Like something almost being said, it's the SPRING 2014 "WHAT ARE YOU READING" thread!

Our Mutual Friend was great, at least in college.
The last TV version of Bleak House made Carey Mulligan a star.

And I'm ripping through Five Came Back by Mark Harris, a definitive Hollywood / WW2 book.

Yeah, I was pretty sure Hofstadter was also the one who brought us that classic observation on US politics.

(sure sure, but---read it again, between the between)

Pinefox and Fizzles - I am just about managing lit and footie because I've taken sometime off work to watch WC (1st phase).

Next week is Wimbledon so its gonna be hard work.

I get the sense that Bolano's interest in Jünger was largely part of his interest in artists' and intellectuals' complicity with authoritarian states (as in Distant Star, Nazi Literature in the Americas, or By Night in Chile, which was originally titled Storms of Shit both in allusion to its ending and as a parody of the title of Jünger's Storm of Steel).

― one way street, Tuesday, June 17, 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sure I agree. Celine was never close to anybody by contrast, but I don't quite get his concentration on Juenger. Maybe RB saw Juenger as someone who was highly thought of and yet the books seem to be quite bad (The Glass Bees was utterly forgettable). I feel like I need to read more Juenger just to try and come up with a theory but I'm only writing this to be rid of the notion of doing so. I don't want to waste my time.

I'll try and get hold of Nabokov on Dostoevsky. Sounds up my alley.

7 chapters into Bleak House so far (corresponding to the first 2 numbers of the serial); still no real plot to speak of, although we have been introduced to the titular House... I'm enjoying all the scene-setting, while also anxiously waiting for 'something to happen'

favorite character BY FAR = the entire Jellyby family

read a bit of fitzgerald's 'the crack-up', forgot what a wit he was

also seem to be starting to reread oolissayss

what fitzgerald says about that is awesome

Even the intervening generations were incredulous. In 1920 Hey-
wood Broun announced that all this hubbub was nonsense, that young
men didn’t kiss but told anyhow. But very shortly people over twenty-
five came in for an intensive education. Let me trace some of the reve-
lations vouchsafed them by reference to a dozen works written for
various types of mentality during the decade. We begin with the sug-
gestion that Don Juan leads an interesting life (Jurgen, 1919); then we learn that there’s a lot of sex around if we only knew it (Winesburg, Ohio, 1920), that adolescents lead very amorous lives
(This Side of Paradise, 1920), that there are a lot of neglected
Anglo-Saxon words (Ulysses, 1921), that older people don’t always resist sudden temptations (Cytherea, 1922), that girls are sometimes seduced without being ruined (Flaming Youth, 1922), that even rape often turns out well (The Sheik, 1922), that glamorous English ladies are often pr
omiscuous (The Green Hat, 1924), that in fact they devote most of their
time to it (The Vortex, 1926), that it’s a damn good thing too (Lady Chatterley’s Lover, 1928), and finally that there are abnormal variations
(The Well of Loneliness, 1928, and Sodom and Gomorrah, 1929).

that glamorous English ladies are often promiscuous (The Green Hat, 1924), that in fact they devote most of their
time to it (The Vortex, 1926), that it’s a damn good thing too (Lady Chatterley’s Lover, 1928)

lol

I'm halfway through "A Confederacy of Dunces". Very funny. I also got a book called "The Cult Film Reader"in the library which I might dip in and out of over the week.

I am reading Journey to the End of the Night. An earlier thread in this series reminded me that I wanted to read it.

My mind was wandering as I was walking back from the market this morning and I thought something perhaps novel about Celine is the way parts of the narrative expand and contract against expectation -- he moves to Detroit very fast -- so that you are never bored and notice time the way it sometimes feels. For example, when you are tired or in the morning before you've eaten breakfast, you may walk very slowly and notice things more. Or when you are nervous and anxious because you are escorting people around campus, you may not be sure what happened a few minutes ago.

Shirley

The part where Shirley reshapes Christian religion and the figure of Eve, casts Milton aside and sees the holy light through a feminine prism of nature is surely one of the most beautiful things I've read.

'I saw -- I now see -- a woman-Titan: her robe of blue air spreads to the outskirts of the heath, where yonder flock is grazing; a veil white as an avalanche sweeps from hear head to her feet, and arabesques of lighting flame on its borders. Under her breast I see her zone, purple like that horizon: through its blush shines the star of evening. Her steady eyes I cannot picture; they are clear -- they are deep as lakes -- they are lifted and full of worship -- they tremble with the softness of love and the lustre of prayer. Her forehead has the expanse of a cloud, and is paler than the early moon, risen long before dark gathers: she reclines her bosom on the ridge of Stilbro' Moor; her mighty hands are joined beneath it. So kneeling, face to face she speaks with God. That Eve is Jehova's daughter, as Adam was His son.'
'She is very vague and visionary! Come, Shirley, we ought to go into church'
'Caroline, I will not: I will stay out here with my mother Eve, in these days called Nature. I love her, undying, mighty being! Heaven may have faded from her brow when she felll in paradise, but all that is glorious on earth shines there still. She is taking me to her bosom, and showing me her heart.'

Then they go and have a political fight with an old-fashioned blockhead and throws his bible quoting sexism back at him with radical force. I was left knackered by this monumental chapter in the middle of the book. The novel's ending is a bit... just there, but I feel now C Brontë for me is the greatest of all.

I finished Anti-Intellectualism in American Life last night. The last quarter of the book was mostly concerned with a history of American secondary-school public education and its many missteps. The main interest for me was the degree to which faddism has been a big part of public educational theory for at least a century now. However, my interest did flag after Hofstadter moved past his historic review of anti-intellectualism in American religion and politics, and he started to survey the history of American education.

I'll probably spend a few days messing around in poetry or essays before I take the plunge on a book.

that actually is the essence of educational theory iirc

next thread: "I live in an immense activity, in which everything becomes morning" -- but what are YOU reading Summer 2014??

Youn - like your reading of Journey.... I think he gets more impatient and moves faster, which actually goes against what ellipses does, normally.

Does those is in his later fiction, that is.