The Decline and Fall 2016 of gILBert the fILBert: What Are You Reading Now?

Library scores today:

Bresson on Bresson: Interviews 1943-1983

E.M. Cioran - On The Heights of Despair

László Krasznahorkai - Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens

All breezy winter reads.

Yuri Herrera: The Transmigration of Bodies, followed by his Signs Preceding the End of the World -- noirish Mexican high pulp

Tangenttangent: yes they'll be for sale in a month or two I'll mention it in here when they are, but if you want an email alerting you drop me a line via the email you'll find here: http://thebookofdisquiet.wordpress.com

Parabéns Tim, those look amazing!

Decided to delve into Russian lit (one of the few big European ones than I can't read in the original, so have always stupidly avoided), and got:

Master & Margarita
Fathers & Sons
The Cossacks & Hadji Murat

Well. That is a fucking awesome start!

I barely look in this thread and am glad I did today because I've been wanting to read the Book of Disquiet for some time and that looks like a thing of beauty Tim

yeah have also intended to read it for some time.

I really love the book and I continue to be happy to talk about it (just as well) but I'm quite looking forward to not reading it for some time! I have a battered, somewhat marked-up and ink spattered spare copy if anyone wants it.

Incidentally I'm told that Margaret Jull Costa, whose excellent translation I have used, has translated the rest of The Book of Disquiet and will be publishing a "complete" version in 2017.

Excellent, can't wait for it all.

started The Last Samurai today, likely the last book i will read in 2017 and i wanted to go out on a high note

er 2016

Same here, Flopson. Arriving home from the library, I just now got a call from the library that it's in (would go back, but would now mean a crosstown trek after dark through holiday shopping traffic).
While at library, I scored a free discard of The Old Wives' Tale ---is it good?
Thanks to ILB for making DeWitt's books your top recommendations, when I listed the other contemporary lit I've been getting lit with.
So now---where should I start with the books of Benjamin and Adorno?

william gass's the tunnel arrived at last today. what a large and intimidating tome. the single review quote on the deep black cover: "the most beautiful, complex and disturbing novel to be published in my lifetime" is pretty cool. feels like an "abandon hope all ye who enter here". i'll finish the four wise men first i guess.

dow, with Adorno, I would start with Minima Moralia, which represents Adorno at his most aphoristic: it's structured as a series of very short, essayistic fragments, along the lines of Nietszche's Beyond Good and Evil, and it's not quite as imposing as his major later books, which tend to be much denser in texture. Dialectic of Enlightenment is more forbidding, but I'd read that next, since almost all of his later work presupposes the arguments he and Horkheimer make there (especially in the opening chapter on the concept of enlightenment). Alternately, Adorno wrote a great deal on classical music, so you could start with one of his books or essays on a specific composer if there's someone you're particularly drawn to. (My favorite book in that vein is probably In Search of Wagner; don't start with Adorno's essay "On Jazz," which is important to Adorno's line of criticism on popular music, but which if read in isolation will make it harder for you to take him seriously.)

With Benjamin, I'd start either with the second and third volumes of his chronological Selected Writings (to get a historically contextualized sense of the variety of genres in which he worked), or with the highlights in Illuminations and Reflections (Arendt's introduction to Illuminations really undersells the materialist aspect of Benjamin's criticism, but as a collection of essays, it's still absolutely dazzling).

*Nietzsche's, that is

Thanks! Minima Moralia it is, then Illuminations. One more: Canetti? I'm guessing I'd like the memoirs more than Auto-da-Fé. given some of the responses to it on ILB (prob would like Crowds and Power, given some of my own impressions, but seems too obvious a first choice).

My own experiences in and near some crowds, that is.

i think i recall that tunnel blurb, never got around to trying that so im interested how u perceive it

I have never really heard of the Pessoa book or had any idea what it is about, but I agree with the view that Tim's is a marvellous achievement and, indeed, that its production genuinely deserves public acclaim, prizes and what Alan Hansen used to call 'plaudits and accolades'.

I have to agree that MINIMA MORALIA and ILLUMINATIONS are logical accessible places to start on those two.

I would add Benjamin's BERLIN CHILDHOOD as, in a way, even more accessible and personal. Also UNDERSTANDING BRECHT and the Belknap WORK OF ART collections are nice and relatively accessible collections.

I think I will have to stop THE STARS MY DESTINATION - the central character scares me too much.

I love Berlin Childhood, and the Diary in fact. The geographical and temporal symbolic mapping of an emotional space, which seems to me to produce a kabbalah that's personal, historical and political (while not excluding or allowing mystical approaches) is v compelling for me. I'm not sure if this is an orthodox interpretation though.

Just going into the notes I took when I was going through Benjamin reasonably intensively, two quotes I hope illustrate the above:

“I have long, indeed for years, played with the idea of setting out the sphere of life – bios – graphically on a map. First I envisaged an ordinary map, but now I would incline to a general staff’s map of a city centre, if such a thing existed. Doubtless it does not, because of ignorance of the theatre of future wars. I have evolved a system of signs, and on the grey background of such maps they would make a colourful show if I clearly marked the houses of my friends and girlfriends, the assembly halls of various collectives, from, from the "debating chambers" of the Youth Movement to the gathering places of Communist youth, the hotel and brothel rooms that I knew for one night, the decisive benches in the Tiergarten, the ways to different schools and the graves that I saw filled, the sites of prestigious cafés whose long-forgotten names daily crossed our lips, the tennis courts where empty apartment blocks stand today, and the halls emblazoned with gold and stucco that the terrors of dancing classes made almost the equal of gymnasiums.”

I think that's comparatively straightforward, though its implications are complex.

“.. today this point in space where we happened to open our Meeting House is for me the consummate pictorial expression of the point in history occupied by this last true elite of bourgeois Berlin. It was as close to the abyss of the Great War as the Meeting House was to the steep slope down to the Landwehr Canal." p605

this investigation in isomorphic places in time and space - ie where they can be mapped on to each other to form a sort of symbolic node - occurs throughout his writing. There's another bit which I haven't got a note for, where he talks about his teenage self being aware of a void in Berlin beyond a line marshalled by prostitutes, and also:

'This dead corner of the Zoological Garden was an image of what was to come, a prophesying place. It must be considered certain that there are such places; indeed, just as there are plants that primitive peoples claim confer the power of claivoyance, so there are places endowed with such power: they may be deserted promenades, or treetops, particularly in towns, seen against walls, railway crossings, and above all, the thresholds that mysteriously divide the districts of a town' p610

I think I will have to stop THE STARS MY DESTINATION - the central character scares me too much.

Re: Benjamin, I read this earlier in the year and quite enjoyed it despite what seems at first like a kind of cheesy or silly idea. I'm surprised I hadn't seen much discussion of it or reviews anywhere. It's carried off pretty well. http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=23184

It's premised on the idea that Benjamin faked his death and emigrated to New York in secret. The novel is about the discovery of a follow up to the Arcades Project that he wrote in secret about NYC in the second half of the 20th century. The book is written in part as literary-criticism (offering analysis on this made-up work), part the story of its discovery and Benjamin's legacy, and part a speculative re-writing of the Arcades Project transposed into the 20th century (Robert Moses as Hausmann, Andy Warhol as a kind of Baudelaire, etc.).

It's a fun read , despite some potential issues one may find with it (philosophically, historically) - but, as a work of fiction, I think it can take some poetic license, which it uses (imo) to good effect. Also, its formal experimenting allows it a kind of narrative momentum that is otherwise absent from most conventional writing on him.

It seems like some of you may enjoy it - not just for those interested in Benjamin, but also as a kind of fully realized Borgesian exercise, and nice reflections on NYC in the second half of the century, etc.

Also, by the weird logic of coincidence, it came out at roughly the same time as the actually attempted re-writing of the Arcades Project by the poet Kenneth Goldsmith, which takes New York as the capital of the 20th century. I have no idea whether or not one another knew of each other's projects.

I have yet to read, so will withhold any judgment, but it seems like a heroically ambitious effort to pull off. https://www.versobooks.com/books/2168-capital

(My favorite book in that vein is probably In Search of Wagner; don't start with Adorno's essay "On Jazz," which is important to Adorno's line of criticism on popular music, but which if read in isolation will make it harder for you to take him seriously.)

I loved Adorno's In Search of Wagner at the time. Quite an attempt to map the contours of the music to the politics. Could never get into Wagner's music but I would like to re-read.

On Benjamin, this is a bunch of diary entries on Brecht. His impressions, arguments, debates. Really good.

One more: Canetti? I'm guessing I'd like the memoirs more than Auto-da-Fé. given some of the responses to it on ILB (prob would like Crowds and Power, given some of my own impressions, but seems too obvious a first choice).

Auto-da-Fé is a very good novel. I read the first two vols of his memoirs but because I had read/knew the background of almost everyone it was very good filler+, gossipy and fun, though not sure how that would work with someone who hasn't read much Musil or doesn't know Mann or Broch (not saying you don't but its something to consider). Probably my favourite thing by him is the short book-length essay on Kafka's letters to Felice. Nveer got around to Crowds and Power as from 2nd hand readings the book sounds a bit...dumb.

apropos of nothing, i wanted to share this hunky photo of James Laughlin, the founder of New Directions Paperback, that i stumbled upon while trawling Wikipedia

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/James_Laughlin.jpg

inspired by Last Samurai, and after being a big child with a poor attention span and training myself on short, sweet and simple novels and novellas under 400 pages, my new years resolution 2017 is to tackle some of the big complex tomes I've had on my list but keep pushing to the back of the queue

I have never found out what the novel THE LAST SAMURAI is about.

It sounds like it is about a samurai but I think people on ILB said it was not.

It is not about a samurai, it's about a very bright child, and books, and suicide

and dads, and Toshiro Mifune.

so far it's about a single mother raising a child prodigy. it's really, really good

i do want to read that. i will get to it eventually.

i doubt i would ever read adorno but i have been browsing through the penguin dictionary of critical theory today at work. i'm pretty sure every entry mentions freud and lacan.

I finished "Stoner" by Williams. Sometimes you want to yell at Stoner and tell him to snap out of it, because he can be so oddly passive and emotionally blank, but the elements of the book that seem frustrating midway through begin to have cumulative power. Since the book was published in the mid-60s I'm guessing it was written somewhat under the spell of existentialism, which might explain Stoner's oddly abrupt and implacable decisions, but you don't have to buy him as some kind of existential and/or stoic hero to find the book moving. The relentless tally of missed connections in his family life is thrown into sharper relief by the one love affair that does work out for him, however briefly, and there's even some steamy sex at about the 3/4 mark to liven things up.

It would be interesting to have some outside perspective on Stoner, because as he himself admits, he's not very good at introspection or self-awareness. I suspect that he shares more of the blame for the failure of his marriage than the book lets on.

Thanks for all of those responses, will certainly check Berlin Childhood, related Benjamin, and at least one of Canetti's memoirs.
deserted promenades, or treetops, particularly in towns, seen against walls, railway crossings, and above all, the thresholds that mysteriously divide the districts of a town' p610 Right, the only way to do it, along with the connective associations, the layers and so on, is to include this other stuff, esp. approaching, stepping over, or zigzag wandering memory's gaps, the divisions of the town you're mapping. If you don't remember, just briefly indicate that and go on to the next thing. Unless you want to write fiction about it, and I don't (maybe can't, but anyway don't).

Don't remember or didn't know at the time, being a child or spaced youth, and if it's not the sort of thing you could turn up now, feasibly. The guy who looked like that thirty years ago, on that street? Probably several guys like that. It was Collegetown.

I've had luck introducing Stoner to the unfamiliar.

I finished "Stoner" by Williams. Sometimes you want to yell at Stoner and tell him to snap out of it, because he can be so oddly passive and emotionally blank, but the elements of the book that seem frustrating midway through begin to have cumulative power. Since the book was published in the mid-60s I'm guessing it was written somewhat under the spell of existentialism, which might explain Stoner's oddly abrupt and implacable decisions, but you don't have to buy him as some kind of existential and/or stoic hero to find the book moving. The relentless tally of missed connections in his family life is thrown into sharper relief by the one love affair that does work out for him, however briefly, and there's even some steamy sex at about the 3/4 mark to liven things up.

i thought this book was terrible. i don't often discard a book after a quarter of the way but i did with this. when it got to the scene where the three buddies were discussing the guy who died in the war and were like "hell if he was here now he'd sure be laughing at us three dummies" or whatever, i just couldn't go on. there was a litany of really cliched shit besides this as far as i recall.

a friend of mine published a book. that i would want to read! so, i'm reading it. she's an academic but she writes in a nice readable style for slow people like me. all about the history of free black people of the north before the civil war and the political activism inherent in their travel by train. boat. etc, throughout the north. just walking down the street was no easy thing. which means this book is amazingly and sadly timely. in the first chapter alone you get the history and etymology of the n-word and the birth of jim crow and segregation.

it ties in with my jazz reading too. the countless first person accounts i have read this year by black musicians who toured the country during the 30's, 40's, and 50's could fill five-volumes with tales of woe, close calls, and chaotic conditions. but they were spreading the gospel to heathens and i'd like to think that their hard work paid off in some small way.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51WCc1yzwtL.jpg

loved Stoner

Hi Skot, do you know about the Negro Travelers Green Book series? Published 1936-64. Originals: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/the-green-book#/?tab=about&scroll=10 Those are a bit hard on my eyes, even with Chrome zoom, but several articles w excerpts are also online.

I'm reading Nostromo, part of a plan to read Conrad's three overtly political novels. Is this where the title and germinal idea for One Hundred Years of Solitude came from? From one of the first chapters:

"How old, I wonder," he murmured, looking at her with a slight smile. Mrs. Gould's appearance was made youthful by the mobile intelligence of her face. "We can't give you your ecclesiastical court back again; but you shall have more steamers, a railway, a telegraph-cable -- a future in the great world which is worth infinitely more than any amount of ecclesiastical past. You shall be brought in touch with something greater than two viceroyalties. But I had no notion that a place on a sea-coast could remain so isolated from the world. If it had been a thousand miles inland now -- most remarkable! Has anything ever happened here for a hundred years before today?"

"Hey guys, I'm reading Joseph Conrad!" doesn't seem like very good ILB fodder but I'm pretty swept up in this so far.

Just finished Jernigan and adored it. Lovable prick, him. Should probably read Stoner, I enjoy academics in books (not David Lodge so much) like Crossing to Safety. American lives, etc.

loved Stoner

not trying to troll any of you - i expected to like it but it was a real outlier as far as my dislike went. prob the only book i've abandoned in recent years, though i tend to know my own tastes well enough to avoid that.

Finished collections by Areny Tarkovsky and Cesare Pavese. Holub's essays mentioned upthread are great too. He writes about science in a very detailed way and lets the poetry happen, almost by accident - he know it can't be forced.

Now onto Carvantes - Don Quixote.

I loved Stoner, too. I found the end incredibly moving and have essentially adopted 'what did you expect?' as a mantra.

I did wonder about Stoner's passivity. I figured it was partly an existentialist thing, but also a kind structural or pathological passivity, handed down from his parents. There's also a stoical feel to him, a holy suffering - something like Michael K or Bartleby.

Okay, I've been sitting this one out for now, but I am another Stoner detractor. Because of that passivity you mention I just wanted to tell him something to the effect of "wake up, bro!"