A halo of warmth in the darkness of the year: what are you reading spring 2023?

In the meantime, the semester is over and when I am not grading, I’m catching up on the piles that have accumulated— today I’m reading Argentine poet Maria Negroni’s Exilium, an interesting book regarding myth, the years of dictatorship, exile from language, and (seemingly) cycles of birth/re-birth. Evocative and strange work, center-aligned, with a good translation.

xyzzzz, I forgot to add— glad yr finding something in Prynne’s work!

Professor Calculus?

― the pinefox, Saturday, 29 April 2023 12:23 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

the same! or tryphon tournesol as he is known in the original belgian

apparently the actual real piccard was a very tall and thin long-necked man; hergé felt this a bodyshape that did not suit his favoured cartoon dimensions, so he made calculus a "mini-piccard"

that is quite delightful

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc3krgW-LIQARaJ4YKxZoQcdwHuerJ94ePZCXRtF5gsL13HiEVYHPEL8qU5wohJlt0cpTW3ZWzLPw3tPYAgtZNoST8rk7mM1W5QBR5XvES9TlL2dxBQpoLOkblyz9oNoMF0hAUC5_EBSEetF3fDIDfuJgpRDEuHcfyQHDK2_5HyFkw_M7WToPCvvq-/s1600/auguste-piccard-4.jpg

last month was all illegitimacy, Scarlet Letter, Ruth, An Eye For An Eye.

next month will be modern versions of Greek myths (and maybe some actual ovid / euripides for background), starting with a Stone Blind

While continuing with self-deprecating, winking, swaggering Bono I've also started a short novel I've meant to read for years: Keith Waterhouse's first (?) novel THERE IS A HAPPY LAND, about childhood.

This week I reread True Grit by Charles Portis … marvel at his prose always, and was so swept up in the story i finished in a day or two. Love the drama of the last couple of chapters, the showdown, the pit, the skeleton (!) the snakes (!) … like a serialized drama where it all unfurls so excitingly.

Also revisited Ask The Dust by John Fante
Back in the day i loved this as a wide-eyed naive uni student dazzled by writerliness but two decades def blurred my memory of the misogyny & violence & racial slurs that make up a lot of the central narrative. Jesus. He writes beautifully and in its weird intensely Catholic way I do like the novel but damn this is a hard one to come to grips with as a fully -formed adult.

It’s not even an “oh the times” argument, it’s like he was working out old personal shit on paper & is just like, a story mm yes its a story

lot of that in literature I know
but it’s one that definitely has hung around with me long after putting it down.

What's another good Portis? I loved True Grit, although sometimes it felt a bit... cute? I can see why it appealed to the Coens.

I've just started "Vet's Daughter" by Barbara Comyns, which is sublimely miserable so far. It's so vivid and atmospheric, in so few words, without seeming telegraphed. Reminds me a little of... Roald Dahl? Like Dahl if he took abusers more seriously.

Dog of the South is my fave Portis

^this is the justly celebrated canonical favorite

you really can’t go wrong w him imo
i need to read gringos, that’s the only one of his i haven’t read

I eventually made my way through all of them. Masters of Atlantis was the one that has stuck with me the longest, but they are all worthwhile reads. More than any author I can think of, his books grapple with what Wm. Carlos Williams wrote in his poem: "The pure products of America go crazy."

Library of America just put out a Portis Collected Works: https://loa.org/books/727-collected-works

I say it any chance I get: Masters of Atlantis is the funniest book I’ve ever read.

"in essence, part of reading him (for me) is finding the phrases and bits of language that really stand out and then burrowing in"

Yes, table, that was my impression - those moments of lucidity felt like they were cut into the text. It's interesting how readable those later books felt.

"xyzzzz, I forgot to add— glad yr finding something in Prynne’s work!"

I had that collection in my unread pile for a couple of years. Your posts on reading him encouraged me to have a run through it.

I finished SILVERVIEW recently.

le carre: the thing he's actually good at (possibly)

I’m halfway through Overstory now and it’s threatening to veer into love story schmaltz

Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe, by David Maraniss

In this case, Path Lit by Lighting was an approximate translation of Thorpe's Indian name.

I finish Keith Waterhouse's THERE IS A HAPPY LAND (1957). It's all told by a small boy, in his own argot. Some of the children's speech rhythms and emphases (I don't mean the vocabulary) read oddly now. The story starts out seeming like it will be a sort of revelling in children's customs, but gradually grows darker. There is a suggestion of the danger that adults can pose. But the children themselves often seem to be the most dangerous and malicious characters. The book ends with poignancy and reflection. Waterhouse is very good on perceptions, thoughts, self-presentation, the ongoing negotiation within a conversation. He shows himself a shrewd, observant storyteller.

Finished Francis Davis The History Of The Blues which ends with some oh so white rumination on who is preserving the genre which I could have done without. Told the story in a readable way but could do without that .

Finished Joana Russ's How To Suppress Women's Writing which I will probably need to reread regularly if i get the opportunity. So could do with a copy. Do hope other people read this one I have currently borrowed and it doesn't just languish in a basement in Rathmines.

Started On Savage Shores how Indigenous Americans discovered Europe by Caroline Dodds Pennock,
her book telling the story of how from the first contact with Columbus at the turn of teh 15th/16th century which tends to be represented as Europe discovering a populated continent there had been traffic the other way too. Columbus came back to Spain with a few native individuals.
& the number grew over the next couple of centuries.
I'm in th introduction so far and she is talking about the population of Europe already being far more cosmopolitan than it has been represented since. Also what terms to refer to people from teh Americas with including the Aztecs which she's calling Aztec-Mexica so that people aren't totally confused by her dumping the traditional projected name used for teh alst few centuries.
Anyway seems to be a good book and I like the writing so far.
I've heard her interviewed on a few podcasts since hearing about this book a couple of months ago. Enjoyed what I heard.

Needed some light reading so am working my way through Strong Female Character by the stand up comedian Fern Brad, which is a memoir about her being diagnosed with autism in her 30s. Really enjoying it so far.

After that it'll be Mel Brooks' memoir. Anyone on here read that one?

I couldn’t find that I ever posted about reading The Stepford Wives but I loved it and have reread it about fifty times since. I saw Rosemary’s Baby in the kindle sale for 99p and bought it, read it in maybe three and a half hours.

Levin reminds me very much of Margaret Atwood in the way he identifies and recontextualises horrific misogyny. So in Rosemary’s Baby, Rosemary begs her original doctor to see her urgently and sits and calmly tells him everything that has gone on. She thinks the doctor has left the room to call the hospital, but instead he’s called her husband, who comes to pick her up.

It’s something that is reported by many women; doctors often dismiss or ignore their symptoms, don’t trust them as adequately understanding their own bodies or feelings. From this Time article:

Women are more likely to be offered minor tranquilizers and antidepressants than analgesic pain medication. Women are less likely to be referred for further diagnostic investigations than men are. And women’s pain is much more likely to be seen as having an emotional or a psychological cause, rather than a bodily or biological one. Women are the predominant sufferers of chronic diseases that begin with pain. But before our pain is taken seriously as a symptom of a possible disease, it first has to be validated—and believed—by a medical professional. And this pervasive aura of distrust around women’s accounts of their pain has been enfolded into medical attitudes over centuries. The historical—and hysterical—idea that women’s excessive emotions have profound influences on their bodies, and vice versa, is impressed like a photographic negative beneath today’s image of the attention-seeking, hypochondriac female patient.

tpd is early iirc, and was out of print for a while - i had to pick up a second hand copy.

levin's big trick is to put the twist ending in the middle, spend the second half of the book living with the consequences.

my pick of his would be A Kiss Before Dying which does that masterfully.

Boys from Brazil, Sliver even, all worth reading

(i was wrong, This Perfect Day is between R's Baby and Stepford)

I bought A Kiss Before Dying as well

Always been curious about Perfect Day as it’s been lying around my parents house for a half century with this cover

Bono's SURRENDER reaches his work in the early 2000s on African debt and AIDS relief. This part of the book is not the most enjoyable.

Bono makes a case for the importance of the AIDS treatment based on his travels in Africa. He also describes his negotiations with US politicians to try to secure funding. He is very favourable about Condoleeza Rice and re: G. W. Bush, emphasises that he created the biggest healthcare initiative ever.

I found this difficult to read because I do not like those people. Bono says nothing about the other things that they did which many people thought were bad.

Separately, I find myself thinking that Bono could put lots of energy and ingenuity into campaigning for medicine in Africa - and I cannot criticise that - but he would never campaign for eg: socialised health in the USA, which I believe would also be good for many people. In some sense, I think, the latter is 'too political' for him. It doesn't fit his view of politics as something that you have to transcend.

Meanwhile I have started Nell Dunn's UP THE JUNCTION (1963). I think my vague idea of this book was that it was a 'kitchen sink novel'. But it's really more a series of vignettes, which appear to be quasi-documentary rather than primarily fictional. It contains a lot of dialogue which is unattributed - like hearing the voices on a Free Cinema documentary. It contains some flashes of striking prose.

The book is not very long. It belongs to the category of 'books that I have owned for a long time that I would like to read rather than constantly leaving them unread while I acquire new books'.

I started reading the introduction of Ed Yong's An Immense World where he sets up a thought experiment or scenario where several different animals and a young woman are in a large room together. So he compares what their sense experience is likely to be. I enjoyed what I read so far but am in the middle of several other books so I left it there for now.
Book is about the experience of the world through what is understood of other animals' senses and what it tells us about the human experience. Have only come across him talking about the one imaginary woman so am assuming he is fully recognising neurodiversity.
I think it is getting good reviews and teh podcast appearances I've heard have been quite good.

Up The Junction turned into a BBC Ken Loach play that I think was reshown a couple of months ago and a film that has Dot Cotton from early years of Eastenders in . I noticed there were differences between the play and the film. Film may be truer to the book.
Film had a great Manfred Mann theme song.

I have the book or at least read it a long time ago, probably early 90s. So probably picked it up from one of the Dublin cheap booksellers.

I think play was reshown, I certainly saw it so am assuming it was on tv rather than downloaded.

I definitely want to read An Immense World. I'm currently taking a break from The Traveller of the Century to read Vicki Baum's Grand Hotel. So far seems to be a novel of characters, I generally prefer novels of plots but we'll see.

re up the junction: film is not in my opinion truer to the book

interesting maybe as a rare example of london-based kitchen sink (which tended to be a northern phenom)

"Dot Cotton from early years of Eastenders"

Think she was in late years also !

gyac, I've always been troubled by how well I thought the film of Rosemary's Baby depicts the things you mention - considering Polanski's own history, it felt to me like the sort of twisted compartmentalization of an abuser who has the intelligence and empathy to understand how gaslighting works and what effects it has on its victim while somehow still being able to indulge in it himself. now I'm wondering if I wasn't giving credit to Polanski that actually belongs to Levin.

pinefox, I think in addition to the things you mention it's worth being critical of the initiatives themselves, i.e. how much of the money actually goes where it should, how much profit is being made off the back of it, how much of this is PR and tax evasion, how much of it is top down "here Africans the white man has come to help you" as opposed to engaging with grass roots activists on the ground, etc.. of course I don't expect Bono himself to get into those issues.

The film version of Rosemary's Baby is famously faithful to the novel; iirc Polanski only omits a very minor subplot about Rosemary's sister.

xp I don't watch Eastenders so had assumed she would be long gone. It was funny seeing her as a teen in the late 60s film after seeing her in that though. I think Maureen Lipman is also in the film.

I used to go down to a clothing shop in Clapham in the mid 80s, bought a fringed suede jacket from there. Not really familiar with teh area otherwise. I think it was heavily gentrified since the book/play/film wasn't it?

A funny thing about Bono's account is that he keeps going to see Republican senators who say "why should we give money to these African countries - they're riddled with corruption?". And Bono says "Senator, I appreciate that, but we're working on good governance ..."

The reason I find this funny (not in a very happy way) is that I believe that the Republican party is responsible for massive corruption in the USA.

The CIA's role in this corruption as the US and USSR used much of Africa for proxy wars also worth pointing out (though I grant this would not get republican senators onside).

I tried to get at this months ago, and perhaps caused some damage to my standing here, but will say what I meant then: Bono is a fucking idiot.

Mary Renault - Funeral Rites
Isabel Wilkerson - Caste
Glyn Maxwell - The Boys at Twilight: Poems 1990-1995

entirely agreed :)

xpost

xp re Bongo
I assumed that was well known.
Is anybody stanning for him?
Do hope his days as an automatic talking head are over or at least numbered.

Do remember walking behind him on Temple Bar and realising what a little man he was, not to be sizist or anything. But does make you wonder if the napoleon complex is a thing.

the beginning of the gentrification of clapham is literally what "up the junction" is about (nell dunn moving there from fashionable chelsea in the late 50s)

Mary Renault - Funeral Rites

Funeral Games, innit?

yep

I finished *Stepping Stones* the series of interviews with Seamus Heaney. It's 600 pages long and became oddly hypnotic the further along I got. Despite the Nobel prize, I don't think I'd fully metabolised his standing as a cultural figure (ignorance or provincialism, on my part?). Friends with Lowell and Bishop, Hughes and Brodsky; professorships at Harvard and Oxford; reading at Milosz's funeral. Still, there is a moment, after his stroke, when Clinton comes calling to his hospital bed, that the size of his achievement really dawned on me. I don't know why it should have been that when the work is right *there* but, somehow, the work operates - continues to work - on a different level. It's so thrumming and sinuous that *book* doesn't quite feel like the right word. Artefact, probably.

Now reading David Toop's *Sinister Resonance*. Even for Toop, this is episodic, fractured and abstract. The main threads of it are meditations on paintings and sculptures; the uncanny silences held within the frames, the subjects - particularly of Vermeer, di Chirico, Nicolaes Maes and Juan Muñoz. There are the usual excursions into place, artefacts and hypnagogia though, and he always makes me want to go back to the art - in whatever form it takes.

I took another break from the French Revolution and read The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler. No need to comment. It's a classic.