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

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?