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

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!"

Until now

I've never read any description anywhere by anybody that made me want to read it (the novel, not the description). But that's one of the things descriptions should be good for, so it's all good.

i would never begrudge anyone for giving up or not being sold on Stoner, it's an aggressively dull premise and it brings you into a very distant, cold world. yet, it is just magic. i read it in intense and somewhat unusual circumstances but the fact that many other ppl had a similar reaction (including Tom Hanks lol) assures me there's something there. i found the thesis defence scene thrilling, i think you liked it had you held on for long enough, Ronan.

^^^^

it's strange, i am really really patient with books, i think it's the only thing i've abandoned in near-anger that i can recall, like besides when i was 14 or something and read things that were around the house or that family members had bought.

afair it wasn't the atmosphere that stopped me, it was that that atmosphere kept being broken by clanging bits of bad dialogue or half-sketched minor characters. the scene i mentioned where they discuss the dead war buddy was the last straw - i seem to remember a few precursors to that though, i know in the end i was tweeting excerpts in ridicule, which seemed to resonate with a lot of people even though they didn't immediately recognise the book.

but yeah, people fucking love that book, it was maybe two/three years ago when i had a go and it's even bigger now i think, it has a cult following that's growing all the time. i don't think my reaction was contrary or whatever though, i wasn't aware of its status so much when i read it, and i guess every old book i read tends to have a cult following of sorts.

When this was tweeted...
The Paris Review‏ @parisreview
“‘Kill your darlings’ is one of my favorite sayings.” —Michael Haneke (link: http://bit.ly/1RAepOg) bit.ly/1RAepOg

..i tweeted back "you misspelled ''Bosnians" as "darlings", but then i got cold feet about it and deleted in fear of being sued

I think you've (deliberately?) confused Michael Haneke with Peter Handke?

Uh-oh, now flopson's description does have me interested: sounds like the author might be setting up as many barriers as possible, challenging himself and readers. Once in a while, I've found myself unwillingly pulled in or near by the blunt charm of churlish charmlessness, a voice talking shit and sense. I'll give it the random read test if I see it around (won't seek it out---although wouldn't hurt to look up local library holdings online now...)

oooooh shit, ward, you're right. so I would have been an idiot as well as a sued smartarse.

stoner totally sounds like something i would dig. never read it. maybe i've never actually seen a copy. just read about it. i tend to remember things that get compared to richard yates.

this also reminds me that i need to finish watching criterion dvd of the browning version.

Fwiw I think Butcher's Crossing is a better book, but Stoner had a very strong impact.

A novel about the life of an inscrutably passive academic sounds is my version of hell

Sounds like

B-b-but it's so insightful about his inscrutable passivity! Oh wait.

I think you need the end to get Williams's point, like. Besides, Stoner's passivity (which involves a long tenure at a decent university) is actually kind of heroic relative to what his parents had to deal with.

I'm within a dozen pages of finishing the first volume of The Man Without Qualities. I won't have the second volume to hand until Christmas, so I intend to read The Bookshop, Penelope Fitzgerald, in the interval, based on the superlative reviews posted by other ILBers.

A strong finish to the year for Aimless

Made possible by the innumerable gaping holes in my lifetime reading list.

Halberstam, Female Masculinity

The book Dylan's tour manager had dictated to tape as constructed after his death by his son. Another Side Of Bob Dylan.
Very interesting so far.

A Mark Kermode I bought in Dealz for €1.50. Hope it's still at home when I get back.

A few things I grabbed as I left earlier.
Patricia Highsmith Strangers on A Train,
Henry Fielding Tom Jones,
notes from underground Dostoevsky.

Hatchet Job is Kermode

Frank?

Oh, I see.

Kermode is Mark.

Quiff sporting film reviewer type talking about process of attending film screenings, meeting annoyed film makers and having to pay to see bad films released without press screenings. Normally as early as possible on Friday morning before needing to review that afternoon.

Been enjoying but left behind in a flat I might stop worrying about when I get back to.

Did anyone end up getting this edition of the Voynich manuscript, discussed in Spring and All 2k16? I'm intrigued.

https://www.amazon.ca/Voynich-Manuscript-Raymond-Clemens/dp/0300217234

"Pack My Bag" is probably my least-liked Henry Green book (I'm just not that interested in his years at school and college, even with the tug and tension of a youngish man anticipating being sent to war imminently) but he's always such a pleasure to read.

Now I'm also reading "The Bookshop" by Penelope Fitzgerald because I'm never one to ignore a trend.

I read the lovely NYROB editions of Back and Caught last month.

Mark Kermode
Born Mark James Patrick Fairey 2 July 1963 (age 53) Barnet, London, England
Residence Brockenhurst, Hampshire, England
Occupation Film critic, presenter, writer, musician
Spouse(s) Linda Ruth Williams

I've always wondered if he took Kermode after Frank - or for the pun on 'commode'?

it's his mother's maiden name

no pretty sure it's cause it sounds like shitter

It's Kerr-mode though, innit.

I read Janet Malcolm's In the Freud Archives, after reading about it on here (I think). I couldn't decide if it was a bagatelle, a vanity project, or if it cut right to the heart of Freud's legacy. Probably a mixture of the three. Masson and Swales come out of it seeming agreeably mental.

On a related note, having read and enjoyed a few of Adam Phillips' books, and Irving Yalom's Love's Executioner, are there other canonical 'literature of therapy' or books I could/should look for?

I've just started Don Quixote

yo también

Started readin orientalism (which I've only read parts of before) and Anagram by Moore. Also been given books by two old guys from the pub (James Herbert and wilbur smith, naturally) which I'll be too polite to not read. I liked Herbert when I was a teenager...

Herbert and smith wrote the books, they're not the old guys .

read the title story of Ted Chiang 'The Story of Your Life' last night. Haven't seen Arrival yet, but really loved the story

Finished Magda Szabo's The Door, it didn't make me feel bad about myself.
Sorry if this makes me an inhuman monster.

is it meant to? I've been looking forward to reading it for a while, have a copy in my pile.

Just finished Magda Szabo's The Door. Really excellent, mysterious, unnerving, but man. Some books leave me feeling worse about humanity, the future, the world, this is the rare book that left me feeling worse about myself.
― JoeStork, Saturday, December 10, 2016 6:40 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also, for the record, Stoner bored me.