'I FALL upon the spines of books! I read!' -- Autumn 2014: What Are You Reading?

Ernest Hemingway, A MOVEABLE FEAST

more fun than usual cos about real people one is interested in.

Hugh Kenner, A HOMEMADE WORLD

brilliant critic but to be honest, not his best book; a lot of questionable stuff and, it seems to me, wheels spinning through empty air.

It's difficult for me to reread "A Little Cloud," for when I was seventeen I misread it and thought it was the last word on the difference b/w the guy who goes away for college and the guy who stays.

trying to juggle a few at the moment:

Gilead, finally.
The Peregrine, which I'm really excited about.
Miles, by Miles Davis.
The Cultural Turn, Fredric Jameson

Finished William Nordhaus's Climate Casino. Was a bit drier than it needed to be, but informative and, for the most part, persuasive. Now reading some of Isaac Babel's Collected Stories for a change of pace.

Xp let me know how The Peregrine is, I've been eyeing it for a while

o. nate, if you get back to climate, might try Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warmingby McKenzie Funk, about fwd-thinking moguls, incl. some who back denyin' pols. Also read appealing reviews of Naomi Klein's new This Changes Everything.

Recently: All the King's Horses, Michèle Bernstein's brief but witty YA novel about gender roles among the Situationists (Bernstein's sequel La Nuit, which hasn't been translated, sounds more interesting for its protracted narration of a dérive); Kathy Acker's Don Quixote, which I loved, which reads like Burroughs with considerably better politics, and which I need to think more about; Caitlin Kiernan's The Drowning Girl, which makes the most of its unreliable narrator in terms of flexible treatment of narrative time, and seems eerier because less florid in style than the early stories I'd read by Kiernan (whom I started to read because I'm interested in how trans women writers think about community, displacement, and embodiment); Julie Delporte's minimal but touching sketchbook Journal and some of Annie Mok's memoir-comics; Lynne Tillman's episodic traveler's novel Motion Sickness, which does interesting things with the accretion of minor characters and the late-80s waning of the Eastern Bloc but which ultimately seemed slighter than Haunted Houses (although I think I'm probably more interested in gender than in questions of national identity); Simon Hanselmann's collection of depressive stoner comix, Megahex, whose contents are much more claustrophobic in bulk; Benjamin's late essays on Baudelaire yet again; and the essays in Lukacs's History and Class Consciousness I hadn't read before (in the past I kept circling back to the essay on reification).

I'm starting Ingeborg Bachmann's Malina, Radio Benjamin (the recent collection of Walter Benjamin's radio scripts), and the first volume of Henri Lefebvre's Critique of Everyday Life--so far it's interesting to see how heavily Lefebvre relies on the 1844 Manuscripts, and the way he veers between the lyrical and the polemical.

I read The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark last night. It seemed like an exercise more than a story, but it was impressively better than anything else I've read in that vein.

I've just picked up the Screech translation of Gargantua and Pantagruel from the public library and am curious to see how he manages the trick of bringing Rabelais into modern English. How much I read of it will depend on how it measures up.

One self-correction: apparently La Nuit was translated by Book Works in 2013, but is between printings.

YA novel about gender roles among the Situationists YA?! Cool, take that, dystopian teen vampires.
P. sick of unreliable narrators tho.

I'm plagiarizing "YA" as a descriptor from the friend who lent me All the King's Horses, but it seems apt, since Bernstein was self-consciously writing in the mode of Françoise Sagan's Bonjour tristesse (La Nuit apparently has a similar relationship to the narrative methods of the nouveau roman) and both exploiting and implicitly commenting upon the commercial mobilization of youth.

Will have to read that and the Sagan, thanks. (Perhaps related: just starting that Colette collection of three short novels mentioned upthread, since it comes with good references from Ornamental Cabbage.)

Ian McEwan - The Children Act
Penelope Fitzgerald - The Bookshop

I am reading <i>Billiards at Half-Past Nine</i> and <i>The Shock of the New</i>. So far <i>Shock of the New</i> has been very informative

Really liked ´The Children Act', thankfully without the irony of ´Solar´. Valeria Luiselli´s ´Sidewalks' was a revelation, combining fiction and essays but sometimes reads like a diary (a very well-written diary that is). Now 100 pages into ´The Bone Clocks' by David Mitchell. The first part seemed a mashup between ´Black Swan Green´ and ´Ghostwritten´. Familiar territory.

Outsider in Amsterdam by Janwillem Van De Wetering.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janwillem_van_de_Wetering#/image/File:Janwillem_van_de_Wetering.jpg

it's a fucking peculiar book, I tell you. or rather it's not so much the book but the translation... well, Wikipedia:

He usually wrote in Dutch and then in English; the two versions often differ considerably.

"Beg your pardon?" said Grijpstra.
"Imagery from the East," said de Gier. "Comes from my reading and it fits the case for this is a Hindist Society."

Grijpstra scratched the stubbles of his beard.

"If the civilians knew how silly their police, are they would commit more crimes"

in basic sentence construction it's a bit like reading john lanchester. mundane things and notions need to be carefully unencrypted. but the effect isn't totally displeasing - it's an oddly effective way of conveying foreignness.

the bald policier racial stereotyping (1975 if it matters) is harder to swallow.

"What makes this series so engaging is that the policemen are as quirky and complicated as the criminals."
Washington Post

because they speak as if hastily parsed by Google translate.

Initially, I was put off by The City And The City because of what seemed like an attempt at this kind of garbled gravel, which suggested those old animated PSAs starring MacGruff The Crime Dog, as parodied by sock puppet dog Triumph The Insult Comedian: "It was a dark und stormy nightski---for me to poop on!" But either CM later dropped/downplayed the "East Euro" shtick later, or the book got good enough that I didn't notice anymore (or both).

Christopher Paul Curtis, The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963

kind of garbled gravel, which suggested those old animated PSAs starring MacGruff The Crime Dog, as parodied by sock puppet dog Triumph The Insult Comedian: "It was a dark und stormy nightski---for me to poop on!

would read

I enjoyed The City & the City but strangely don't remember the "garbled gravel," maybe because the prose seemed breezier than I expect from Mieville. The Outsider in Amsterdam quotes oddly remind me of English as She is Spoke: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/english-as-she-is-spoke-1884/

I love English as She is Spoke. "To craunch the marmoset" is a phrase which haunts me still.

Some of the lists read like Gertrude Stein portraits decades before the fact (which I don't mean as an insult to Stein):

Put your confidence at my.
At what o'clock dine him?
Apply you at the study during that you are young.
Dress your hairs.
Sing an area.
These apricots and these peaches make me and to come water in mouth.
How do you can it to deny?

Jane Eyre's backstory is very similar to Agnes Grey's (mother gets disowned for marrying poor clergyman), you'd almost think they are related...

The Outsider in Amsterdam quotes oddly remind me of English as She is Spoke: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/english-as-she-is-spoke-1884/

I'd forgotten about this! I think it was reissued as a copy of the original imprint back when I worked in a bookshop, and it was handy to read in idle moments.

An Outsider in Amsterdam isn't quite as bad as that, but the sentences do feel fairly consistently off. I'm not sure whether that has a charm in itself but you do get used to it for the most part, even if the total effect only contributes to a general lumpiness.

like dow I read the whole of DUBLINERS (in my case again). I liked it and I think dow has a point (implicit) re: maturity, reading it with an experience eye, etc.

I also watched the film THE DEAD (1987) again and liked that too.

― the pinefox, Monday, November 10, 2014 5:12 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thanks, yeah that's what I meant. It was like Dylan used to be my bold young uncle, and when I finally listened to Blonde On Blonde. I was struck by his being so much younger than that now--but still dropping science on me. Re Joyce, I read Portrait and Ulysses so long ago, in school, so was really amazed by his youthful voice here, more vulnerable in a way, for the lack of constantly-risking-absurdity literary acrobatics---if he failed in this kind of deep social commentary, via focus on individuals, especially with less outspoken well-wishers and guardians of the status quo watching so intently---you want an audience, you got it kid---would have been much worse than just going off into stylistic doodledom for the nonce. Not worse than court actions vs. obscenity maybe, but bad enough.

The movie is very worthwhile; Huston always does right by his literary sources.

"finally listened to Blonde On Blonde" *again*, I meant to say.

"Tonio Kroger" was an immense influence on young me, and not just thanks to its straightforward depiction of youthful homosexuality; I loved the shift in time and tone.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, November 7, 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I liked Tonio Kroger, still felt like preparation work for Death in Venice. The shift is interesting (when he loses both of the people he loved). Reading both back-to-back is interesting, and it illuminates a (somewhat shallow) reason for liking Death in Venice: there is almost no dialogue. At one point Kroger says his age is 30 but Mann has always seemed v 'old' to me. Life dealt its blows (whatever they were; Mann was dutiful and married, that could be the cost). I'd love to get round to Doctor Faustus. Not sure about Buddenbrooks, he wrote this in 1901, after Death in Venice when he...might NOT have known enough.

Be interested to read the review of this book on the story.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n18/tj-reed/impossible-conception

Interested in the book too: http://www.cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-16264-7/deaths-in-venice/

started ZN Hurston, THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD
it seems quite good!

and Jim Crace, THE GIFT OF STONES
a novel about the STONE AGE

how is THE GIFT OF STONES. this is something I am currently interested in.

My reading pace has slacked off the past few weeks, but I can say I am genuinely happy with Screech's handling of Rabelais. I plan to stick with it, but slowly.

Talk about new Penelope Fitzgerald bio tonight: http://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2014/11/19/penelope-fitzgerald-hermion-lee-and-wendy-lesser?hspace=279619

Tomorrow night, sorry.

Peter Lorre bio The Lost One

Haphazard months, needy periods of waiting. Does all this, then, happen in a woman's life because of certain definite infractions and disobediences, through individual omissions, the breach of a companionship with one man, the choice of another, and then the fact of being chosen by yet a third? The long sequence of household cares, of toil with the needle, of turned skirts---"My dear, I swear it's better than right-side out!"---of ingenuities which one pretends are little triumphs, are not, then, the result of pure hazard, but of a hostile, almost fatalistic power? She thought without gratitude of old Becker's gratuitous alms-giving. She called to mind those little festivities of the flesh, swiftly conducted and swiftly forgotten, exasperated moments from which a broken masculine voice seemed to rise up to Julie's ears. 'It's not their real voice,' thought Julie, 'but the voice of an instant.'
..."Julie, you're not feeling ill, are you?"
She shook her head and smiled patiently. 'No,' she answered within herself. 'I'm just waiting for the moment when you are no longer there...You read through me into another man, and you treat him as an enemy. One would really think that Herbert has no secrets for you. You hate him and understand him. When I think of Esquivant you ask me if I'm feeling ill. What good advice you give me from the height of your twenty-eight years! An honest little counsellor, one of those plebeian marvels that chance sometimes places at the elbows of queens. But the bitches of queens go to bed with the marvel and turn him into a trumpery duke, an embittered lover and a misunderstood statesman. With you as my advisor I'd never do "anything silly," as you so nicely put it.'
She emptied her glass of brandy at a gulp, though it was a very old brandy, and worth serious attention, a smooth and civilized brandy.
"Alley-oop!" said Julie, putting her glass down.
"Bravo!" said Coco Vatard.
'If he only knew what he was applauding! Nothing silly any more---that's tantamount to saying I'll never be any use to anyone anymore---not even to myself. He'll keep me from ruing myself, or from being taken in. People can always ruin themselves, even when they've got nothing.'

Ornamental Cabbage, thanks so much for encouraging me to read this collection of short novels by Colette! So many scary speed bumps for the simple male mind---I want to trot around Paris with Julie de Carneilhan 4ever, and sometimes feel that I have, with her American frienemies (can't really keep up, of course, but)

reading margaret drabble's 'a summer bird-cage' when i'm in a fiction mood and edmund morris's 'dutch' (an odd duck of a book) when i'm not.

I'm dying to know what you think of Dutch! It's still my go-to Reagan bio, despite its, ah, experiments. The insights and Morris' way with a metaphor help.

so i just completed the third oryx and crake book – madd addam. strange, good conclusion (maybe?) but something of a slog.

have only reached 1980, but it's definitely a page-turner. the fictional bits verge on the ridiculous, but the writing and the portrait of reagan's personality are exemplary. there's a passage comparing reagan's personality to a glacier that's probably as good a piece of writing as i've ever read in any biography.

now the fun begins! Wait till you get to the descriptions of a typical day, William Clark, David Stockman, and Bitburg.

Ornamental Cabbage, thanks so much for encouraging me to read this collection of short novels by Colette!

Yay, dow! Glad you like her. She wrote a LOT of books, and they're all pleasingly short (I don't think any of them break 200 pages). If you can find some of her short stories, especially the ones based on her time as an actor in Paris, they're also great.

After finishing MaddAddam (anybody else read it? I need to have a post-op discussion) I'm moving onto Murakami – Colorless. Then, I'm gonna give another go to something traditional I've disliked. Something inspired by the 'authors you hate poll.' I might try Moveable Feast again.

xpost I'll check those out too, OC. And somebody just sent me Colette's advice columm--it's from a new collection of her previously untranslated stuff
http://logger.believermag.com/post/102890463209/colettes-advice-column

http://media.tumblr.com/d95cf76eabb70fe75ed91739ec386371/tumblr_inline_neh036ly0T1rglck1.png

Rick Perlstein The Invisible Bridge

magisterial imo, only quibble is my desire for more on the rise of religious right but perhaps that will surface in the Carter/Reagan era follow-up. perhaps Perlstein is better at summary than synthesis but this is still a treasure trove for anyone interested in the transitional mid-70s. reading was an intensely *personal* experience because it triggered so many formative memories of politics and culture when i was a teenager, now clarified by middle-age perspective.

John Le Carre A Perfect Spy

maybe not the epic/grand finale he intended but a fitting end to the cold war spy saga and probably the last book of his I need to read.

Haruki Murukami Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

My first Murukami and probably not the place to start. 75% fascinating and then my interest flagged, felt like a YA novel w/youthful perspective on adult life.

Dennis Lehane The Drop

short story stretched to novella length for movie tie-in and wouldn't you know, it's the inconsistent Lehane's best work since Mystic River and his scripts for The Wire

Ian McEwan The Children Act

don't know if this novella is a short story stretched but it feels slight somehow and I actually liked Saturday and Solar. Those novels captured arrogant a-holeish main characters but the judge here is just dull despite the thorny dilemma she's faced w/. first time I've thought McEwan was going thru motions.