Winter 2021: ...and you're reading WHAT?!

just finished frisk. these dennis cooper novels are fucked up

that’s for sure. read that one a few years ago and honestly kind of regretted reading it.

i loved it but i can see that. i certainly can't unread it

anyway moving right into the third novel in the george miles cycle, try

the cycle revealed more of itself to me during frisk as well, like up close it is like an anti-love story, a document of extremely unpleasant and empty people having sex that is attached their ultimate fantasies of dismembering someone during sex.... but telescope out a bit and it is about how having sex with infinite variations of the same person (george miles) is a reflection of how much the... narrator/omniscient voice/some of the individual characters/fictional dennis cooper and/or irl dennis cooper are in love with him

that is probably incomprehensible lol

i guess what i mean is it may seem to be all blood, guts, and gaping assholes, but in the margin beyond that it is almost entirely about... transcendent love. i think

^^^ You've got it

Frisk is my fave of the cycle, btw

I finished DS Marriott's Hoodoo Voodoo, then read the Primary Information/Ugly Duckling Presse reprint of NH Pritchard's The Matrix, now I'm onto Tom Mandel and Daniel Davidson's collaborative long poem, Absence Sensorium. It's really something, I think sometimes about how Davidson died much too young, age of 40, and how we would be better off if he were still alive and still writing this weird and provocative work.

Hi, I'm fairly new to the world of literary-fiction (and also, literary non-fiction) and totally new to this thread (and also, talking about books in general).

I just finished Swimming Home by Deborah Levy - it's kind of straightforward and elusive in equal measure, in a way I'm not sure I "got." It's hard to say what it was, but something about it was just less than satisfying. I welcome suggestions on her other books.
I am now reading Cleanness by Garth Greenwell. I'm 2 of 7 chapters in and there's also been blood and assholes (not gaping as much as clenched tho') and, arguably, traces of transcendent love (maybe not love but desire?).

Hi. I don't have any suggestions since I haven't read those books you mention, but welcome!

I thought Cleanness was great!

I mostly lurk but popping my head up to say if you enjoy Deborah Levy's style but found Swimming Home somehow unsatisfying (I felt similarly) then her "living memoirs", Things I Don't Want to Know and The Cost of Living, are well worth your time. They're elegant and weird and brutal, and they don't miss their mark.
They're also more moving.

I sometimes find her fiction more exciting and interesting to hear her describe than to read. Her voice is so strong it almost doesn't suit being stuffed into a story, like someone wearing clothes much too small for them.

I mostly lurk but popping my head up to say...

Bravo! Encore!

Confessions of a Fox - Jordy Rosenberg. The one littered with critical praise often with the words 'romp' and 'rollicking' in, hence it being about a year since I bought it to reading it. I'm *just about* persisting despite it being yet another example of a version of 18th century style - you know the Sort, all Capital Letters and Rhetorick with a k and an entire slang dictionary slathered onto the pages to produce Effcts both Comical and Tragicke. I only know of one decent version of this mode, and that's Pynchon's Mason and Dixon.

There's also an unreliable academic narrator who communicates mainly through footnotes, in a facetious and grating tone.

it's very much a first novel.

there are aspects which deserve longer scrutiny, trans erotica and an attempt to dramatize gender fluidity in the language of the time, but it comes across as current thought cloaked in an ersatz version of the language of the time*. After all 18th century english was how serious people communicated seriously in the 18th century. it's not a joke or cartoon.

I'm thinking of giving up persisting soon, but will keep going for the moment.

* I should add that by this i very much do not mean 'oh god woke 18th century,' - gender fluidity and frameworks of gender representation in that period are a real discipline, and the other is a real academic of them. but there's a lack of the sense of the cadence of thinking and representation of thought from the 18th century doing the work, it's more like current frameworks with 18th century argot.

Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett. Collection of short stories. Good, I think. Interior monologues in domestic spaces, with a careful awareness of the mechanics of interiority, the circling round a thing, the unusual snags of feeling and recognition by which thought progresses or insight is gained. The elliptical and non-cliched nature of thinking and feeling. Someone said that she was similar to Jen Calleja, but i don't get that at all tbh, in fact Pond reminds me more in some ways of Gerald Murnane, an understanding of how to get to the profound from the repeated mundane and quotidian, and how the unusual or genuinely strange is actually part of that fabric.

The effect to me is a little like trying to catch an elusive thought that seems to have whisked away just before the moment you were aware of it, but which you feel has insight. Sometimes you find it and can look at it, most of the time it flits away without any sense of what meaning or importance it may have had. CLB is adept at catching them.

Hello, I have never posted to this board before, but I have just started reading Sensoria Thinkers for the Twenty-first Century by McKenzie Wark as I finally finished reading the Jacques Derrida biography that came out last year.

confusing ambiguity in my post:

for 'and the other is a real academic of them' read 'and the author is a real academic of them'

Hi Oor Neechy. How are the 21st Century thinkers?

Started Chess Story, Stefan Zweig, last night. It's novella length and I should have finished it last night, too, but couldn't keep my eyes open. No reflection on the story, which was taut and beautifully constructed (as far as I got).

Hey Neechy.

Chess Story is fabulous. One of those books I know I own but which has been nabbed by the book poltergeist.

I'm reading Love's Work by Gillian Rose. Like Aimless, I should probably have finished it last night but was blinking back tears and couldn't manage it. It's propelled by onrushing death and Rose releases a torrent of wordplay and memory; it's full of wry observation and shatteringly unadorned descriptions of what happened to her people and the important relationships she's maintained and lost. What a beautiful book.

love’s work is amazing.

I think I picked it up from a recommendation on here - may well have been you Fizzles so thank you. I vaguely knew of her through Jacqueline Rose and Adam Phillips but hadn't read anything by her. Jesus, for such a short book it's got extraordinary heft.

^ I've heard enough. I just ordered a used copy for myself.

think i got the rec from xyzzzz and others itt. but yes - more the better! incredibly moving. i need to go back and revisit some passages.

Hi Oor Neechy. How are the 21st Century thinkers?

― Fizzles, Monday, 8 March 2021 17:14 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Just started it, but I think its trying to stay away from old white guys from the west

I've heard mixed reviews of the Rosenberg book, even tho a friend of mine loved it, he also has sometimes...well, our tastes align to a certain degree, but there are things he enjoys that I find awful. Like Zizek.

Chess Story is fantastic, agreed.

Just finished The Jakarta Method, by Vincent Bevins. It never rubs the reader's face in the horror, doesn't go in for graphic details of torture/murder, but manages to be emotionally overwhelming just by the loss experienced by the people he talks to and writes about, both of their friends/families/lovers and of their hopes for something better. Devastating book, highly recommended.

Nearly finished with Wolf Among Wolves by Hans Fallada. Much less stressful to read once it moves out of Berlin, still not quite sure what I think of it.

Started Log of the USS Mrs. Unguentine while outside on a really nice day, kind of waiting for another day like that to finish it.

Glad you found The Jakarta Method to be as bracing and informative as I did! One of the best books I read last year.

Just finished The Jakarta Method, by Vincent Bevins. It never rubs the reader's face in the horror, doesn't go in for graphic details of torture/murder, but manages to be emotionally overwhelming just by the loss experienced by the people he talks to and writes about, both of their friends/families/lovers and of their hopes for something better. Devastating book, highly recommended.

I read it in October at tables' rec. OTM.

is James McBride good? Seems like somebody on ilb said book x was v good, book y was shit (or vice-versa).

Another vote her for Deborah Levy's non-fiction. There's a third volume coming out this year.

https://lithub.com/50-very-bad-book-covers-for-literary-classics/

😬

Speaking of Jane Austen... I'm almost done reading Mansfield Park for the first time and jeez what a slog. All of Austen's fine observation and irrepressible irony in service of a complete nothing of a story, dragged out to interminable length and populated almost entirely by creeps, schemers, dunderheads, sluggards, harridans, and drips.

I believe James Morrison did some posts on crazy print-on-demand covers for classics ages ago?

Yes, a classic!

Finished Mansfield Park, I can see how it might be an interesting book to discuss - Lady Bertram as a reductio ad absurdum of the idea that once a woman has secured her living through marriage she need no longer even think, let alone act or speak; the whole thing a subversion of a romance, where all the action happens off-stage in the last twenty pages. And I actually liked Fanny, yes she is quiet and timid and compliant, but she is clear sighted and keeps her head and stands her ground when she ultimately needs to. Still think it was a snoozefest though.

Stranded by Clinton Walker
really great so far, gone through the early years of Saints & Birdman and just been introduced to the Boys Next door and their mate Chris Walsh.
& the author's opwn background.
Very readable, do wish I had picked this up when it first came out and wonder if tehre is a reason I didn't. Other tahn not seeing it. BUt would have thunk that Tower in Dublin would have got it and failing taht Rough Trade in London. So wonder if there was a reason I wouldn't have been aware of it. Obviously no internet at the time at least for me.
Oh well, reading it now.

Jean Stafford didn't write short stories so much as reports or dispatches about people she's observed. Occasionally it works.

I'm re-reading some Chekhov and I can't stop thinking about Easter Night.

I am caught between two stool, having started both My Dog Tulip, Ackerly, and Psmith in the City, Wodehouse. It's now a race for my affections.

hott

I've started Siri Hustvedt, MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE. It's very readable. NYC and poetry in the late 1970s - goes down surprisingly easily. Look forward to more.

ON the last section of David Olusoga The World's War and armistice has been signed. just been reading about black troops fathering babies in the Rhineland and the later Nazi response which is disgusting.
& Black troops who had got some respect from fightig as part of teh French Army triggering the US army to try to get them treated with acomplete lack of respect. Which seemed to be more prevalent after the fighting ended.

Good book, think I'll read more by him.

Finished Kehinde Andrews New Age of Empire which was a pretty scathing overview of the West's exploitation of the colonies and how it doesn't seem to be getting much better just teh exploiters seems to have changed. China and the rich of various countries exploiting resources and allowing teh money to go to the white west. NOt sure what any form of egalitarianism can build on if the resources are all going to be gone.

Stranded Clinton Walker
JUst getting to the Birthday party imploding and me getting the timing of Jeffrey Wegener's playing with tehm wrong. It wasa Dutch tour after which Mick Harvey took over the drums again and then teh antipodean dates at the end are Des Hefner.
OH and just when i was wondering why the Moodists hadn't had much coverage they appeared on about the next page. Chris Walsh having appeared much earlier since he was around to help teach Tracy Pew bass.

Last night I finished both Psmith in the City and My Dog Tulip. Remarks follow.

In this book Wodehouse delivers a Psmith who is recognizably in character. This is a sequel to his earlier 'public schoolboy' stories in which Psmith plays the eccentric second fiddle to one Mike Jackson, a handsome lad who is normal as milk and wields a wicked bat in cricket. Both Mike and Psmith appear again here, but now as apprentices in a bank.

Wodehouse wisely pushes Psmith to the fore here, rather than as a secondary character. The major flaw in this yarn is a lack of scope for Psmith to fully blossom out, as he did once he was finally untethered from the stolid Mike and sent to NYC in Psmith, Journalist, a much finer book. This novel is comparatively tepid compared to Wodehouse in full cry.

As for My Dog Tulip, I was rather less impressed with it than the critics who supplied the Introduction and cover blurbs, which tout it as a masterpiece. One blurb from a NYT reviewer claims the book "shakes up our sentimental preconceptions about dogs". This is nonsense. Ackerly is hugely sentimental about Tulip. He keeps trying to deliver her a life of perfect unclouded happiness; he describes her beauty in the rapturous tones of a lover; he is often consternated because his attempts to be the perfect dog owner for his pet keep coming a cropper through his lack of practical judgment. Unsentimental this is not.

I kept wanting to tell him to settle down, try less hard and just find a reasonable balance of his needs and hers, some pleasant life together that he knew how to accomplish, instead of imagining how wonderful it would be if Tulip could be made blissful, then failing at it over and over.

As normal as milk?

The Ackerley to read is My Father and Myself. That's his masterpiece.

There's a Captain Beefheart album and song called "Safe as Milk", featuring the lyric, "I may be hungry but I sure ain't weird".

xp