Also read about eight books I haven't finished yet.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, 4 January 2019 20:01 (five years ago) link
I had much reduced year I think, probably down to a reduced commute and more other distractions. Most of these seem to have been read out in the park, during the very long, very hot British summer. I seem to have read virtually nothing from Jan-Mar and Oct-Dec.
George Eliot – MiddlemarchFilip Springer – History of a DisappearanceElif Batuman – The IdiotRobert Musil – The Confusions of Young TorlessDenis Johnson – Tree of SmokeEimear McBride – A Girl Is A Half-Formed ThingDan Hancox – Inner City PressureRoss Raisin – A NaturalJon McGregor – Reservoir 13William Gass – Omensetter’s LuckIris Murdoch – The Sea, The SeaAnn Quin – ThreeNicole Krauss – Forest DarkThomas Pynchon – VinelandOlivia Sudjic - SympathyJohn Updike – Rabbit ReduxRosie Snajdr – The Hypocritical ReaderGuy Gunaratne – In Our Mad And Furious CityWill Eaves – MurmurAlvaro Enrique – Sudden DeathTim Weiner – Legacy of AshesRichard Ford – The SportswriterMike McCormack – Solar Bones
― Matt DC, Saturday, 5 January 2019 17:05 (five years ago) link
how was Omensetter's Luck?
― flappy bird, Sunday, 6 January 2019 05:23 (five years ago) link
it's been a loooong time but I remember omensetter's luck being an odd one in that he hasn't yet gone full pomo as he would in his later two novels, it's strange/"difficult" but in a way that's more in line with something like Faulkner - iirc the thing that felt the most gassian to me was the character names (that and the fact that he chose to set it in 1890s Ohio because it was a place & time he knew nothing about, and wrote it without doing any research lol)
Robert, I'd hesitate to use the word "like"; you realise pretty quickly that ketchum isn't really trying to scare you so much as make you feel sick in your soul from relentless hopelessness and ugliness. This is most effective in the extremely fucked up and sad the girl next door, apparently based on a true case; but even with something like off season, which from its schlocky urban-legend cannibal hillbilly premise (not to mention a bunch of hilariously gratuitous sex scenes at the start) seems like it'll be this fun gory survival horror but is just grim and stomach-turning in its unpleasantness. Or the lost, a very tight thriller of JDs run amok in the 60s that ends with a really disgusting and racist prison rape fantasy - I have a feeling JK's politics were probably quite reactionary from reading these.
Those three are all pretty good tho, but after a while I was like ok I pretty much know what to expect from this guy now: extreme violence committed against (or perpetrated by) children, a parallel narrative of a world-weary ineffectual cop who arrives too late to save the day, birching (this is just a weirdly specific thing to keep showing up again and again, it's a bit yikes) - and the writing quality gets worse in the later books I read. Stranglehold is atrocious, manipulative tripe.
His short story "the box" is really good imo.
― Pierrot with a thousand farces (wins), Sunday, 6 January 2019 14:38 (five years ago) link
Also, as usual I missed a couple of books off my list: I also read out are the lights by Richard Laymon and our house by louise candlish. I found the Laymon on the "take a book, leave a book" shelf in our launderette and got excited because it has the half-remembered story I posted about here and later tried to look up but couldn't find any evidence that any such story existed. Laymon's an "extreme" horror merchant but much sillier than ketchum, all action and dialogue, one-sentence paragraphs and massive type, you can read a book of his in a couple of hours. The Candlish was me getting suckered by marketing, it was promoted with the hashtag #THATlastline & I was curious. It was ok, ymmv depending on how much you care about the anxieties of homeowners, the last line was completely unremarkable.
― Pierrot with a thousand farces (wins), Sunday, 6 January 2019 15:11 (five years ago) link
I've never been in a hurry to read Laymon as he's particularly known for gratuitous rape scenes but I feel obligated to try a few.
Girl Next Door and Off Season are the Ketchum fan favorites (haven't read any myself). I really don't know much about Ketchum's politics but he isn't one of those writers whose fans swing right or left. There's a decent summary and biographical info in these links.
https://thebedlamfiles.com/commentary/jack-ketchum-1946-2018/https://thebedlamfiles.com/nonfiction/book-of-souls/
The first piece is “Henry Miller and The Push,” a memoir of Ketchum’s mercifully brief 1970s-era tenure as a New York literary agent, with clients that included his longtime hero Henry Miller. After pushing an old woman to the ground in a rush to catch a taxi, an act that shocked him as much as it did the woman he pushed, Ketchum became determined to quit his job immediately—but not until after meeting his idol face to face. The tale’s final pages lovingly detail that meeting, with Henry Miller registering as “a living fucking saint.” I’ve read other recollections of Miller that paint a far less rosy picture, but Ketchum’s claims are persuasive. Certainly his account demonstrates the enormous influence Henry Miller had on Ketchum’s life and writing, starting with the title of the book under discussion, which was evidently inspired by that of Miller’s BOOK OF FRIENDS.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, 6 January 2019 15:34 (five years ago) link
I never even heard of Ketchum until early last year when I went to this annual recital/birthday party given by a flamenco guitarist and he mentioned various friends who had recently passed including Jack Ketchum and Billy Joel's piano teacher Morton Estrin.
― Spirit of the Voice of the Beehive (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 6 January 2019 15:45 (five years ago) link
I loved Omensetter's Luck, but yes it did remind me more of Faulkner than anything by Barth or Gaddis or Pynchon, which was what I'd been expecting.
― Matt DC, Sunday, 6 January 2019 15:57 (five years ago) link
I’ve told the “what fun do monks have?” joke irlXp I shouldn’t make assumptions about politics really as I know horror is often about pushing those kinds of buttons. Re ketchum’s career as an agent, didn’t he use that to get an author signed who turned out to be himself under a pseudonym or something?
― Pierrot with a thousand farces (wins), Sunday, 6 January 2019 16:05 (five years ago) link