The girls are out flaunting their Summer plumage but you're stuck inside, reading. What?

There's some Pynchon love/hate on this thread so i started gravity's rainbow the other day

gotta say, if you don't like it i don't think there's going to be a point you WON'T find mason/dixon excruciating

That's one disruption to finishing the book that 'If on a Winter's Night a Traveller' is lacking...

A long time ago, my girlfriend bought two books I'd been raving about and took them on a plane flight. One was If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. The other was a copy of John Barth's Chimera that turned out to have the signatures misplaced and a good chunk of the opening missing. I can't remember which order she started them in: either she got to the missing chunk of Chimera, turned to the Calvino, and went "whoah, uncanny," or she got partway in the Calvino, decided to try the Barth instead, and then went "whoah, uncanny."

The Taste For Beauty

Dugmore Boetie: Familiarity os the Kingdom of the Lost

A strange but good one, this--a memoir by a black South African con-artist and street thief who died in 1966. Has some very odd touches, though, like the fact that he accidentally burns his mother to death on page 1 and then never mentions it again.

stein sausage?

― thomp, Saturday, 1 August 2009 16:04 (2 weeks ago) Bookmark

Sorry thomp, meant to elaborate a while ago, but I can't find my copy of Time and Western Man. At the library now tho, so:

At present I am referring to what I have read of Miss Stein at the Three Lives stage of her techinical evolution. What is the matter with it is, probably, that it is so dead. Gertrude Stein's prose-song is a cold, black suet-pudding. We can represent it as a cold suet-roll of fabulously-reptilian length. Cut it at any point, it is the same thing; the same heavy, sticky, opaque mass all through, and all along. It is weighted, projected, with a sibylline urge. It is mournful and monstrous, composed of dead and inanimate material. It is all fat, without nerve. Or the evident vitality that informs it is vegetable rather than animal. Its life is a low-grade, if tenacious, one; of the sausage, by-the-yard, variety.

Finished:

Alberto Moravia - Contempt. My new favourite author -- will be going onto read Two Women soon.

Joseph Roth - Confessions of a Murderer. My new favourite author -- will be going onto read Radetzsky March soon.

Leonardo Sciascia - The Day of the Owl. My new favourite author -- hoping to read etc

Now: Stefan Zweig - Beware of Pity.

How is 'Beware of Pity'? I've had it on my shelf for a while, but (of all the reasons not to get around to reading it) it's far too heavy relative to its size, which I find weirdly intimidating.

GR that is kind of funny but mainly it makes me think wyndham lewis is a dick

read james baldwin's the fire next time and another country. and some other things.

like him way more as an essayist. it's kind of weird reading an essentially old-fashioned novel where people talk about racism and say 'motherfucker' and it isn't awful, though

it makes me think wyndham lewis is a dick

― thomp, Tuesday, August 18, 2009 10:37 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

He is definitely a bit of a dick.

I like him though - Time and Western Man is great, not necessarily particularly coherent as such - it's just an all-out assault on the idea of Bergsonian time as a philosophical and literary idea. The force of his prose is tremendously energising (it can also be tremendously ennervating, like anything noisy and sometimes obstreperous - see The Apes of God). What I like about his theoretical writing generally is what you don't necessarily get in that section, or rather you only get the second half of it in that section - the way he takes abstract ideas and materialises them into bricks which he then heaves with tremendous gusto at whatever it is he is arguing against.

In fact, he uses the methods of satire to analyse and attack his theoretical opponents. He is, it hardly needs saying, not even handed. The thing that makes this okay is that he's very good at it. Or at least he's very good at it sometimes. Other times, such as in Paleface, it's boring and shrill and substanceless - glorified pub rant.

What makes it work especially well in Time and Western Man is that the theories of flux and sensational time that he's attacking are exactly those opposed by the methods of satire. Sparks fly in a most entertaining fashion - and within its context, that Stein quote is amusing.

And I basically think he's right about Stein, both theoretically and in that descriptive section (which is sort of an extension of his theory anyway). It's preceded by a bit which compares Anita Loos' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes with Gertrude Stein, which is fun as well.

IK -- Is the Pushkin edition the one you're thinking of? Great cover, but yes, it feels as if it could be lighter (see also that horrible edition of Gaddis' Recognitions with the pink cover -- although it didn't stop me from reading either, perhaps because I got both as a loan from the library). NYRB should print every book ever.

So far its shaping up to be quite the tragedy. Great set-up, although I am feeling a bit fatigued by the Vienna novels. A bit but I doubt it will be enough to stop.

Gamiliel -- Since Lewis attacks Bergson's ideas does he discuss Proust's fiction?

Since Lewis attacks Bergson's ideas does he discuss Proust's fiction?

He does, in the main in The Apes of God, in fact, through Horace Zagreus, and that's really a discussion about satire - Proust the gossip columnist rather than Proust the time philosopher.

I can't remember what he says about Proust elsewhere, although I don't think he condemns (or blasts) him particularly. In fact Lewis was a big admirer of Proust, and if he does discuss his time philosophy, it's more in a tone of admiring disagreement than belligerent disapproval.

I would suggest, tentatively, that Lewis's major beef was with writers who tried to convey the passing of sensational time through stylistic devices - the Stein stutter, sections of Joyce, certainly Virginia Woolf. The idea of internal monologue offended him.

This is vague recollecting on my part, I need to return to Time and Western Man and have a proper look, and will do so with pleasure, it's a most invigorating read.

A friend of mine went to the Futurism exhibition the other day, and I quoted her the section in Blasting and Bombardeering where Lewis talks about Marinetti - to a certain extent his attitude can be guessed at by their conversation -

'You are a futurist, Lewis!' he shouted at me one day, as we were passing into a lavabo together, where we wanted to wash after a lecture where he had drenched himself in sweat.

'No,' I said.

'Why don't you announce that you are a futurist!' he asked me squarely.

'Because I am not one,' I answered, just as pointblank and to the point.

'Yes. But what's it matter!' said he with great impatience.

'It's most important,' I repled rather coldly.

'Not at all!' said he. 'Futurism is good. It is all right.'

'Not too bad,' said I. 'It has its points. But you Wops insist too much on the Machine. You're always on about these driving-belts, you are always exploding about internal combustion. We've had machines here in England for a donkey's years. They're no novelty to us.'

'You have never understood you machines! You have never known the ivresse of travelling at a kilometre a minute. Have you ever travelled at a kilometre a minute?'

'Never,' I shook my head energetically. 'Never. I loathe anything that goes too quickly. If it goes too quickly, it is not there.'

'It is not there!' he thundered for this had touched him on the raw. 'It is only when it goes quickly that it is there!'

'That is nonsense,' I said. 'I cannot see a thing that is going too quickly.'

'See it - see it!' Why should you want to see?' he exclaimed. 'But you do see it. You see it multiplied a thousand times. you see a thousand things instead of one thing.'

I shrugged my shoulders - this was not the first time I had had this argument.
'That's just what I don't want to see. I am not a futurist,' I said. 'I prefer one thing.'

'There is no such thing as one thing.'

'There is if I wish to have it so. And I wish to have it so.'

'You are a monist!' he said at this, with a contemptuous glance, curling his lip.

'All right. I'm not a futurist anyway. Je hais le mouvement qui déplace les lignes.'

At this quotation he broke into a hundred angry pieces.

'And you "never weep" - I know, I know. Ah zut alors! What a thing to be an Englishman!'

Yes, the Pushkin edition xp. I was just flicking through it there and noticed that pp145-168 are printed upside-down too, so that's yet another obstacle to overcome.

Also tucking into some Eric Ambler. Nicely end-of-days 1939 paranoid.

Alberto Moravia - Contempt. My new favourite author -- will be going onto read Two Women soon.

Joseph Roth - Confessions of a Murderer. My new favourite author -- will be going onto read Radetzsky March soon.

Leonardo Sciascia - The Day of the Owl. My new favourite author -- hoping to read etc

Now: Stefan Zweig - Beware of Pity.

What a line-up of fantastic books!

Am reading 'An Apology for Idlers' by Robert Louis Stevenson: essay collection. I've said it before, but I really love RLS, and you can't help feeling he'd have been a great guy to know--funny, charming, completely without arsehole qualities.
The title essay is all about the joys of laziness, and is my new philosophy of life. The cover's excellent too--appropriately unfinished...
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/0141043962.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

The Mystery of the Yellow Room - Gaston Leroux

The birth of the logical detective? Holmes essentially being a superlative observer, Rouletabille explicitly spurns the footprint. (Can Dupin really be called a detective? Rue Morgue's solution is too way out, Purloined Letter's too silly.)

Complete lack of human warmth. Fun, all the same.

I put a library hold today on Kobo Abe's Kangaroo Notebook. A description of it elsewhere on ILB sounded intriguing, although existentially-oriented magical realism isn't my usual fare.

Donald Westlakre: The Hot Rock

WestLAKE that should be.

Also, just read the first novel by William Trevor, which is now out of print and which is no longer listed among his books, so he seems to have disowned it, But check out the cover!
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2481/3840588509_c3ec0e3647_b.jpg

(Try http://www.flickr.com/photos/28475170@N02/3840588509/ if that didn't work.)

Gamaliel -- Thanks for your answer (and the quote). I very much like internal monologues, perhaps more blindly than I should so 'Time and Western Man' is a must read. Even if Wyndham does sound like a dick.

James -- yeah that was a good run of books. The Moravia in particular, I just love how he pours scorn (if that was the intention and it purely wasn't the only one) on that old chestnut of literature as a way of gaining insight into particular mindsets by setting up a a drama where all we have left is the inability of using writing as a way to understand the deepest most important things. Even better than Zeno's Consicence in that respect. No wonder Godard adapted it (haven't seen that film)

The Sciascia amounts to a comprehensive set of diamond edged sentences, huh? No waste. I like how there seems to a whole worrying underneath about the notion of justice that is at the heart of these books, with the whodunits being a sideshow. Hopefully more will come out as soon as I get a run of these going.

The ending to the Roth was very beautiful, to me.

The Zweig is a bit hard going at the mo. Every word, gesture seems to be meticulously looked at but I wonder if, for once, there is the need for that much detail. How are the short stories?

I only read the one about chess and it's meticolous but not excessively so.

Reading Graham Greene's The Third Man and The Fallen Idol.

Just finished the Collected Essays of Graham Greene. He definitely had an intellectual pov and certain amount of rigor in pursuing it, mostly coalesced around his convert's adherence to Catholic doctrine.

Last night started Justinian's Flea. So far it is walking over ground I have walked over in the past with other authors and with many of the original sources (easy because they are so few in number). I am hoping for a bit of Grand Unifying Theory sprinkled on top.

Just finished the Collected Essays of Graham Greene. He definitely had an intellectual pov and certain amount of rigor in pursuing it, mostly coalesced around his convert's adherence to Catholic doctrine.

We talked about this book some time ago on one of these threads. Him meeting up with Ho Chi Minh is pretty thrilling stuff.

'The Forsaken' - Tim Tzouliadis

The Book of Questions - Pablo Neruda

How are the short stories?

Fan-bloody-tastic!

Was in the West of Ireland for a week, seemed fitting to read a Tim Robinson book: went for Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage. Love the style - dense, observant, bit of knotty abstraction. Will read more next time I'm over. (Read the new Faber edition, which has an 'other books in this series' page right at the end, listing the NYRB Catalogue. Good job, Faber. Tidy editing. For a reprint of Labyrinth, how about a stapled Roneo of your old edition?)

Read randomly from books around the house for the rest of my time there. Aubrey, Jonson, Burke. Also realised I'd never tried a serious long poem by Byron. Started Childe Harold, realised why I'd never tried one.

Also had fit of rereading Chandler: Farewell, My Lovely and The Little Sister. Simple pleasures.

master and margarita! loving it so far. also a book of criticial essays in preparation for college.

Alberto Moravia - Two Women. Excellent, and Rosetta's way of dealing with her loss of innonence was utterly unexpected, affecting, even quite shocking. The story is similar -- in the sense that it is to do with a family dealing with the end of the second world war -- to Morante's History: A Novel. I definitely will read it at some point.

Started: Denton Welch - A Voice Through a Cloud.

re-reading 'ariel' and 'chimera'

trying to decide whether to read the sylvia plath thread

have read in past few days:

some of gogol's short stories
some of cordwainer smith's
some of the man without qualities
all of the house of the seven gables (loved it)

Enjoying the Musil thomp?

Weren't Moravia and Morante married?

E. Nesbit, Kelly Link, and George Herbert. Gonna read Albert Wendt's Sons for the Return Home for class next week.

Recently finished...
John Cheever - Bullet Park
Malcolm Braly - On the Yard
(both great)

About to start...
San Francisco Tape Music Centre
Saul Bellow - Herzog

Finished up the Greene. Now it's time for my traditional Summer moomins book (this year it's Moominsummer Madness) and after that, Ikku Jippensha's Shank's Mare.

San Francisco Tape Music Centre

Fantastic. In that connection, here is Ramon Sender's attempt to communicate with a hypothetical being by means of randomly-chosen works in the dictionary. It made me laugh.

"Weren't Moravia and Morante married?"

Yup. Just wondering if anyone read both books and how similar they are or not.

Finished the Welch last night - so many incredible sentences that concretely communicate the blackness and agony and yet others that express his desire to live. Brilliant writing.

Doubled that w/Sartre - The Wall.

Just started on Durrenmatt - The Judge and His Hangman.

Really glad you liked A Voice Through A Cloud, xyzzz__, the tone of his writing is quite remarkable.

I've just been dicking about the intern... I mean, I've just finished Murder in the Submarine Zone by Carter Dickson/John Dickson Carr, and rather like my attitude to The Fall, I find myself incapable of criticism - I can go through the motions, but really (rather like in My New House) 'I do love the bad things about it'.

Am starting either The Blood of the Lamb by Peter De Vries or Maiden Voyage, Denton Welch's first novel, apparently rather more a travelogue, than novel actually.

Inherent Vice is still on the back burner (in the form of the right-hand stereo speaker), begging to be read, but I think it's just going to have to wait a bit longer. No rush, no rush.

Oh, and read Markheim by Robert Louis Stevenson. Very good. Got me thinking about deranged-psyche-of-the-criminal-stories (Tell-Tale Heart, Crime and Punishment, Killer Inside Me &c., he said, implying a host of others, that don't actually spring to mind right now).

Right, must read 'Markheim' NOW!

It's only about five pages long, I should add, but good, good!

The thing I want to add, just before I retire (because that's what young gentlemen like I do, we retire - we don't collapse into bed barely tugging a sheet over our fully clothed body while half heartedly shuffling out of one shoe oh no) was that Markheim was specifically recommended to me by an extremely eccentric elderly Italian chap, who was a passionate Anglophile, loathed Italian 'incompetence' as he called it. He would occasionally walk round the office holding his arms somewhat in the manner of a chicken impression, while flexing them experimentally all the while saying 'I must, I must, I must improve my bust'. He was very likable, but extraordinarily tight, frugal to the point of rudeness.

Anyway, when I said I liked Stevenson, found him interesting, he enthusiastically recommended to me Markheim in the strongest possible terms. As a consequence a good deal of reading it involved me wondering what exactly it was about the story that so appealed to his personality. I'm really none the wiser, but I had an entertaining enough time chewing over my speculations as I read.

reading:

eleven - patricia highsmith

i've been on an a.m. homes and mary gaitskill kick of late, and the girl at the bookstore recommended patricia highsmith next

GamalielRatsey, that's a great story. I find I have a copy of Markheim in a big book of RLS short stoires, so I shall HAVE AT IT!

I recently finished Paul Lafarge's The Artist of the Missing, which I read while home with the flu, and the combination of cold-medicine-induced delirium and Lafarge's wacky/surreal way with narrative motion made for a pleasant head-trip.

Now I'm back to John Hemming's magnum opus The Conquest of the Incas, which I formerly left off at around page 300.

Recently...
Conrad Aiken: A Heart for the Gods of Mexico -- odd
RL Stevenson: Markheim -- great stuff - GamalielRatsey really otm
J M Coetzee: Summertime -- yay! a return to the good stuff after a couple of pretty minor books from him

Just finished The Blood of the Lamb by Peter de Vries. This is the only book that has ever made me actually cry. In that American tradition that is not at all literary, but with that vein of directness that I've never quite been able to appreciate in Raymond Carver. It is clear, sane, funny and incredibly bleak and sad - looks unpretentiously at the limits both of faith and doubt (without in any way making those the subjects of what he is writing about).

Although not at all lyrical (it is brief and horribly to the point in its style) there are also moments of intense lyricism.

I haven't done it justice, damn, but this is a really good book, and it will make me return to his comic novels, which I've been able to see are well done, without actually enjoying them as much as I feel I should.

Reading Maiden Voyage by Denton Welch now, his first novel.