Heavens! Look at the Time: What Are You Reading During This Summer of 2017?

read the news about the closure of the Buenos Aires Herald which led me to pick up Andrew Graham-Yooll's A State of Fear: Memories of Argentina's Nightmare. It's a series of extended anecdotes, effectively, covering the experiences of a journalist in the ten-year period between 1973 and 1983 from guerrilla violence, the return of Perón,, junta, los desaparecidos (the disappeared), exile and return, and is very good. He's a good writer in the journalistic style for a start, but it's also his depiction of where political violence sits in society, how it infects it and the mirroring of state and revolutionary violence that gives the books chapters a cumulative power.

It contains disgusting ironies for those who have accustomed themselves to the British national media:

.. the government was ridiculed in every headline, the bravado of the press an undignified retaliation for its toadying to a Perónism capable of instilling fear in the newsrooms just weeks before. There was an unabashed crowing at every stumble of a preposterous administration.

The disgusting irony being that yes, this is v reminiscent of the jackal mentality of the UK press, but of course that 'toadying' had been instilled by a fear as a journalist or editor of bombs in your desk, imprisonment serious death threats and warnings from the military and police, let alone running the other risk of being seen to favour the government by revolutionary groups. The toadying of our press is of course born of no such fear, but greed for proximity to power and laziness.

The best piece is The Hangover, which frames experiences of the extreme pre-junta violence (1100 dead from political violence in 1975, 60 in January 1976) with a heavy evening of beach-side drinking with his revolutionary friend Diego Muñíz Barreto:

He winced slightly as he passed on the description of the youth dropping, hit by the bullet. 'I've seen it before; people just drop or fall back in a small pile, like a shirt or a pair of trousers. There is no more convincing sign of death or serious damage than that drop. Death is not an athletic pirouette as in the cinema.'

On the return of Perón:

That was the day when everybody one had ever known seemed to have gone to the Ezeiza airport; old schoolfriends met there, carrying a pistol in each pocket, their own memory of their real name confused by the use of so many aliases. That was the day when some people went to watch, some to commit murder; a few men went to commit adultery; provincial aunts arrived on the free train service - special for that day - to look for lost nieces; and hundreds of citizens of all ages went in the belief that this was the day when all their problems would be solved.

That's a great piece of writing, I think.

on how violence infests and infects society:

During Mrs Perón's government, her secretary made kidnapping fashionable. it had previously been a reprehensible part of guerrilla fund-raising - which by the end of 1973 had totalled 170 million people abducted and released, in exchange for a ransom of 43 million US dollars. The police found kidnapping to be an effective form of retaliation. The secretary [described elsewhere as a 'man ridden with a fear of dying, an impotent diabetic, devoted to parapsychology'] set an example, using his own ministry as headquarters for a private army into which retired and active police officers were recruited ...

The fashion went all the way down the social line. In Munro, a working-class suburb, a woman with a babe in arms had the child snatched from her as she entered a grocery. Until she emptied her purse of her scant shopping money on the pavement, the infant was not returned.

Buenos Aires became a city roamed by unmarked cars, usually Ford Falcons, supplied on a fleet order to the police, but preferred by all for reliability at high speed and relatively low running cost...

Inside these cars sat men in dark glass and half open shirts, holding machine guns, wearing half a dozen chains around their necks, with St Christophers, crucifixes and Virgin Marys. They would sometimes travel home on the same train as I, or on the bus to the islands, late at night.. If there was a hint of recognition, their reaction was always the same; a glance over their dark glasses, a wink and a shake of the head was an order that greetings were not possible because recognition did not exist, and neither did casual acquaintance.

Who were these men? How did they wake up? With whom? Did they love? How? There did not have to be anything logical about them; there was no need to explain them; but it would be interesting just to know the full story of twenty-four hours of their lives.

The last quarter of the third bottle of wine was emptied into the tuco pan. Diego decided to put the tallarines on to cook and give his children supper.

So, yes, really good book. And for followers of the Is the Guardian worse than it used to be? thread:

I went to work at The Guardian, where liberals are conservatives who counsel readers to vote Labour

Am currently reading the autobiography of Michael Powell (of Powell and Pressburger), excitingly titled A Life in Movies. He's got a vivid sense of place- a good early section describes hopping time at his father's hop farm in Kent. The writing is both slightly stagey, and chatty and informal, and generally full of good cheer, a mix recognisable from his films, though it can be a little erratic in tone, slightly elderly in places. There's a recognisable 'Powell tone' (though of course Pressburger was really the writer) in bits like this:

The next day we had only a twenty-mile ride to Bournemouth from "The Sign of the Trusty Servant". He's a bit rare now but the sign is still there. He has deer's feet to run fast with messages, and a pig's head, because a pig will eat anything, and a padlock on his snout, because he can keep his mouth shut; and - I don't remember the rest but take the day off!

I can almost hear it as a line of dialogue or an opening narrative monologue to one of their films. But there's also the slightly brexity mix of good cheer and sentimental feudalism - i think we talked a bit about that on the P&P thread wrt A Canterbury Tale. It's not quite right as an observation - certainly the brexity thing is unfair, he loved France as a second home - but a love of age, and of childhood, of striking landscapes, and of vivacious, strong-headed women and sexual relations with them gives an odd, certainly not unpleasing but also slightly uneasy tone to some of his films, especially his early ones.

as i'm nearing the end of old goriot i started the ballad of peckham rye

xpost Hadn't heard of that one, will have to check it out. Reminds me, have you read Jacobo Timerman's Prisoner Without A Name, Cell Without A Number? I haven't, but it was well-received in the US, except by junta fans like Buckley and Buchanan and Jesse Helms and maybe Jeanne Kirkpatrick, who made the Reagan Administration distinction between Authoritarian and Totalitarian.

i haven't read it, dow. but seeing you post does remind me i owe you a post on la vida es sueño! (haven't really been around ilb much recently, but have generally been reading a *lot* more, so lurking in the corner a bit more).

Spook: Science Tackles The Afterlife, Mary Roach. Got this ages ago as a perk of donating to a podcast network, thought I should give it a shot.

So James Atlas has a new book about being a biographer. Does this mean his excellent Delmore Schwartz bio will come back into print?

Of course the book seems like it might be largely about writing the Delmore Schwartz bio, with the Saul Bellow bio of course getting into the act as well.

Okay, having read a few pages, this thing is right in my wheelhouse.

Apparently Richard Ellmann was his mentor, so this book has something for everybody, well everybody on ILB, well teh pinefox, at least.

Just finished chandler's the long goodbye - it's no surprise but what a beautiful book.

read william gerhardie's futility which is an exquisite little novel: look forward to checking out his later work

now reading lady into fox by david garnett (bloomsbury hanger-on & recipient of admonishing letters from dh lawrence)

gerhardie's DOOM is fun

Elizabeth Taylor's A View of the Harbour. This is despairing, funny and exquisitely observed. Turns out paranoia and smalltown rage are just what the doctor ordered for an end of summer fit of the vapours. Who knew.

Finished Greene's The Power and the Glory. For some reason, I had it in my mind that this was a much more whimsical, almost comic novel with a lovable rogue as the central character - so the novel's bleakness and pessimism, the savagery of its observations, took me wholly by surprise - he's definitely from the 'tough love' school of Catholicism! Less surprising - the beautifully economical way that Greene conjures atmosphere, a sense of place, a feeling of foreboding, hellhounds on the trail.

Now reading: Great Granny Webster by Caroline Blackwood

I read Jane Eyre and loved it, every shocking twist and dumb coincidence.

Just finished "Inferno" and "Alone" by Strindberg. Really liked the latter, the former is completely insane.

doris lessing: briefing for a descent into hell

Now reading The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form by Kenneth Clark, which is about beautiful people who aren't wearing clothes. Damn fascinating subject.

I found this, on a similar-ish theme, pretty interesting too:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/1858940842.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Well its been one and half memoirs from me, depending on how you see Enrique Vilas-Matas account -- translated as Any Way in Paris -- of his attempts to become a writer in 70s Paris by following on Hemingway's footsteps (zzz) and by also renting a room from Margerite Duras (no ordinary landlady) (v good, tick). I've begun to read Simone De Beauvoir's Force of Circumstance (one of the four vols of her properly dictated to the reader memoirs) and the new translation of Pessoa's Book of Disquiet which is something far stranger than any of this.

Intriguing re FP and new translation in recent New Yorker.

Simone de Beauvoir invented the Blade Runner speech:

"I think with sadness of all the books I've read, all the places I've seen, all the knowledge I've amassed and that will be no more. All the music, all the paintings, all the culture, so many places: and suddenly nothing. They made no honey, those things, they can provide no one with any nourishment. At the most, if my books are still read, the reader will think: There wasn't much she didn't see! But that unique sum of things, the experience that I lived, with all its order and its randomness - the Opera of Peking, the arena of Huelva, the candomblé in Bahia, the dunes of El-Oued, Wabansia Avenue, the dawns in Provence, Tiryns, Castro talking to five hundred thousand Cubans, a sulphur sky over a sea of clouds, the purple holly, the white nights of Leningrad, the bells of the Liberation, an orange moon over the Piraeus, a red sun rising over the desert, Torcello, Rome, all the things I've talked about, others I have left unspoken - there is no place where it will all live again."

the ballad of peckham rye

Finally finished TWITS, and I think the first two thirds are very good and the final third is amazing. So there.

Now I'm reading "Left and Right" by Joseph Roth, and "Darker With The Lights On" by David Hayden, this latter a brand-new (debut) short story collection by someone who is pleasingly happy to talk about being a modernist writer, hooray.

Yeah dow iirc that piece is all we have more of it but the early stuff is not as good.

Good de Beauvoir quote. Her novels didn't leave a mark with me; this is a lot better so far.

I really like that Roth bk xp

xpost I just bought that David Hayden - haven't taken the wrapping off it yet. Look forward to it. Reading a few story collections at the moment, You Are Having A Good time by Amie Barrodale, pretty good, sort of like darker post-internet Cheever.

I've also been started Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett, not sure what I feel about this, Room Little Darker by June Caldwell which I really like in places despite a growing irritation with some of the cliches of modern Irish short story writing, eg twee alliteration, made-up words to fit twee alliteration, etc. Starts to feel a bit forced/performative, especially when you read British reviews delighting in the use of language etc written by people who prob think the falsified language is real or authentic.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (a few pleasing and unexpected similarities with the (superb) Caroline Blackwood book I read just before this)

I had high expectations of WHALITC but found the middle stretch pretty hardgoing for such a short book. Begins and ends well, though.

What did you think of Peckham Rye, Mark?

Don't remember a middle slump but then I did read WHALITC in one go on a plane.

Peckham Rye I remember as being really good, too.

re packham rye: still only 3/4 chapters in currently, chuck

peckham

The Wry Ballad of Chris Packham: would not read.

I wanted to go for a moonlight walk around Peckham Rye Common after reading Ballad, even though my own experience of Peckham told me this might not be the wisest thing to do. Amongst many other things, M. Spark = a great London writer.

And yes, I haven't experienced any middle book slump with the Shirley Jackson, nor found it particularly hard going. I am surprised it hasn't ever been made into film though.

I had the same experience with WHALITC (that took almost as long to type as the actual title). I think it's something to do with Jackson's fierce grip on the narrative - nothing escapes; there's no excess.

Wry/Rye would be a rhotacist's nightmare.

The first thirty pages or so are beautiful - tense, weird, precise - then Charles turns up and sucks the wind out of things. The denouement is pretty compelling but I didn't buy Constance's devotion to Merricat. I dunno. I have a feeling like it's one of those great books I read on the wrong day.

I am pulling up to the final few pages of The Custom of the Country, Edith Wharton, and apart from its being focused exclusively on the folkways of the very wealthy, with special emphasis on New York and Paris, it has been reasonably compelling. It is worth noting that, for the purposes of the characters in this book, the world is solely made up of the wealthy and no other kind of existence is imagined. The social climber at the center of the book is cruelly lacerated, but from the perspective of the lowly reader, every last one of them comes off badly.

Kazimierz Brandys: Rondo -- supremely entertaining Polish novel about theatre/WW2 Resistance/fakery/sexual obsession

Finished Rachel Cusk's Transit, it's better than Outline (which I enjoyed). It's still a series of little character studies, but the narrator slowly starts becoming less of a cipher. You get her first name near the end of this one (spoilers!), and I'm pretty sure that's the first time?

I'm currently reading the new Orhan Pamuk, enjoying it but I have no idea where it's going or even what kind of story this is going to turn out to be (which is a good thing I guess).

Also read VanderMeer's Borne, it's fun except for all of the time that Borne is not 'onscreen', which is unfortunately most of the second half of the book. Great final image though.

I am pulling up to the final few pages of The Custom of the Country, Edith Wharton, and apart from its being focused exclusively on the folkways of the very wealthy, with special emphasis on New York and Paris, it has been reasonably compelling. It is worth noting that, for the purposes of the characters in this book, the world is solely made up of the wealthy and no other kind of existence is imagined.

You have troubles with novels about wealth? It's not criticism, I'm just curious. That's her milieu, but not her only one: she wrote one of the great American short novels about rural insularity, Summer.

jordan the narrator's first name gets used once in outline, when she gets a phone call. that's it tho. glad to hear transit is good, will add to the ever growing pile

That Mary Roach thing ended up being way too cutesey for my taste, but I still finished it.

Now back to French rural life and Pagnol with Manon Des Sources

Oh that rings a bell, thanks Adam! I wonder if she makes a point of using it once per book. Looking forward to the last one in the trilogy.

Having laid to rest Edith Wharton's book, I took up with a very different novel, To Build a Ship by Don Berry, set on the Oregon coast in 1851, at a time when native americans still outnumbered settlers by about 5 to 1. I chose this because I spent most of the past week camping and hiking just a few miles south of Tillamook Bay, where the story occurs.

Earlier this year I read Trask by the same author, set in 1848 in the same coastal area. He wrote a third novel called Moontrap which forms a sort of trilogy of books about Oregon in those few years of transition, when California was being overrun by ragtag fortune hunters and Oregon received some of the overflow. I own Moontrap and will read it before too many months go by.

read & quite enjoyed john clute's first novel the disinheriting party. more seventies postmodernist grotesquerie than anything to do with sf proper... kind of interested in checking out his other novel now.

now per wahlöö's the lorry.

Ernest Becker - The Denial of Death

Very interested to know what The Lorry is like

Reading BACACAY by Witold Gombrowicz, his first collection of stories, and it's very good and quite mad so far

Was thinking of reading Patrick Modiano, then saw a mention of The Black Notebook---good? Or should I start somewhere else, if at all?