporting character was a crossdresser.

I'm in one of those funks where I can't quite settle on a book so I'm going with it and re-reading a few bits and pieces.

John Suiter's *Poets on the Peaks*, is a gorgeous thing, tracing the history of Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen and Jack Kerouac in the pacific northwest, specifically their time working as fire lookouts in the Cascades. It's meticulously researched and photographed and further proof that I need more mountains in my life.

Colin Thubron's *In Siberia* is a bleakly beautiful travelogue through the then newly-opened Siberia. Thubron speaks Russian well and throws himself on the mercy of local people, ending up in unlikely places and situations.

Also reading Tarkovsky's *Sculpting in Time* and Seamus Heaney's *Seeing Things*.

Just to get my blood moving I picked up The Outfit a hard-boiled crime novel by Richard Stark. It's good crime noir, very sharp and tightly written action, but the middle section is sort of a medley of miscellaneous 'heist' stories which loosely tie in to the framing story, but don't add much unless you enjoy fantasizing about pulling off a robbery in the same way other people fantasize about winning the lottery. This is part of a series about a superman tough guy named Parker. I think the others in the series stay closer to Parker's adventures and may be a bit less of a tossed salad.

You might like the first Parker, The Hunter (basis of the excellent Lee Marvin flick Point Blank): here he's outta stir and back for revenge, standardly enough, but also, the author says that he doesn't know all that he wants, so things go in different directions---by Dirty Money, (which I think is the last one, but don't care,) he's clearly into the cool of heists as planned and must be into the chaos aspect as lived out, considering how many times he's been through this and put others through it. Some of the other characters are more engaging, I think, but he's an asshole worth watching, in my limited experience (this is # 24 in the series).

tables, what plays are you reading?!

I'm curious too.

In the past few days, I’ve re-read:

Long Day’s Journey Into Night
Curse of the Starving Class
Fences
Body Indian by Hanay Geiogamah
In the Blood by Parks
A Murder of Crows by Mac Wellman
The Ohio State Murders by Adrienne Kennedy

Need to do a few more re-reads but that’s about 2/3 of the semester, more or less.

Oh, I also read for the first time:

Sarah Ruhl, Dead Man’s Cell Phone

It’s a course on American Playwrights so had to limit myself somewhat, normally I do a big double-header with family, fading ways of life, and the force of self-destruction in The Cherry Orchard and Curse of the Starving Class.

Nahoko Uehashi - THE BEAST PLAYER

Japanese YA fantasy book. p good, will definitely read the sequel.

Various Authors - MARPLE

12 crime novelists have a go a writing a Miss Marple short story. Only found a couple compelling. Also way too many of them featured nephew Raymond.

My current book is Niki: The Story of a Dog, Tibor Déry. The author is Hungarian and the dog in view was clearly based on a particular dog he owned, though the human characters are lightly fictionalized. Compared to, say, My Dog Tulip Déry adopts a much more intellectualized approach than Ackerly's sentimentality. The dog's doggy nature occupies the center of the author's attention and interest while the humans occupy the margins of the story.

I finished reading THE PENGUIN BOOK OF THE MODERN AMERICAN SHORT STORY.

What are your favorite recently published short stories?

I'm starting off the new year with John Fogerty's autobiography, Fortunate Son. It probably helps to be a big Creedence fan, as I am, but I'd have to say the book is a page-turner. Fogerty is in take-no-prisoners mode. He seems to not be on good terms with almost anyone from the band's heyday, and he's not afraid to tell it like he sees it. I enjoy the hunting and fishing stories, but I do wonder how he's going to fill the second half of the book. The Creedence period went by in a flash - which is I guess true to how it actually happened.

just finished ‘tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow’ by gabrielle zevin, about a trio of video game developers. interesting insights about gaming in there and characters who maks infuriating, and infuriatingly real, decisions

about 10% through marlon James’s ‘moon witch, spider king,’ which so far has his familiar mixture of elegantly constructed, free-flowing writing about just he most brutal violence you can imagine. feels easier to read than black leopard, red wolf, but the central character is less dynamic so far

James Kirchick - Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washingon
Amina Cain - A Horse at Night: On Writing
Russell Banks - Cloudsplitter

xp There was a lot of music in a very few years. Hadn't changed the bandname until 68 and were falling apart by 71. 3 good lps in 69 so yeah over fast . Timeless music for many but one small part of a lived experience.

JUst catching up with Blood and Land which I was sent I think by mistake while I was looking for another book on Native Americans some time last summer. I think I still have about half of it to read. written by J. C. H. King, a British scholar.

just finished A history of the world in seven cheap things : a guide to capitalism, nature, and the future of the planet by Raj Patel,
which was pretty good.

& before taht The Five by Hallie Rubenhold which was interesting but did have some writing quirks I wish the writer hadn't used. The idea that this character must have felt.... was something I thought was looked at as a bad writing trope. So shjame to see it here so frequently.
Otherwise the idea is pretty interesting, give the women best known as the victims of Jack The Ripper an existence beyond that by fleshing out their biographies.

Through The Language Glass Guy Deutscher
talking about how culture shapes language

o. nate, it's funny you're reading the Fogerty bio given today's news

Yeah, just noticed that news too. Right now I'm at the point in the book where he's deeply depressed over the whole Fantasy contract situation, so its nice to think that there will someday be a resolution.

I'm about to finish a long book of mid-80s poems by Coolidge. The more I read of him, the more I'm sort of wowed by how much he's done— from more concrete poetry to poems that are like thickets of clashing syntaxes to beautiful pastoral lyrics, the guy's kind of done it all. Really incredible.

Prynne group continues, but I've been busy with other reading this week so won't get to the week's book until right before our meeting tomorrow.

I've started reading Behrouz Boochani's NO FRIEND BUT THE MOUNTAINS (2018). My understanding is that the author is Kurdish and was some kind of refugee, or perhaps other kind of migrant, in Australia, where he was locked up. I'm hesitant about saying this because I haven't read much yet. I'll find out more as I go. The book was written in the Farsi language, and translated into English. So far it describes being on a truck full of migrants, then a boat full of migrants, which is in danger of sinking.

The foreword by one Richard Flanagan states that this is a great book that has huge political import for what it says about how migrants are treated. Formally, the book is primarily prose but includes a large number of breaks into a kind of 'poetry', ie: language organised by line that expresses the situation already described by the prose. It is fair to say that in English, this poetry does not come across well. Possibly it does in its original language.

Funny talked about having watched a video of a refugee containment camp in the Australian outback in a conversation yesterday. Watched it in the first months of being in town in 98. It held a lot of Afghan refugees I think among others. There was a protest about conditions hence the film.
Hadn't thought about it in a while. So coincidence I think.

Antarctica, a short story collection by Claire Keegan. Most of the stories are very short (under 20 pages) and more like vignettes, focussed on scenes, situations, characters. Some of them build to a climax, some of the climaxes are cliffhangers - the first story is perhaps the most dramatic in this regard, also the least convincing. Most of the protagonists are women or girls, most from or in troubled, poor, or unconventional families. Simple writing, short sentences, the odd arresting image - 'the blustery trees made a carousel of shadow inside the kitchen'. It took me a while to warm to it but by the end I was finding them quite affecting, though there's nothing quite as gut-wrenching, thankfully, as Foster.

Finished Alexander Baron's With Hope, Farewell. Protagonist is a young man in 30's London, alienated from his Jewish background and eager to assimilate; he also dreams of becoming a pilot. Out of nowhere, WWII provides a solution to both problems - but of course he comes back psychologically damaged by the war, and meanwhile anti-semitism in London is on the rise again. Some great setpieces - a Jewish wedding with violence erupting in the nearby street, a huge riot which I think might be portraying the battle for Cable Street. Protagonist and his very pregnant wife get stuck in traffic on a bus while the crowds break police lines and chaos erupts, very scary read for anyone who's used to being stuck in a standstill on a bus at Dalston Junction.

ledge, I had a good experience reading Small Things Like These.

Yes I enjoyed that one as well, she calls it a novel here - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/20/claire-keegan-i-think-something-needs-to-be-as-long-as-it-needs-to-be - but in terms of story it's scarcely more incident-packed than some of her shorter ones, still it's good to be able to spend a bit more time in one of her worlds.

there's an interesting bit in that article about what small things like these is 'about', and her lack of judgement on the magdalene sisters. i did feel in some of her short stories a rather casual attitude towards real incidents or issues - one story features, indirectly, fred west, two others have characters using the 'n' word.

It's clear what her protagonist thinks.

yes her characters are not quite so forgiving!

xpost to Fizzles - I think your characterization of Claire-Louise Bennett's writing is apt, and your previous post makes me want to read Gerald Murnane. (attrition without dullness or numbing, where the focus is on the restlessness for the pressure applied)

thx gyac