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

I'm currently reading Captains of the Sands by Jorge Amado. It's interesting to me to compare this to another novel that came out a year later, Brighton Rock by Graham Greene. Both depict gangs of criminal youth in seaside towns and have Catholic themes. However, I would say the similarities end there. Although Amado doesn't shy away from depicting disturbing acts, he romanticizes the gang in a way that Greene never does. The gauzy atmosphere of mischief and hijinks in Amado is worlds away from the creeping dread and menace of Greene. Perhaps it's because Amado wants to show that his gang's way of life is the inevitable product of an unjust society, whereas Greene is more concerned with questions of personal agency and guilt.

I think they're very different situations. Pinky is a gangster in the James Cagney sense, he's out for himself. The Captains meanwhile are kind of a mutual aid society of runaways and orphans, of an extent that I don't think would exist in 30's Brighton - even with all the poverty that no doubt was around, I'd wager similar structures would still be based around families; Amado's setting is more liked Dickens. Pinkie's also 17, so the senior of most of the Captains. He objectively has a lot more agency than they do.

Re: the Catholic themes, worth pointing out that the Captains reconcile catholicism with worship of orishas in that typically Brazilian way, while true blue catholic Greene is, erhm, less ecumenical.

the pinefox, what you described sounds promising. What ruins the book?

I read My Phantoms last week: a solid novel-length description of a mother-daughter relationship.

I thought you had read this novel? I'm sure you will quickly form your own view if you do.

I suppose a short answer for me is: aimlessness, self-indulgence, too many things that go absolutely nowhere, a narrator who has very little to offer us or anyone else. She randomly smashes all the crockery and her flatmate isn't bothered. It doesn't help that she spends most of the time drinking, and her life is subsidised by - it's hard to tell, as she never seems to work; maybe by the royalties of a book that she has, mysteriously, published, despite, on the evidence of the narrative, being no good as a writer.

I can see some people liking the book. On the whole, I think it's bad.

As mentioned, I can believe that GR's later work is better.

Listening to Piranesi while sick with Covid was one of the high points of last year for me. The fever really added to the experience!

As noted, I have no recollection of how the Raymond Carver stories turn out, so I was shocked and horrified - again? - on reaching the end of 'Tell the Women We're Going', where an already unpleasant, but seemingly quite ordinary character (and married father of three) is suddenly said to have 'used the same rock' on two women he's just met. The implication is that he kills them, though this isn't certain. It's like the horror of, well, horror fiction, but in a piece of what you'd thought was realism. The popular phrase 'toxic masculinity' has never seemed so fitting.

On the other hand, the ageing husband in 'After the Denim' is into knitting and needlework; one of the most profoundly 'feminised' characters I've encountered in Carver, if the term makes sense.

The last chapter wound things up well, I thought.

I finished W.B. Yeats's verse drama THE SHADOWY WATERS. My impression has long been that this text is notorious in WBY's oeuvre for its vagueness, the author's uncertainty over what it was, his vacillation in rewriting it repeatedly. I've meant to read it for years. In fact the version I've now read, at least, is quite short, only 30 pages or so, with a dense prefatory poem about Coole's Seven Woods - the usual material - and another about some mythic figures. The main text is about an ancient pirate ship captained by one Forgael who is given over to some kind of search for immortality. His crew raid another ship and bring him a Queen, Dectora, aboard. Unsurprisingly she and Forgael eventually get together despite her initial great reluctance, mainly I think because he plays a harp and casts a spell on her (and everyone else). It doesn't seem a great model of consensual love, a point noted within the text itself. At the end Forgael and Dectora sail off after the immortal birds with human faces (a pretty grotesque image perhaps) while the crew depart for the real world.

I can't say that this work is great, or terribly interesting or convincing. A few poetic phrases stand out for their directness: 'The whole ship / Flashes as if it were a net of herrings'; 'I am a woman, I die at every breath'. Thematically I suppose what it expresses is a Yeatsian mood in which a 'noble' or aristocratic union can proudly face down death.

I also read a narrative poem, THE TWO KINGS (1914), basically about a Queen, Edain, at Tara, who tells her King, Eochaid, how she had a visionary encounter with some other noble fellow (unsure who - the other King of the title?) who asked her to come away with him for immortality. She refused, insisting that being with her mortal love was what she wanted. This sounds standard fare but there is some poignancy in the passionate words with which she says this:

What can they know of love that do not know
She builds her ledge
Above a windy precipice?

The Captains meanwhile are kind of a mutual aid society of runaways and orphans, of an extent that I don't think would exist in 30's Brighton

I guess I'm skeptical it existed in '30s Brazil either - at least the way it's depicted in the book. It seems more like a myth or a fable. And at book length it becomes a little too predictable: the plucky orphans with hearts of gold vs the cruel police and reformers.

It absolutely existed, at least as late as the 80's when the film Pixote portrayed some kids in similar circumstances, and I wouldn't bet against it still existing today. Whether Amado romanticizes his protagonists is a separate issue - like no doubt these structures were/are full of trauma and violence and abuse, physical, sexual and emotional (which tbf Amado acknowledges, even if I'd agree it's not the main thing to take away), but they're still quite different from the wham bam gangsters of Greene's book.

I mean to a large extent this is just a reality of a society where social services don't have the reach (or most of the time interest) to follow up on individual cases.

I'm reading I Am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett - a deadpan comic novel. He's good with repetitions:

"To make a long and sad story abbreviated and sad"

"and so my entry was well attended and well documented by a shocked few who told a shocked, though mainly uncaring, many"

"her screams filled the streets like screams"

The main character's family name is Poitier, so his mother baptizes him Not Sidney. She also buys stock in Turner, so when she dies Not Sidney gets adopted by Ted Turner, who is somewhat uncomfortable by how much this reminds him of Growing Pains. From theron it's a picaresque novel. Currently he's going through a clear parody of The Defiant Ones, which makes me worry the rest of the book will also be riffing on Poitier's 60's output, which I am not very familiar with.

the "mutual aid" dimension to nascent mobsterism isn't unusual at all, as a self-ennobling claim if not as a fact: especially in the early stages of organisation -- it didn't take me long at all to find a version of the classic quote abt the krays: "“the krays were very caring and never touched ordinary people, they really looked after their own"

and the opening scene of the godfather also speaks to this ("you come to me on the day of my daughter's wedding", there will come a day when i need a favour of you etc: this is mutual aid). and it's all across peaky blinders also, the local mob as a police force for those that the official police (bcz racist and corrupt) never protect… but of course just as subject to tides of corruption and in-group prejudice and even more to charismatic sociopathy

Yes, agreed - but I'd say within the US and UK contexts the picture that's transmitted is more of individuals within an existing community fulfilling certain roles for it - i.e. there were already Italian-American communities in the US and working class communities in the UK, and they already had elements of mutual aid set up, the gangsters slotted into and/or exploited those.

The Captains are quite a different thing because it's not about a group organising within a community to defend and/or exploit it, it's kids who are mostly isolated from society at large and self-organizing within that; geographically isolated, even, in Amado's novel. Also of course being orphans they lack the family ties that contextualize ppl like the Krays within their community.

I do think there's paralells to be drawn, but I'd place them nearer to contemporary black gang culture in the US than the organized crime of the Krays or the cosa nostra.

And the gangsters in Brighton Rock I don't think fit into any of these modes - they are mostly punks, self styled Individualists, perhaps predecessors of youth cultures to come.

yes it's years since i read or watched brighton rock but i feel like pinkie is p much "charismatic sociopath" from the outset -- if he'd escaped his end in the book the fate of a joe pesci character always awaited him, at the hands of rival mobsters

Carver's stories 'So Much Water So Close To Home' and 'The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off' continue the presence of violence in the stories - in all these cases, violence by men and against women. In the first a girl has been killed and a woman attends her funeral. Here she hears about the violence. The husband is not guilty but seems implicated by having found the body and not immediately reported it. I note that a much longer version of the story appears in FIRES.

In 'The Third Thing', a quite long and dull story, a fellow who cannot talk acquires bass for his pond, then the pond is flooded. The fellow kills his (perhaps unfaithful) wife then drowns himself.

In 'A Serious Talk', yet again, there is at least the threat of violence, as the character Burt takes random vengeance against his wife's having a new partner - cutting her telephone wires, stealing her pies, and raising an ashtray as if to hit her. The last line is black comic / absurd: he has gone back to his car and started driving it: 'It was hard managing it until he put the ashtray down'.

I recalled that Carver wrote about troubled men, but not so much that he wrote about violence. This aspect is, naturally, I suppose deliberately, troubling.

But the collection makes me think about Carver and 'masculinity' (a concept I am not certain I understand). I think:

1: Carver writes about 'tough guys' who can build fences, drive cars, go fishing, drink whiskey, maybe even go hunting. (You may say anyone can do those things.) Carver is a 'masculine' writer.

2: Carver also writes about some of those people being actually violent or threatening violence. Carver demonstrates how such 'masculinity' can be dangerous, especially to women.

3: But more interestingly, Carver also seems to write a lot about men who are not very comfortable with these identities or habits. Men who don't really fit their roles, and feel awkward. Carver seems keen on awkwardness - it's even there in his great title WOULD YOU PLEASE BE QUIET, PLEASE? (The character who carries away the ashtray then remembers to put it down could be similar in a way - like Alan Partridge with his cheese.) Carver, I think, isn't just writing 'masculine fiction' about real men, but almost the opposite: repeatedly demonstrating how ill at ease these men are in the roles they're given. I suppose that's one reason they drink so much.

I feel a possible contrast with that obvious comparison Hemingway. He seems to me happier to let men be men, not to show them chafing at this role. But that could be because I am thinking of Hemingway the person, who really was masculine or macho, and not his characters.

I return to Michael Bracewell's UNFINISHED BUSINESS. I think that the book may be better written and more insightful and poignant than a lot of his earlier work - including THE CONCLAVE to which it's a sequel. I enjoy reading it. What I wonder is whether the book will prove to have any dynamism or plot. MB doesn't seem to have developed any new fictional material or areas of interest at all in the last 30+ years. Suburbia, offices; style and clothing; memories of punk rock.

Carver writes about 'tough guys' who can build fences, drive cars, go fishing, drink whiskey, maybe even go hunting...Carver, I think, isn't just writing 'masculine fiction' about real men, but almost the opposite: repeatedly demonstrating how ill at ease these men are in the roles they're given. I suppose that's one reason they drink so much.

Reading Hemingway's Collected Stories a few years ago, I was struck by how damaged his men and women often already are, no matter what they're doing or trying to do/avoid in the scenes shown. Likewise, in (far as I've gotten in the fiction)The Sun Also Rises, Brett and the boys bust out of Paris, wanting to be tourists again, and taken care of by foreigners as nannies, play therapists, performers.
I recently read a long review of a posthumous collection of his letters, written over many years copiously quoted: he crazy, jittery at best, and even when generating a smooth, cool-to-cold surface, the tremor is often there. (Also: lots of beefs, but more surprising are instances of vulnerability, though some of it seems manipulative.)
Alfred mentioned that posthumously published novel, Garden of Eden, about expermimenting with gender roles, I think? Would like to read that and some other posthumous.

I finish rereading WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE. The main impression that I record is to re-emphasise the presence of violence in these stories. In addition to the several I've already mentioned:

* 'The Calm': a hunter shoots a deer, then almost provokes a fight in a barber shop just by talking about it. (Why? Because he should have killed the deer and put it out of its suffering?)

* 'Popular Mechanics': a husband and wife fight over a baby. My fear is that the baby will be dropped over the hot stove. The ending leaves the possibility that they kill the baby by fighting over it. You could probably reasonably say that the husband is to blame for the violence. The wife is presumably smaller and weaker; by using force he is exercising an unethical domination over her. He's also probably hurting the baby. I thought slightly of THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE.

* 'Everything Stuck to Him': no actual violence in the story but only because the young husband doesn't go on the hunting trip he wants to go on. Classic Carver line when another fellow tells him 'The geese are flying to beat the band'.

The fact is that several of these stories are about males for whom violence, against animals, is normal. That isn't the case for anyone I know, that I can think of. I don't say that hunting is wicked, for that raises the question of hypocrisy for anyone who's ever eaten meat. But I do suggest that for these men, a certain kind of violence is normal and enjoyable. Meanwhile, violence against people also seems much more normal for many of them than it would be for almost anyone I know.

* 'What We Talk About When We Talk About Love': well, maybe this will be more peaceful. Not really, as it contains tales of an ex-husband who threatened a couple then shot himself in the head. The cardiologist at the centre of the story is drunken, seemingly depressive, and ominously possibly violent himself. I'm bothered by his aggression. I wouldn't want to be around him.

* 'One More Thing': a male character, LD, storms out of a house after yelling at a wife and daughter, and - definite violence - throwing a jar of pickles through a window.

That's 5 stories in a row!

I posit that if this book were published now, people wouldn't say 'this is moody', 'this is minimal', 'this is the forgotten America of people scraping by' or 'this is how men and women fail to communicate'. They'd say 'this is very violent'.

If that's correct then does it mean that something has changed in c.40 years? That 'our culture' is more sensitive to or bothered by violence? Or more ready to talk about it? Or that potential victims of such violence are more audible in said culture?

If you suppose that 'trigger warnings' exist and aren't a tabloid fiction, then I can fairly imagine this book being labelled something like 'content warning: domestic violence'.

I don't posit that the book is bad because it's so violent, or so simmering with aggression. It could be an achievement that it conveys all this aggression. I do merely note that this is part of its unsettling effect, which makes me doubtful that I'd want to get too close to these characters.

pinefox, not to be weird in stating the obvious, but the US is a violent, patriarchal place. the problems of violence that Carver brings into the work are reflective of that reality. i wouldn’t want to get too close to these characters, either, but wonder if that might be precisely the point?

Or more ready to talk about it? Or that potential victims of such violence are more audible in said culture?

I finished Uwe Johnson four part novel 'Anniversaries', written over a ten year period and totalling nearly 1700 pages. It was an immersive experience like how those big novels are (though I read the first part two years ago and then left it, till I picked it up again around Xmas). The last parts build a picture of the just born East German state through the years of a woman and her child.

For a novel set in '68 it's actually as much a book about Germany from the 30s; the novel is actually lightly experimental in the way it darts from that period right through around 1949 (so lots of material on denazification, and the beginnings of the Stasi), but it also doesn't decide on whether this or that system is BEST. The character sees what's going in America, a country at war with Vietnam, and it isn't a rosy picture. So while it hardly mentions what's going with student protests in '68 it spends time with the character as a teenager, as her friends learn about life and politics in the heat of Soviet occupied Germany.

Ultimately the writing really deliver. Johnson can write about people, nature, psychologies, a place. Certain passages (the account of the harvest in the middle of part Three) are breathtaking.

One of NYRB's greatest triumphs too, in bringing this out.

^Sounds good!

I've seen Johnson's novel often enough at the bookstore to wonder. I may buy it today.

Intangibles: Unlocking the Science and Soul of Team Chemistry - Joan Ryan

I reviewed some of this when I was partway though already in my baseball thread.

It’s kind of an unusual topic, but I loved it. It reminded me, when reading, of Moneyball, in terms of the strengths of the stories told and how convincing they are of the central thesis. If you know me at all online, you have probably read me going on about the importance of communities and my interest in relationships between people. This book is about that, but it makes the argument that the function of team chemistry is to elevate a team’s performance. Sounds obvious, but in the highly quantified world of sports analysis, you need to show your bona fides. Michael Lewis actually told Joan Ryan that team chemistry doesn’t exist, and so I was very interested to see how this played out!

Ryan has worked with/around my beloved San Francisco Giants for longer than I’ve been alive, so a lot of her analysis and connections come from teams across the decades. She talks about the 1987 San Francisco team that won the NL West and the various characters in that team that made up the roster. There’s anecdotes about Kevin Mitchell joining and bonding with Dave Dravecky, who was a member of the John Birch society (!). She writes about basketball, a sport I have never followed as an adult, and made the case for the 1996 women’s American basketball following a path to build a team that worked and loved and pulled for each other after their previous failures. When I say I was glued to this story, wanting them to come through it?

I mentioned in my baseball post, about the characters in clubhouses known as “cancers”, players who can pull a clubhouse down by malingering and who contribute less than their intrinsic talents because of their effect on the cumulative whole. The interesting part of this book is when she explores the 2002 Giants team which had two high profile characters that clashed, Jeff Kent and Barry Bonds. Ryan went in with the received wisdom, that these two dragged the team down. But both Kent and Bonds reiterated, fiercely, that though they didn’t care for each other as people, they had each other’s backs to the death on the field. And of course, they played together and off each other and got to a World Series together.

I quoted a lot from the book on the other post, but there are so many great stories in this book that stuck with me. Despite the fact that this book covers the Giants in depth, my favourite chapter actually began with this:

The Society for American Baseball Research held its second annual analytics conference at Arizona State University in March 2013. A lanky, square-jawed pitcher named Brandon McCarthy settled into a chair onstage for a panel discussion. McCarthy had participated at the inaugural conference the previous year, too. He was a rarity among major league players at the time. He completely embraced analytics. He had begun reading Bill James’s sabermetrics books for fun, mostly to win baseball arguments on social media. He soon was following the daily stream of statistical analyses on websites like sabr.org and FanGraphs.com. He liked the black-and-white clarity of analytics. He had improved his own performance by applying what he learned. In short, he was both aficionado and practitioner and could hold his own with the mathematicians and baseball geeks in the Arizona State University auditorium.

Halfway through the discussion, the moderator brought up the squishy, anti-analytic notion of “clubhouse guys” whose presence supposedly somehow makes a team better. What was McCarthy’s take? The pitcher paused. He rubbed his face, knowing his answer might come as a surprise, and maybe a disappointment, to the acronym-and-algorithm crowd. “I think they’re really important,” he said. “And the reason I say that now — much more than I have in the past — is just being part of the A’s team last year.” By which he meant he had spent a season with Jonny Gomes. I had never crossed paths with this player. But I knew if I was going to understand team chemistry, I needed to understand Jonny Gomes.

sounds great! tho I've always been wary of 'cancer in the club house' takes because oftentimes I think a lot of it is probably just straight up bullying of a teammate who doesn't quite fit in.

Yeah, Bonds alludes to the inherent racism of the charge as applied to black players (whereas difficult white players kind of get to be characters or tenacious or passionate). Kent obviously was this himself and pretty loathed by the press as well, but the teammates didn’t see them that way at all.

Picked up a Jilly Cooper novel, Score!, at a charity shop for a bus journey. It’s crammed full of life and vulgar jokes, and reminds me of the way Joseph Wambaugh wrote in the 80s. It’s 800 pages long so I’m unlikely to finish it. But it’s very entertaining: Barbara Pym doing a script polish on Mario Puzo.

Omg, I have legitimately read that so many fucking times! You should absolutely finish it, and come back and talk to me about it!

RE: "Captains of the Sands", I didn't mean to say that I don't believe gangs of street children exist or existed in Brazil, or that they function as mutual support organizations to some extent. It was more the Disneyfication of the gang in Amado's book that I was objecting to, and the way he uses it to make his political points. It borders a bit too much on propaganda for my taste. On the other hand, Amado's frankness about the sexual activity of young boys seems more psychologically realistic, and unusual for writers during that period, although the way girls and women were portrayed seems potentially troubling from a modern perspective.

xpost

Amazing - that's reassuring to know! I'll see what I can do. I keep thinking, "I'll probably put this down at some point..." but then carry on reading. It never seems to run out of energy.

I lolled pretty hard in public when one of the characters was described as "the James Galway of cunnilingus"

A line that I have tried so hard to burn from my memory. Oh Jilly!

gyac, you may well be all over this, but do you know the sports writer Red Smith? Red Smith on Baseball and American Pastimes are a couple I haven't gotten to yet, but The Red Smith Reader is staggering: two 800-word columns a week, from late 30s to early 80s, models of passionate lucidity, from witty to red-headed furious (punching up at team owners, professional associations, media manipulation, fuck you too racist classist Cold War tool Olympics Committee), in drive-by shots, because always racing to the word limit through crowded bleachers while sorting out fields of play, so that even I (usually) feel like I understand some of what's at stake, right now, for leading players and their teams, in a wide variety of sports (which he periodically refers to as "games for children," trying to cool down himself and other sportsheadz).
Mind you, he's not above padding out horse race coverage with conversations and horse lineage, because whattayagonndo, those races are short. Indy 500 mostly interests him for the citizens very informally and somewhat massively camped out in whatever you call that green area the cars go round and round--and that's okay, cause the cars go round and round almost as briefly as horses, seems like (yeah he sufficiently profiles drivers too).
Non-sensational, unblinking coverage of a cockfight (once, not his regualr beat), while noting that such are still legal in a number of states at time of writing.
Sometimes takes his son, future international correspondent Terence Smith, in fishing trips, interviews locals and researches locales, also there's an image that's stayed with me, of a sea critter that stays noticeably dreary-ugly out in the tides, turns pink etc. in contrast to the harbor waters, perversely-bravely-perhaps mindlessly enough (mysteriously exceptional anyway).
Also lingering: his being under metal roof of a South African track star's homeland family home, with parents who are no fools, conveying enough in tone, facial expression etc.

I did not, Dow, and I greatly appreciate the recommendation! I actually have a long-standing love of/interest in horse racing so I will 100% be following this up. Thank you so much.

And, you know, all the rest, but I think it goes without saying that that’s all up my street.

You're welcome---it's more about team sports, but he seems reasonably, professionally engaged by horseracing and all or much that it entails)(get it, horses, tails) I'm told that book about Seabiscuit, maybe basis of the movie, is good.

I like to watch it on TV, but haven't read much about it (yet).

I love to watch things on TV

I continue towards the end of Bracewell's UNFINISHED BUSINESS (2023).

The novel is enjoyable. Easy to read. Elegant. You could say that MB is good at social and cultural textures, at least of certain kinds. City streets at dusk. Memories of summer evenings in suburbia (very Clientele, not that The Clientele told us much specifically about suburbia). Restaurants. Expensive wedding receptions.

However, it can also be said that MB's range as a writer and thinker has been narrow. This novel is a sequel to one from 1992. It seems a good idea to reuse those characters, not create new ones that are similar to them. But to write a sequel also, by definition, in one way shows a lack of imagination. At the same time the set-up is often very close to MB's appealing short novel PERFECT TENSE (2001): the alienated office worker remembering his past. That's literally what much of this novel is.

It makes sense that MB needs to fill in the gaps between what had happened up to c.1992 and c.2017 when this is set. But he also often goes back to earlier memories, ie: those that were already covered in the first novel. So he is almost literally repeating himself at times.

The novel tends to start from a scene - protagonist Martin Knight at his desk in the office, say - and go from that to a reverie: 'Martin thought of a dinner party, was it 15 years earlier?' - and from that, quite extensively described, to another scene earlier than that. Or he'll jump sideways and say 'At that moment, Martin's ex-wife was entering a restaurant'. The main point is that most of the novel's movement is backwards in time, not forward. You could compare MRS DALLOWAY, though that also contains a lot of present action. Or Proust, if the difference in scale weren't so great. I daresay that in his modest way (and at an in-person event on this I found him quite self-deprecating) MB is trying to effect some kind of fictional aesthetic for a C21 Proustian project.

It's a bad sign when Bracewell's sentences trail off into ellipses, and he presents snatches of remembered speech, which often aren't particularly insightful. It conveys a sense that he's running out of the energy to make the prose coherent and continuous.

MB's topic is poignant enough: a solitary man whose marriage has ended, who now spends much of time drinking alone (surely he doesn't need to drink so much) and reminiscing about better days. This has its truth. But MB could give the character more meat to chew on. He has a daughter: why wouldn't he make more effort to be with her and make that a good relationship? (He does a bit, but MB shows it only fleetingly.) He thought of himself as an 'aesthete' - OK, why doesn't he now, in the 2010s, go to art galleries, or films, or simply ... read books? The idea that exciting romance is in the past I understand; the idea that experiencing art and culture is in the past, I don't. The character is unnecessarily limited in this way.

The daughter Chloe could be a promising character. She is a lesbian and MB makes a good effort at describing her love for her partner (fiancée in fact). But why not say more about what this younger, almost Gen Z, person thinks about the world? It's set in 2017 - what does she think of the forthcoming General Election? MB leaves that stuff to Jonathan Coe.

MB is obsessed with rendering clothes - the exact details of a waistcoat, tie or skirt - and sometimes places or objects, even menus. There is potentially some virtue in this, in a Peter York way: a record of taste and time. But it would be better if it accompanied a stronger narrative, rather than taking the place of story. I reflect that MB is oddly the fulfilment of what Woolf complained about re Arnold Bennett's aesthetic: 'describe the exact number of buttons on her dress', etc, the 'materialism' that she distrusted. MB is very 'materialist' indeed.

What the novel could use is a bit more present-day drama and forward motion. In a way it gets that when the protagonist has a heart attack and a heart bypass - but even in this he is passive. I have a bit to go and I hope that MB can deliver a final element of story, rather than just more texture.

RE: "Captains of the Sands", I didn't mean to say that I don't believe gangs of street children exist or existed in Brazil, or that they function as mutual support organizations to some extent. It was more the Disneyfication of the gang in Amado's book that I was objecting to, and the way he uses it to make his political points. It borders a bit too much on propaganda for my taste. On the other hand, Amado's frankness about the sexual activity of young boys seems more psychologically realistic, and unusual for writers during that period, although the way girls and women were portrayed seems potentially troubling from a modern perspective.

I think it's certainly a fair charge to say Amado sentimentalizes his protagonists, though I wouldn't make as cruel a comparison as Disney - as I think I mentioned earlier, Dickens is imo a closer analogue, and all the sentimentality in the world hasn't turned people off him. tbc I do think it's an apples & oranges situation with Brighton Rock tho, just completely different contexts.

I finish Bracewell's novel. Certain events happen, but not in a way that's very connected. A character dies - suddenly and randomly, so it's poignant but has no meaning or causal connection to other events. The protagonist keeps drinking heavily despite having had two heart bypass operations. He leaves his job. He decides to move to a flat in the suburb where he grew up.

It's odd how blank MB has left this character. It must in some way be deliberate. He's extremely passive - but he's also totally uninterested in most things. He thinks nothing of politics - in 2017, when Brexit among other things was everywhere. He doesn't care about sport. OK, he's an 'aesthete'. But he doesn't go to galleries either, or the cinema, or read books (the only books he looks closely at, he admires their binding). He liked music in the 1970s. Fair enough that he's not into the music of today, Tom Ewing Poptimist style. But then why doesn't he care about Roxy Music reunions, or reflect on the death of Bowie a year earlier?

Bracewell said in person that he was the 'Ambassador for Suburbia'. He refers to suburbia a lot. He did write properly about it in ENGLAND IS MINE, I think. But in his fiction suburbia is more of an alibi. Suburbia is 'a memory of a summer evening, shining through on a landing, on a box of LP records, in 1974'. OK. Yes, I can identify with that aspect of suburbia. But if I were going to write a book supposedly rooting itself in suburbia, I would talk a lot more about what actually goes in suburbia. Chinese takeaways, Indian restaurants, minicabs, garden centres. People washing cars, mowing lawns and raising children. Pensioners. Busybody online groups. MB seems very uninterested in any actual _people_ who might live in suburbia.

Given the relative success (?) of this novel, it could be interesting (?) to see if he is stirred, or forced, to write another, and go a little outside the zone in which he is so comfortable.

West of the Revolution Claudio Saunt
Book on what else is happening in North America as the American army under Washington is trying to fight off British rule.
I've just been reading about a Spanish religious expedition trying to link Santa Fe with Monterey that was unsuccessful since it turned back halfway and did a circuit including the Grand canyon. They mapped the route but managed to get 2 rivers 100 miles apart combined.
Previous chapters have looked at Russian expeditions into what would become Alaska.
I think I came across the book in a couple of bibliographies, possibly of books on Native America. It is really interesting to see what was happening outside of the colonies you hear most about. What became America was and is a vast space.

Animal Land Margaret Blount
Been reading blount while listening to Blount since I been listening to Sun Ra quite a bit recently.
Book from the mid 70s about fictional animals in books especially Children's books. IT seems pretty knowing in some of its turns of phrase.
Doesn't frown on the Song of the South collection as much as later books would thanks to the way the stories were collected . But does touch on things like agency and nods to feminism though I don't think it says so explicitly.
I'm quite enjoying this, though not sure where I got the recommendation from as to its existence. Had to order it as an interlibrary loan anyway.

Patti Smith Year of the Monkey
Anecdotal tale of a time that Patti Smith was in California between San Francisco and LA. Spends a lot of time talking about dreams and everyday conversations. Again quite enjoying it. Quite readable, not sure what I'm going to come away with unlike Just Kids where you get a better understanding of an influential part of her history , maybe a better understanding of her psyche.
Anyway, go it over Xmas from a local library thinking I'd get through it rapidly. Instead wound up with it sitting around the bed for teh last few weeks as i got through some books I'd had out much longer. Glad i have got to it now though.
I would like to get a chance to read some of her 70s rock journalism though. I guess the writing style here is quite readable anyway which not everything is.

W.E.B. du Bois The Souls of Black Folks
Finally getting to read the great black thinker. Odd writing style possibly, maybe reflecting the times since this came out right at the start of the last century. May also be trying to sound biblical.
Quite anecdotal as he covers various subjects related to the black experience of teh time. I think I will be trying to read some more of his stuff.

The Big Blue Book Calvin Jones
Mystery about how a wheeled contraption works. Something I should have read a few months ago.
Written by porn mustachioed mechanic Calvin Jones.
Somehow over the next few weeks i shall get to the very bottom of this or fail or something.
If I do I can fix bikes, if I don't I won't be able to as much. Ho hum

I"m chugging on with Kristin Lavrandsdatter, just into the third and last book. I think it could be described as ultra realist - compared to this Middlemarch seems like a riot of larger than life characters and events. I'd say it's maybe 10% political intrigue, 30% christian guilt and 60% just people getting on with their lives, regrets, loveless marriages, etc. It's very good on family life, both the mediaeval aspect and more universally/timelessly.

Darryl Pinckney - Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-seventh Street, Manhattan
Zora Neale Hurston - Dust Tracks on a Road
Barbara Comyns - The Juniper Tree

Two weeks and two thirds into Life and Fate. I'm glad I've spent zero time trying to keep track of which characters belong to the large family, whose far-flung experiences in WWII provide the device that attempts to tie the narrative together. The connections between all the people, places and experiences Grossman describes all run strongly through Stalin, the Party, the Soviet bureaucracy, the Holocaust, and the war itself. The family narrative is mostly incidental and only provides a slender emotional thread to connect a dozen disparate milieus.

The Chandler (NYRB) translation seems very readable, neither overly literal nor flattened out. The introduction points out that Grossman spent much of WWII functioning as a journalist and that experience is very evident in the novel. The structure of the book is very reportorial, worked over to give the descriptions greater resonance. The characters are all sketches, but Grossman is quite good at sketching them.

Very appealing, esp. your second graf, thanks.
Alfred please check back in some time(s) re:

Darryl Pinckney - Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-seventh Street, Manhattan
Zora Neale Hurston - Dust Tracks on a Road
Barbara Comyns - The Juniper Tree

I've started N.K. Jemisin, THE FIFTH SEASON (2015), the first of a trilogy of fantasy novels set on a continent that seems to be subject to earthquakes. Can't quite tell what the technological level of the world is - low, I think, as a character rides a horse for transport. The novel puts you in the world without explaining its coinages and usages ('absent paradigm'?), which is quite wearying, but then again it does have a Glossary - maybe that's not a bad way to do it. The novel seems to be focused on certain telepathic children who have special powers and are feared by the community. The writing is clear but not otherwise especially good yet.

Alfred please check back in some time(s) re:

The Pickney was thrilling and obnoxious. On one hand I'm sick of Cal 'n' Lizzie and the letters and Harriet and even more impatient with their generation's petty wars, i.e. that liar Lillian Hellman. Robert Lowell refuses to stay dead. Written in hiccupy paragraphs, the narrative took me a while to get a hold of. But on the other hand Pinckney is a splendid tour guide and alert to Hardwick's old-Southern-dame casual racism (which to her credit she acknowledges and works on). Many, many book recommendations I jotted down, you might expect.

You're sick of Harriet? Can you imagine having those parents? She might well be a handful too, but also think it might be like when you meet Pete's parents in the "New Amsterdam" episode (also follow-ups) of Mad Men, and read what Evelyn Waugh's Maw and Paw really were, beyond his own mentions in A Litte Learning, I might be inclined to make allowances for the offspring.
Will take a look at the book if I come across it; thanks for your plausibly mixed take.

I read Barbara Comyns' *The Vet's Daughter* a few years back. A profoundly strange book, that, now I come to think of it, is quite close in tone to *The Ice Palace* by Tarjei Vesaas, which I finished this morning.

It's hard to put a finger on *what* Vesaas's subject is in the book. The intensity of childhood relationships, yes, but there's a numinous secret at the heart of the book, only hinted at in a conversation between the central child characters, that remains just out of reach, almost as if it's pre- or extra-linguistic. The titular ice palace is a beautiful, ephemeral free-floating metaphor for this unknowable quality but that is a clumsy explanation and doesn't really do justice to Vesaas' strangeness.

I've been puzzling over where I'd place Vesaas (not that he needs placing anywhere). I've read that Joyce was an influence and I can hear echoes of *Dubliners*. Bits of Kafka. The thing it reminded me of most was Angela Carter's *The Bloody Chamber* but that might be a stretch.

There's a good Backlisted episode on Vesaas. Worth it to hear Karl Ove Knausgård read in the original Norwegian. https://www.backlisted.fm/episodes/175-tarjei-vesaas-the-ice-palace

I’ve loved all the Vesaas I’ve read, but The Ice Palace is particularly special I think.

I feel really guilty that I haven't been able to get through Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo, especially since it was a Christmas gift from my wife and it's so short, but I'm just too burned out with work to keep track of shifting narrators and characters who are alternately alive and dead. Will have to revisit it sometime when I'm in a better headspace.

Having better luck listening to the audiobook of Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything. Really fascinating stuff.