Sumer Is Icumen In 2015, What Are You Reading Now?

Joshua Mohr: All This Life -- gave up on this. Seemed specious and pseudo-profound, a bit like how I imagine a Franzen book would be, if I ever read one. All the reviewers love it, though.

Edith Templeton: The Darts of Cupid---picked this up in the library shop, where the opening namesake pulled me right through its 65 pages, with some head-snapping turns (simple male mind had to be told again). The setting is a WWII US War Office in Bathgate, later London, staffed by British female civilians, fed up with husbands, and overseen by British and American officers, all male, duh (the boss is also a doctor). More good points about codes of gender, class, professional status, educational background, workplace, etc. than many novels can manage, without lecturing or filler (would advise a few cuts, but just sentences here and there).
The characters' uses of humor---as tools, weapons, armor, gifts, taxes---have me thinking "British Dawn Powell," although Powell fan Gore Vidal's blurb compares this Edith to Wharton, "cool stare" and all. The narrator of this title story does makes a point of being a tough young cookie, but she's honest about the gaps in her armor, and the ones she can't or won't fill in.
Hope the others in this collection are nearly as good.

Started a Narayan novel, Mr. Sampath - The Printer of Malgudi. It's rather nice to start a book that is not a major commitment of time. This one is just under 200 pages.

Through with the first volume of Jane Eyre, finishing Angela Davis's Women, Race, and Class (such an important intervention), reading Ingeborg Bachmann's formally halting but affecting breakdown poems from 1962-63, and starting Bhanu Kapil's Incubation: A Space for Monsters.

Back to the bucket list/books I should have read in school: Their Eyes Were Watching God seems like art-folk-pop---even within musical distance of another belated read, One Hundred Years of Solitude, at times; also seems like an ancestor---a proudly roving auntie---of African-American entertainment's more caffeinated inspirations.Maybe even the better "chick lit," if I knew anything about that first hand--did enjoy the movie and soundtrack of Waiting To Exhale, even though Hurston's tropical heroine leaves those citizens in the urban Sunbelt dust. Some of them aren't unlike the confidante, frenemies, and other audience members she comes back to, however.

Miklos Szentkuthy - Towards the One and Only Metaphor. Like Musil's Diaries at times - composed of 112 sections, this one puts a bunch of reading together with sketches of characters of this never-to-be-written-up novel. Sees himself as a container for thought and feeling and time itself (no wait come back). Written in '35 so in the shadow of Nazism as well (Hitlerism and Proust). I suppose I mention Musil in the sense that he is in the habit of following a thought through thoroughly but they aren't philosophical. The thing is followed through to a nonsensical result - which can be ok as long as it appears to be literature. Also cf. Musil there is an erotics there - thinking around the body.

The analogy in the intro was of someone looking at this as you would the stars in the sky and then all of a sudden you are grouping them towards a constellation. There is a hint that would happen after a few readings.

Proceeding backwards through 20th Century lit(which is also how I spent much of my share of the 20th Century itself, at the time), getting more and more of a sense of the dynamic attraction and danger of the crowd--"the holiday energies of the masses," as a unnamed revolutionist, quoted by Richard Wright, puts it. Hurston's Janie seeks, finds, realigns communities and families in the crowd, and these run their courses---inside a minute, over decades, whatever it takes.

The characters' uses of humor---as tools, weapons, armor, gifts, taxes---have me thinking "British Dawn Powell,"

try her 'gordon' to add weird sex to the mix

edith templeton, that is, not dawn powell

dow have you read canetti's crowds & power? (I haven't, came close to buying it the other day but it was kinda pricy for a 2nd hand book)

Canetti's on the list, but I hadn't thought of that title specifcally; will check it out, thanks. Weird sex in xpost "The Darts of Cupid" too, re the story's complex mapping of gender inter- and intrarelated regulation, compliance, resistance, and/or transactional tensions, erotic friction,sparks (gifts, taxes), but not s&m, more unexpected than that. Also, the narrator's ideal is love as drug, flotation in the self-aware vanishing point.

But I haven't told all of it.

just read, & really enjoyed: https://nplusonemag.com/issue-23/fiction-drama/nine-inherited-disorders/ (DISCLAIMER: not a book)

Finished Towards the One and Only Metaphor. Plenty of thoughts on Powys, Browne (need to read him) and Joyce (he translated Ulysses to Hungarian and he wasn't fazed by FW as it was being published) and much more. Real keeper of a book.

My bourgeois self is currently getting a kick out of Steppenwolf.

on an actual book-reading tip: I find something deeply appealing in the combination of sentimentalism, chemistry, and 19th century Age-of-Progress humanist ideology that is Jules Verne's L'Île mystérieuse (the first part, anyway -- not sure how things will change once the "mystery" rears its head)

I'm finishing Jane Eyre and returning to Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex: the chapter on race has aged extremely poorly, and her use of Freud is unhelpful when she discusses homosexuality, but I totally love the breadth, polemical energy, and woolly utopianism of the work, like a much shrewder and less abstruse Anti-Oedipus.

Spending half of my time transfixed by some of the sentences from Platonov's Chevengur as collected in The Portable Platonov (this has a play, a couple of short stories and a section from The Foundation Pit which has now been fully translated) and the other half on Hjalmar Sodebergh's account of doomed love in A Serious Game, accompanied by all the abrupt expressionisms of the time (1912)

(btw, there is only 50 pages worth of Chevengur, about a tenth of the bk)

Hjalmar Sodeberg is a wonderful writer. i wish more of his stuff was in English--there's only 'Doctor Glass', 'A Serious Game' and a collection of stories available as far as I know.

I just finished a Swedish book of the same vintage (1908), Elin Wagner's 'Men and Other Misfortunes', a startlingly modern novel about four women flatsharing in Stockholm, their job(hunting) and relationships, fighting off sexual approaches from the boss, all that sort of thing. Very lighlty done, but impressive.

Finished "The Travels of Marco Polo". I thought it was pretty enjoyable, whether one believes Marco actually visited all those places or not, and there is clearly lots of second-hand material in there, whether he picked it up on his travels or while hanging out with other merchants in Venice or whether it was interpolated by Rustichello, it's still a pretty incredible collection of material, and fascinating to read as an example of a "bestseller" that predates Gutenberg.

Now I've started "The Stillborn God" by Mark Lilla, which if nothing else has accomplished the unprecedented feat of making me want to read Kant, though I'm fairly sure that will pass.

This forthcoming book makes me want to read Kant:
http://www.adamroberts.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/THE-THING-ITSELF-nick-fiddle.jpg

It's a riff on the John Carpenter 'The Thing' movie with a protagonist who is obsessed with Kant

Just read The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin. A+ stuff, scarcely dated. On a side note: my copy was printed in 1963, $1.65 cover price.

James, Norvik published Soderberg's "Martin Birck's Youth" iirc but that's the only other novel of his I've seen in English.

close to the end of to the lighthouse, i found it really powerful. that chasmic drop from the dinner scene into this grim post-war future is heartbreaking.

James, Norvik published Soderberg's "Martin Birck's Youth" iirc but that's the only other novel of his I've seen in English.

― Tim, Wednesday, 19 August 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

iirc the intro said there were only a couple of other novels bar what's mentioned - and of course Gertrud can't go w/out a mention. Imagine the play is knocking around somewhere although Dreyer's versh makes for one of the best films of the 60s.

close to the end of to the lighthouse, i found it really powerful. that chasmic drop from the dinner scene into this grim post-war future is heartbreaking.

― doing my Objectives, handling some intense stuff (LocalGarda), Wednesday, August 19, 2015 3:51 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, "Time Passes" is maybe the most striking thing in all of Woolf for me.

yeah, the way she just suddenly hurtles through all the deaths is both really wrenching but also technically brilliant.

like for the opening section it's just incredibly slow and meandering, almost cryptic, then all of a sudden it's years later and these children are dead and this engaged couple have a rotten marriage. this was my first woolf so i look forward to more.

Right, am ordering "Martin Birck's Youth"

Bordwell - Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema
Some more 1001 Nights

Some Jack London short stories. He was a clever writer all right.

Yeah good writer, shame he was an ardent racist though. Not sure if I've read him since I saw that outlined.
Guess I still read Lovecraft and he was too.

So was virginia woolf, ditto

Didn't come up in the Library of America editions I read (long ago), or not that I recall---though maybe he ambivalently shaded the obvious baddie, Nietzche-reading, Ozymandian ahole Cap'n of The Sea Wolf. I mainly retain an impression of methodically mesmerizing detail, in "To Build A Fire," and his experiences working in a laundry, finally getting so sick that he ended up in the hospital--briefly, but still it was a rare achievement, and a holiday! Also "The Open Road" and other tales of hoboing, occasionally with time in jails here and there, comparisons of conditions, etc. Even more of a likely influence on Orwell via The Iron Heel, his pre-1984, and People of the Abyss, which seems like it may have led to Down And Out In Paris and London.
Crick's bio mentions that Orwell's story is fiction, which I hadn't thought of, because it's presented with a lot of London-Orwell-type low-key clarity, good camera recording all shades of grey. So then I thought People.. was a novel too, until I worked in a bookstore and sold a limited edition incl. pictures the author took with a camera concealed in his rags: people looking like miners who just emerged from a cave-in, but they're walking around a marketplace, on just another day in London.

Just finished The First Bad Man, Miranda July's first novel. Will have to check her short storiesm considering how involving this is, chapter by chapter, although the seems too carefully, obtrusively contrived--would rather she just through the cards up in the air than keep shuffling and counting--but as a chapter, it does win me over, as the obsesso characters continue on their journeys, in their spells, exploring new-to-me worlds and ages of passive-aggression, paying dues in funny money and other currencies, having real sex while imaging they, not (necessarily, although sometimes also) their partners, are other people--yadda yadda: it starts out like "Portlandia" meets chick lit, and other pop elements appear, but characterization goes deeper, and finds its own surprising plausibility, which reasserts its boundaries, as the floodwaters recede, or settle in.
I found myself caring about, sometimes moved by, even relating to the characters, however obscurely: most of it has nothing at all to do with people, places, or events in my own life, so not much dependence on familiarity (although if I lived in middle-class suburban California ca. 2013, who knows).

the *ending* seems too carefully, obtrusively contrived. Would rather she just *threw* her cards up in the air...

Older and younger people using and used by, sometimes maybe even for the better, while they all keep getting older, of course: yeah, that part's relatable, as the kids say.

using and used by *each other* ffs

I forgot that July has a novel out. I'll have to remember to check that out. I quite enjoyed No One Belongs Here More Than You. Some might find her a little cutesy, but several of her improbable deadpan twists had me laughing out loud.

Jessica Hopper - The First Collection of Criticism From a Living Female Rock Critic
Mary Gaitskill - Bad Behavior

Jessica Hopper - The First Collection of Criticism From a Living Female Rock Critic
Mary Gaitskill - Bad Behavior

thomas Bernhard: My Prizes -- hilariously bad-tempered

That's his thing, no?

Definitely, but this is a collection of recollections of various prizes he was given (plus some of the acceptance speeches) and how for the most part he hated winning them, or the prizegiving went wrong, or the thing he bought with the money got trashed. Rather touchingly, he seems to go everywhere with his aunt.

just started reading "a late dinner - the food and culture of spain" by paul richardson. very interesting. also been flicking through the irish journal, stinging fly, the london issue. bought that new granta anthology yesterday and my in-tray also has the new musil collection and portnoy's complaint.

Ishiguro, THE BURIED GIANT

Chandler, THE BIG SLEEP

then I started on Kafka, AMERIKA

Tony Fletcher All Hopped Up But Got No Place to Go
History of 50 years of music from the streets in NYC. So far I've got as far as Chan Pozo getting murdered over his reaction to a bad weed deal on returning to NYC from a tour where his congas had been stolen. It's good so far. & has me wanting to get hold of some material by Machito who has already been talked about.
I think what negative criticism I've read of the book has been over omissions he has actually consciously made to fit his self designed rubrick which is about that music from the streets thing, so he drops things when they get commercial recognition. it means he looks at Latin music about a decade before Fania nut none of the Nu Yorica era stuff. He also drops hip hop just as its beginning to get really interesting. He cuts off in 1977, so I think he has the birth of that but none of the latter developments which he might dismiss the street level of because of major label involvement, which doesn't sound quite like the reality of the situation but does seem to be his approach.
Anyway looking forward to reading the rest of this and hopefully having the soundtrack as I go. Writing ids pretty good anyway.

Or alternatively actual title is All Hopped Up and Ready To Go. As in the Ramones line,

readin TEH TRACTATUS in german so lese LOGISCH-PHILOSOPHISCHE ABHANDLUNG, it's nifty

Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist. In German it rhymes, do u see?