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

it seems a little weird that these agencies would spend so much time and money on what seems like, basically, a lot of dicking around

I dunno, much of the history of the CIA in the 20th century seemed to be dicking around - financing abstract art, trying to off Castro with an exploding cigar, etc.

yes coppola's heart of darkness quote springs to mind, adding in 'too few morals' for good measure.

heart of darkness lol, apocalypse now ofc

Mailer's Harlot's Ghost, like your average Le Carré novel, shows 40 years of dicking around.

what if a mole but outer space

I Am Not Ashamed, the lurid, ghostwritten tell-all by troubled 50s actress Barbara Payton. Accidentally reads like a rare mid-century noir written from a female POV.

I Am Not Ashamed, the lurid, ghostwritten tell-all by troubled 50s actress Barbara Payton. Accidentally reads like a rare mid-century noir written from a female POV.

Who was the ghost?

Maybe it wasn't accidental, to have that kind of pulp appeal.

time to catch up on my recent and no not-so-recent reading:

Into the Woods and The Likeness – Tana French

The first two volumes in the Dublin Murder Squad series. Although, as French says in the acknowledgments to the second novel, 'In some places, where the story seemed to require it, I’ve taken liberties with facts (Ireland doesn’t, for example, have a Murder squad)'. Yes, yes, i think it's fair to say that's taking a bit of a liberty, Tana.

These are enjoyable, in fact compelling, to an extent that slightly surprised me. There is in both, but especially the latter, a central near-supernatural element that unravels the minds of the individual detectives, so that they are doing battle not just with a crime and its causes but with their perception of the crime and its scene, of their place in it, of their potential contribution to its causes. They are *implicated*. Their heads get fucked. It puts you on edge as a reader. It's effective.

French manages dialogue and scene building very well indeed. It was a touch and go thing with the initial introductory paragraphs of both, which are quite mannered, but that's got past almost immediately. Apart from a truly dreadful concluding 'action' scene in *The Likeness*, the writing is very accomplished and impressive.

I haven't read the others in the series, apparently not as good, but I might give at least one of them a go.

xxp gossip columnist/pulp writer Leo Guild. I meant "accidental" more as a tell-all so vivid that it crosses over into the world of pulp/noir.

Essays:

The Frontiers of Meaning, Three Informal Lectures on Music – Charles Rosen
Almost magical essay construction and writing. Compare it to the broken footed english civil war history i quote above itt - the quality of the writing is connected to the quality of the thought, or its expression anyway. Poor style cripples difficult or complicated expression and thinking. Charles Rosen's essays are almost delicate in the selection of their elements, the examples, the points of argument, but retain throughout a good humour, resilient and appropriate to talking about art and the attendant arguments and difficulties over differences in taste and performance. As I'm not a musicologist (although can read music), the light but very clear deployment of musical analysis and reading of scores was much appreciated.

The second of these for instance, How to Become Immortal, describe the process by which reputation is constructed from the initial cultural experience of eg Beethoven, and turned over time to Immortality. Rosen's central contention is that 'canonic status is accorded to works not by posterity, or at least not by a posterity as distant in time as is sometimes thought'. He shows why he thinks that and the mechanisms and cultural processes by which immortality is constructed.

The first, The Frontiers of Nonsense, describes the process of initially resisting that which we do not understand, that friction ultimately driving us to try and understand and ultimately love - what are the boundaries of this process.

These are sophisticated essays, light and substantial at the same time, with clear musicological examples and full of anecdote, historical knowledge, and insight. They're also amusing, with pithy aperçus (a phrase that i want to spoonerise immediately now i've written it) and anecdotes:

...Charles Lamb, who in 1821, six years before Beethoven's death, wrote an essay against the appreciation of music entitled "A Chapter on Ears." He has, he says, no ear for music: ".. *sentimentally* I am disposed to harmony. But *organically* I am incapable of a tune." Operas and oratorios are bad enough, he remarks, but even worse are "those insufferable concertos, and pieces of music, as they are called..." Listening to pure instrumental music for Lamb ("empty instrumental music," as he terms it) was like reading a book that was all punctuation...

or the wise

... we have trouble enough revising our own standards of criticism without having to pretend to reform everyone else's.

Second, the essay Local Knowledge: Fact and Law in Comparative Perspective, collected in the book of the same name, by Clifford Geertz. Not the first time I've read this, it's an extraordinary essay on how the management of the 'place of fact in a world of judgment' in western jurisprudence is constituted with regard to قّ / ḥaqq, dharma, and adat in other cultures. I think what I admire most about Geertz is the flexibility of his intelligence to manage questions of relation in a framework that allows comparison. To recognise that sometimes you are going to have to manage matters pragmatically, but that you have to retain an ability to distinguish and to relate. As with Rosen, his deep, deep knowledge allows firmness of opinion where it is due, and a relaxed approach to differences of opinion where any such dogma is unhelpful or inappropriate to assert.

It's an essay that would be in my own personal canonical reading list, and perhaps i ought to try and do better justice to it elsewhere. but as with many geertz essays - and i'm no anthropologist and i'm sure he's been superseded or contradicted by mightier authorities - but you feel like you're getting the literary equivalent of that intelligence chip musk wants to put in people's branes (i might be summarising frivolously ofc). Free intelligence, right here, anyway. And again, the quality of the thought, and its expression, is invigorating to read.

Vehicle – Jen Calleja. I really liked her collection of short stories, I'm afraid that's all we've got time for. Man, I struggled with this. I am delighted that it exists though, and I love the fact that prototype publishing is putting this sort of thing out.

It is not, as the subtitle states, a verse novel. It is, I guess a work of metafiction. And again, the theory is quite enticing, a wandering set of islands, colonised by our european nations, suffer a schism from the Mainland colonisers. A group of academics and writers are paid to recover the history of the schism and its aftermath from the fragments of texts and recordings that remain, only to find this is a political attempt at erasure of history. the substance of the texts are centred around the people and events that orbit around the punk/post-punk group Vehicle. Translation, xenophobia, immigration are the themes.

By fuck it's heavy going. I feel bad because I was going through a period of struggling to read and it's more than possible that i just didn't have the energy or mental sharpness to tackle this book – if any ilxor can rescue it for me I'd be delighted because I really wanted it to work. Didn't finish, I'm afraid.

more tomorrow to avoid DoS-ing the books thread.

one more

Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession – Janet Malcolm.

Sharp, well written, but her tame psychoanalyst is frequently quite annoying... "At our next meeting, I confessed to Aaron that I sometimes got tired of hearing him talk..." No. shit. is what i have to say to that. The book describes the jealousies and organisational politics – and disputes over theories of transference – of New York/US psychoanalysis of the period through the eyes and mouth of a self-pitying, somewhat pooterish psychoanalyst. the focus is very narrow and although that should be its great weakness it's actually probably its strength, as a documentary of the subject and period. It's like a short film or feature piece, unsurprisingly maybe. Malcolm is a very sharp writer. odd little book though.

I commence rereading Sean O'Casey's early play JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK (1924). It's shorter and feels more vivid and immediate than the later plays I've mentioned above. Some of the broad humour also comes through OK on the page.

I've been reading in Some Trick, a book of short stories by Helen DeWitt, presumably early work of hers that was published after Last Samurai in order to take advantage of the surge in interest. It has that feel to it. They're pretty interesting and her talent is obvious, but they're not mature work.

Just finished Geoff Dyer's The Last Days of Roger Federer which was a fun early summer read - hits all the usual Dyer notes (Tennis, Burning Man, jazz, living in Brixton in the mid-80s etc) in a way that worked for me.

Picked up Knausgaard's The Morning Star for £1.50 in a charity shop yesterday. Tempted to dive in (I read, and enjoyed, the first six and a half volumes of My Struggle but just wondered if anyone on ILB had actually read it.

i think some trick is a mixture tbh. imo a few of the stories are up there with her best - brutto for instance or entourage and the french style of mlle matsumoto. these have the recent v laconic style, and sit well with the sexual codes of the europeans and the english understand wool.

the earlier ones are less successful (especially the one set in oxford - famous last words?, as are the rock music ones, which are just slightly off though still have key hdw elements.

JUNO & THE PAYCOCK is perhaps O'Casey's most famous play. I read it long ago. I never thought I liked it that much but returning to it, I do find that it has a directness and comic effect that's better than the later work. Broad comedy in eg: the way that Boyle says he'll do one thing then immediately does another. Odd English middle-class character who's a Theosophist. The Civil War context perhaps doesn't come through so well - a character is shot, but there is never any sense of what people are fighting for.

I then started O'Casey's play COCK-A-DOODLE DANDY (1949). This is odd. It starts with an actor dressed as a cockerel walking across the stage. It seems to concern, in part, misogyny and distrust of women (that is, it seems to be critical of these things) - but I'm not far in yet.

Hitchcock did an adaptation of Juno & The Paycock during the silent era.

True. I should see that. I'm surprised John Ford never filmed it.

I pause the COCK play to read Flann O'Brien's short TV play THE BOY FROM BALLYTEARIM. Its historical setting (Boer War and WWI) is of interest, but the play is very slight. Oddly there's no real twist or action.

I then start rereading Flann O'Brien's early play FAUSTUS KELLY (1943), set in a regional council. Critics have always dismissed this play. But all the dialogue so far holds up well, including long speeches from Kelly that are hilarious pastiches of political discourse. I think it's been underrated.

I go on to Flann's other substantial play RHAPSODY IN STEPHEN'S GREEN (1943). Three acts set in the park, in which insects and other animals talk. Social and political allegory. It's all quite entertaining and has some striking elements - such as the bees whose desire to sting, which will kill them, brings sex and death together in a way unusual in this writer. On the whole I think these plays have been underrated because his other work shortly before them had been so outstanding. They're better than his late work.

Silvia Federici Caliban And The Witch
very interesting book looking at the develo9pment of capitalism and how it effected the working class and especially women who were seriously disenfranchised by the process It looks back at how feudalism was not the idyll it seems to be painted as in school history lessons and that there were actual means of protest at inequality and injustice etc. It also looks ta the rise of the witch hunt and who exactly got vilified.
One problem I had with the text was the constant ping pong one had to play between the text's narrative flow and turning to the end of the chapter where the endnotes are. These are often pretty substantial, which while showing a great deal of research also seriously disturbs the narrative flow. So it takes a bit longer to read than a book with less notes or where all the reference numbers are to citations not actual significant background information. Very good book anyway.
I think I have been meaning to read this for years. Have now been listening to a load of podcasts and archived talks and interviews with the author and other people talking about the book and related subjects.
I think I will try to get hold of the updates on the subjects covered since they do seem to be in the library system.

Ed Yong An Immense World
Science journalist looks at the Umwelt the world created by the senses and how this differs in various animals.. He makes the point that since these create the understanding that an animal lives in it would be very difficult to fully understand what it is like to exist as that animal. He references Thomas Nagel's essay What is it Like to Be A Bat which i had a similar take on in University 20 years ago which I think differed from how the lecturer was framing things. But I think this is very central to an understanding here , the basic understanding is down to one's experience of the world and since the filters of how one experiences the world are down to these senses it will be different without that being your basic experience. You can't visit temporarily and have the same experience and so on.
Good book, have been enjoying podcasts and talks with the author too.I think I will need to read his book on microbes too.

Lydia Edwards How To Read A Suit
great book on the development of men's clothing over about 400 years. This mainly concentrates on the suit as the title suggests. It wasa follow up to a book called How To Read A Dress by the same author. I need to read that one too. I heard about these books a few years ago on teh Dressed podcast. Glad i have read this now and now I have done i found out that I have a bit more time with it. I thought I was having to rush through to get i back for the next person in the library system queue. Not sure what happened there cos it was definitely reading as one copy in the system and one reserve.
Anyway did give me a couple of things i want to adopt and utilise in things I'm making. & would love a further book on other aspects of the male wardrobe showing development over time.

Song of The Outcasts Robin Totton
book on Flamenco that I've had out for too long without reading. Seems to have a lot of interesting info but I'm not 100% taken by the author's attitude to his subjects seems very very white gaze and quite patronising in places..
But may be turning me onto some decent new stuff.

Having finished Caliban and The Witch this morning and got within a couple of chapters of An Immense World I thought I might just give Theodore Allen The iNvention of The White Race another batch.
Sp I picked up from where i put it down last time I was trying to read it then went back to the beginning of the section. I've just read the beginning of the section on the colonisation of Ireland and the restructuring of the power structure and land ownership.
It is already peppered with reference numbers and i watched a tv appearance or heard a podcast referring to the amount of endnotes. It said 35% but it occurred to me earlier that I wasn't sure what that statistic referred to . I have the first of 2 sections which have more recently been omnibused together by Verso. I couldn't wait another few months to get hold of it when I bought it then left it unread for 2 or 3 years. Have meant to get back to it but it has been a couple of years where I have had several books on the go at almost all times. Hoping I will get through this this time and then read the 2nd Volume when I get a chance to. Not sure if 35% was across the 2 volumes. Seem to be a number of citations but also a couple of things that have been half a page long.
Anyway seems to be a good book that I hope i am going to fully ingest. Have heard quite a bit about it and probably have done a lot of reading that touches on this and will help- flesh out understandings better since I started trying to read it.

I finished RHAPSODY IN STEPHEN'S GREEN. It contains a lot of interesting material, and the voice of the human Tramp is very amusing. The satire of Loyalists and war in the third Act is bold, if crude.

I returned to O'Casey's play COCK-A-DOODLE DANDY. This is truly strange. It has almost no continuity of character, motivation or causality. People keep acting normally, then bonkers things happen, including a massive cock rampaging around the countryside causing havoc. It's played by an actor dressed up in a big cockerel outfit. Characters suddenly grow horns. Drink changes colour. You can't tell what's really going on or why. The most coherent thing to say about the play is that it's a critique of puritanism and misogyny, with a certain logic in all the women leaving at the end for a better life. But the play is mostly less coherent than this sounds.

I then read three TV plays by Flann O'Brien, I think all from 1962: THE TIME FREDDIE RETIRED, FLIGHT and THE MAN WITH FOUR LEGS. To be frank none of them are special. FLIGHT feels unusual in being a comedy about air travel from that long-ago date. I'm not sure how often Flann O'Brien was on an aeroplane.

Monica Heisey's "Really Good Actually", a Toronto romcom thing. It's no Heartburn (the obvious influence) but it's very enjoyable.

Also I picked up the complete Lorrie Moore collection for £1, which I'm quite pleased about.

I would be also!

Her new novel is published on Tuesday. Probably not for £1.

Listening to Phoebe Judge reading Turn of the Screw. I had blessedly forgotten James's turgidity.

After some weeks of hectic goings-on and lack of focus, I’m back in the swing. Finished Comitta’s The Nature Book and highly recommend it, especially to fans of Oulipo strategies.

Also read Coolidge’s Mesh, which was not very interesting to me, perhaps because it consists of rather abstract poems that seem to be referencing traditional cis-hetero coitus, which frankly is just not my cuppa. Finished a Coolidge/Mayer collaboration, The Cave, which began interestingly enough but then sort of departed from its subject— a failed caving expedition— and became increasingly dull, even on Mayer’s end, which surprised me.

Finished a chap by my mentor Kevin Killian on the fourth anniversary of his death, which was a nice way to mark the occasion.

Finally, just completed the short novel SALMON by Sebastian Castillo, a very funny yet affecting fabulist bildungsroman.

Now I’m on to Ignazio Silone’s Bread and Wine before heading to the bar for my shift. I’ve read Fontamara previously and loved it, excited to dive back into the poverty and socialist rancor of the Italian countryside.

Martin Hayes Shared NOtes
fiddle virtuoso from Clare's memoir. Pretty good read, not sure if this is the style he arrives at absolutely naturally or not. Seems to be a pretty great read and if this is the first thing he's really written it has a nice tone to it.
At the point I've reached he's gone through a few things that have messed him up pretty badly, drinking messing up his academic career, business investments that weren't as thoroughly researched as should have been and wound up backfiring meaning he is in considerable debt, a stupid physical competition backfiring on him badly. He has relocated to Chicago where some things are going right and some others are continuing to go awry which is having a deleterious effect on his state of mind. He has just formed a band with the player he's best known for playing with but the style isn't working as yet.
Anyway pretty good read from an artist I really enjoy. His Peggy's Dream album is really worth hearing

I've started Sean O'Casey's play THE SILVER TASSIE.

A few short books to end Spring:

Dario Fo - Francis, the Holy Jester
Anne Serre - The Fool & Other Moral Tales
Pierre Michon - The Eleven

I remember Dario Fo's plays as turning up a lot in channel 4s early days

The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard

COMING SOON: An All-New & Improved WAYR thread for Summer 2023! Watch this space for details.

Announcing a new WAYR thread two decades in the making!

Everything is Whirling and Twirling! What Are You Reading this Summer 2023?