And The Snow Fell Softly On ILB: What Are You Reading Now Winter 2017/18

I need to check Aubrey. Moby Dick sometimes makes me picture a Dark Ages scholar, reveling in his knowledge, also Scrooge McDuck, diving and sailing through his secret sea of doubloons (bank vault).

Brief Lives is extremely entertaining.

I read Moby Dick for the first time like 2-3 years ago and it legitimately blew me away. Was expecting something more staid but it was such an unusual, multifaceted, kinda post-modern thing before... that was a thing. I think about it a lot and want to read it again soon. If that’s The Great American Novel I’m OK with it.

Currently reading Tarkovsky’s Sculpting in Time. Maybe 50 pages in, whiffs of (and I probably/absolutely brought this to it myself) “Wise Artist Man Delivering Now Tired ‘Truths‘“ at first, but I quickly got over that. It’s insightful and deeply (life or death) considered and I don’t know why I expected less. Excited for the rest.

I'd like to check out this book when it comes out, about the multiple women on whom Proust modelled the Duchess de Guermantes. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/221118/prousts-duchess-by-caroline-weber/9780307961785/

Nice (and that's not just the results of the google image search).

finished m&m last night and started w&p. i was delighted to find that they immediately addressed my question from i know like dick-all about napoleon but unfortunately not thoroughly enough for my tastes :/

Kawabata, snow country. A slow burn

I'm past the halfway mark with The Women at the Pump by Hamsun. It's OK, but flawed.

The conceit Hamsun is apparently playing with is casting the entire book as a distillation of all the petty gossip a small fishing-and-market town can generate. The narrator is a hybrid between the omniscient voice and the gleeful voice of a village gossip. The characters are unfailingly petty, jealous, vengeful, lusty, obtuse, proud, and scheming. Much is made of questioning who is the real father of half the children in town. No one is noble, but no one is monstrous, either. They are just unredeemed little souls.

The biggest problem this presents is that, while attempting to make fun of this cavalcade of veniality, Hamsun mostly succeeds in the tittering, smirking variety of humor. He doesn't allow the butts of his humor enough humanity. Or, at least, not so far. Maybe at the end he'll swerve into pathos or allow someone a moment of triumph not connected to mean-spiritedness or blind self-love and empty ambition.

I finished Book 3 of Knausgaard's My Struggle. This is the one about his boyhood - basically grade school - unlike the first two it doesn't jump around in time that much, apart from a few interjections from the author writing in the "present". It's quite a feat the way he dredges up his childhood memories in this - and not just the facts of what happened - he somehow manages to convey the texture and emotional contours of these events from a child's perspective. Reading the book I often flashed back to events from my own childhood that I hadn't thought about in ages. On the one hand, you could fairly say that not much happens in the book, on the other hand, these are the kind of events that burn deep into your psyche.

I also finished Lucretius's On The Nature of Things, although I skipped some sections if the going got a bit too heavy. It's amazing how wrong he was about nearly everything, from a modern scientific perspective, yet in a way he was right about the big picture: the world is just the unfolding of impersonal mechanistic processes without intervention of the gods. It also sheds some light on life in ancient Roman times, indirectly through examples he gives and evidence he produces to support his theories.

I finished the Hamsun, less than impressed. Yesterday I started Julian, Gore Vidal. I first read this about 35 years ago, maybe more, but I recall it as a good to very good historical novel about its period (circa 350 - 363 AD). As with Creation, Vidal's other novel about the ancient world, his characters greatly resemble Gore Vidal in terms of wit and sophistication, but this is what makes them fun books.

still moving slowly through the Don McKenzei essay Typography and Meaning. Good addition the category 'good lists' here:

The printer-designer’s own vocabulary developed into an extraordinarily flexible one of types in their different designs as well as different sizes of the same face, paper in diverse weights, colour, quality and size, ink weak and strong, red and black, format, title page, frontispiece, illustrations diagrammatic, hieroglyphic and figurative, bulk, the structural divisions of volumes, “books,” sections, section titles, chapters, paragraphs, verses, verse numbering, line measure, columns, interlinear, marginal and footnotes, running titles, pagination roman and arabic, headings, initial letters, head- and tailpieces, braces, rules, indentations, fleurons, epitomes, indexes and, most important of all, blank white space.

His overall point here being, as he says earlier, 'is that the design and construction of books has always been a sophisticated activity, commanding great talents and expenditure of time and money. There is a growing scholarship of the illustrated book, but the present argument is directed more towards our need to understand the finer intentions which determined its very diverse forms.'

Anyone know any places where the bibliography of modern textual representation takes place? My view, very much in distinction to the '80s and '90s complaints i grew up around that people were becoming illiterate, is that we live in more literate and textually based societies at the moment than at any time in history. If you understand, as McKenzie wd encourage, the book to be the place where the act of reading takes act of reading occurs, a locus that is the consequence of a set of material, historical, social and authorial intentions, how does bibliography work in the present time.

For instance, what can be said to be the *edition* of a kindle work. It's not the image as it is presented on your kindle. Is there some sort of authoritative ur-object, a dated text asset file stored somewhere with relevant editorial metadata? is this different from how it is presented to the reader? (there are certainly user defined aspects to textual presentation now). Taking it outside the kindle, what do approaches to textual design say about theories of perception and the politics of reading? The whole section above comes just after a look at how differences in approach to the image between Protestants and Catholics in the 16th Century meant for the design of the book, the practice of reading, and theories of perception.

I’m still reading Life A User’s Manual

I have had it up to HERE with these fucking OCTAGONS

The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play by Ben Watson, which is a bizarre Marxist/Freudian deconstruction of the life and art of Frank Zappa. England's Hidden Reverse by David Keenan, a look into a certain corner of the Brit U-ground featuring Coil, Nurse with Wound, and Current 93. And last but definitely not least Cosey Fanni Tutti's memoir Art Sex Music. Kinda juggling all 3 at the moment, before I settle into one over the others.

> For instance, what can be said to be the *edition* of a kindle work.

ebooks are versioned pretty much like software is (and yes, there's a uuid in the content.opf file in epubs). i've had updates for things i've previously downloaded (where, when examined, changed only the cover picture for a lower-quality one)

Finished Kawabata’s snow county and thousand cranes, good stuff. Any others of his I should seek out ?

I loved The Old Capital and The Dancing Girl Of Izu

'House of Sleeping Beauties' for a creepier side of him

Master of Go is the only other one i've read and that was a bit repetitive.

I imagine Master Of Go reading like a sports manga.

Which Charles Portis novel should I read first, or only? No collected stories/nonfiction, right?

True Grit might be his best novel as well as his biggest hit, but it is sui generis amongst his work - his only period piece. The Dog of the South is maybe his funniest.

Only read Dog Of The South but that one's great.

Thanks--yeah I heard that about TG and somehow was thinking Dog to start with---he does have a collection, stories and nonfiction: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/books/review/escape-velocity-selected-work-by-charles-portis.html

I would start with Dog or Norwood, which is of similar quality, if not quite as, um, epic.

Also need to post link to excellent story about DotS rediscovery/revival

TOMORROW, Sat. Jan 6, is the last day of COLISEUM BOOKS in NYC

just read

maggie nelson the argonauts

about to read

anne carson autobiography of red

How was The Argonauts? Been curious about that

love maggie nelson. loved the argonauts

Han Kang: The White Book
Max Porter: Grief is the Thing with Feathers

Hoo boy, couple of lighthearted jolly little numbers
They are both really, really good

Finished Kawabata’s snow county and thousand cranes, good stuff. Any others of his I should seek out ?

― calstars, Tuesday, 23 January 2018 11:55 (two days ago) Permalink

Beauty and Sadness

I read Eva Sleeps by Francesca Melandri and I enjoyed it without being bowled over. I know more about the C20th history South Tyrol / Alto Adige than I did, for sure. There's probably not enough tricky bullshit in it for my ridiculous and annoying tastes.

Now I am reading "Geometric Regional Novel" by Gert Jonke and it's right (right-angled) up my street.

Re Kawabata: There's also a new to English one just out, Dandelions, but I haven't read it yet: https://www.ndbooks.com/book/dandelions/

I liked jonke's System of Vienna

Me too but I am liking RGN a whole lot more, it seems more abstract (as you'd expect from a geometric novel I suppose) but seems more unsettling, somehow livelier.

I am going to have a go at describing how this makes me feel.

It's like, there's a load of invisible Oulipian scaffolding (poss. geometric) in the novel which is unknowable but feels like (a) if you studied the novel (and poss. geometry) for long enough all might become clear. Or it might not, and as I'm thinking about this a 1969 Gert Jonke is standing right behind me and laughing at me.

It's pretty strong, in its oblique way, on life in a shitty small town, its suffocations and absurd logic(s).

I read Eva Sleeps by Francesca Melandri and I enjoyed it without being bowled over.

Couldn't finish this, took far too long to get going and I thought the translation was dreadful.

New Year's resolution was to fight against my dilettante ways and fully immerse myself in the works of my favourite artists in different mediums. That's E.M. Forster for literature, who I decided sometime in my late teens is my favourite writer but I don't think I've read even half of his stuff yet. So going through the novels chronologically, I'll start by re-reading Where Angels Fear To Tread.

finishing Fire and Fury today, bought Jane Eyre on a whim and might just go for that next

Which Charles Portis novel should I read first, or only? No collected stories/nonfiction, right?

― dow, Wednesday, January 24, 2018 3:38 PM

Dog of the South is a deserved consensus choice, but Masters of Atlantis is the funniest novel I've ever read.

Re Kawabata: There's also a new to English one just out, Dandelions, but I haven't read it yet: https://www.ndbooks.com/book/dandelions/

― Mince Pramthwart (James Morrison), Thursday, 25 January 2018 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This sounds amazing!

anyone read the new maclaverty?

How was The Argonauts? Been curious about that

― Who put all those zings in your thread? (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, January 24, 2018 7:49 PM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i loved it. saying this as someone who would never opt to read either, she nails the mix of academic art criticism and memoir. i anticipated the form might tend to the loose and chatty, but the criticism is Rigorous; a remarkably sustained interrogation of a small number of Big Questions motivated by concerns of queer motherhood, love and family. her voice is incredible, she thinks about everything with enviable equanimity and self-doubt, turning things over, never trusting her impulses. it made me feel lazy in my mental routines, in a good way. and the diary sections pop

Reading David Hawkes's translation of The Dream of the Red Chamber and it's absolutely delicious, albeit a bit hard at first to keep tabs on who most of these people are.

I finished Simone De Beauvoir's Forces of Circumstance. On and off it took my six months. Life got in the way but also a less focused approach got into me. It didn't matter too much, the book had enough episodes that had a beginning, middle and end...so that I could dip in and out of. The two undercurrents were Algeria and her awareness of death. In a sense seeing her account of France (and her group of left-wingers) dealing with the whole matter of Algeria is somewhat akin to Proust's account of Dreyfus. More reportage than novelistic though. She is really sharp on anti-imperialism as the colonies are -- in the case of Algeria -- nearly destroying themselves to get rid of the colonizer. I would love to know what she made of Battle of Algiers and hopefully she notes this down made for the final volume.

Many, many other highlights in her always conversational and engaging thoughts of her two relationships (besides Sartre) with Nelson Algren and Lanzamann, the reaction to the release of The Second Sex (men, and the right-wing reacting to what was unsayable at the time, which isn't so different from someone saying this stuff on twitter...how the form of debate changes but what is said and countered doesn't so much) and finally trips, many trips: Rome, Cuba and a cracking sixty page account of her trip to Brazil. Mostly sensitively handled. Illuminating remarks at the end on how she is just thought as nothing more than Sartre's pupil, and how some people thought he wrote her novels. Parallels with Ferrante.

Easily her best book and I look forward to reading the other volumes as I pick them up.

Otherwise I finished a short volume of Richard Siebirth's translation of Louise Labe (Love Sonnets & Elegies). Crudely describe it as a cross between Sappho and Petrarch. Sieburth's essay is illuminating and centres on the controversy around a theory that Labe could not have written these (Sieburth refutes this btw), that instead it was Maurice Sceve (a man). There is a pattern..

halfway through the maclaverty now. it is masterful

Somehow some german critics made me read seventeenth summer by maureen daly. Wtf. What a bore of a book. I cannot imagine any teenagers enjoying reading it. What i hated most was the missing metaphysical component. When i was 17 i asked myself and the world the tough questions about god, meaning and life. this book prefers to deal with drinking cokes in cafes. The descriptions of nature etc. are pretty tedious. I also found annoying that angie, the main character never admits to anyone that she is in love. How is it possible to write this book about a summer and a boy without confessing it? Or is she just a heartless monster with some literary and observational skills?

I should note here that Siebirth is a great guy: I wrote to him once asking for more info about a privately printed book he had translated, Oswald von Wolkenstein's "Songs from a Single Eye", which was not available anywhere, and he just sent me a copy.

I finished (re)reading Julian. Vidal wrote it soon after he'd written some successful plays and his ability to dramatically delineate his characters through dialogue, and through granting each a distinct 'voice' is quite impressive.

Now I am reading some short stories by de Maupassant.

The Doomed City by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky.

We never worked so long and so painstakingly on any of our other works, either before or after. Three years was spent amassing, scrap by scrap, the episodes, the characters' biographies, individual phrases and turns of speech; we invented the City, its peculiarities, and the laws governing its existence, as well as a cosmography, as authentic as we could possibly make it, for this artificial world, and its history. It was genuinely delightful and fascinating work, but everything in this world ends sometime, and in June 1969 we drew up the first detailed plan and adopted the definitive title – The Doomed City. This is the title of a famous painting by Roerich that had once astounded us with its sombre beauty and the sense of hopelessness emanating from it.

The draft of the novel was completed in six sessions (in all, about seventy full working days) over a period of two and a quarter years. On May 27, 1972, we wrote in the final period, heaved a sigh of relief, and stuffed the unusually thick file into the bookcase. Into the archive. For a long time. Forever. It was perfectly obvious to us that the novel had absolutely no prospects.

The City is part of The Experiment, and filled with people from Earth who volunteered, irrevocably, for the social experiment. They keep it going, working at processes because the processes exist, and the book sort of clatters along, not concerned with anything gleaming, but garbage collection, stupidity, gloom, drunkenness. There's a sense of hidden meaning being very imperfectly and wrongly interpreted and discovered, as with Roadside Picnic – like the Sufi story about the blind people touching the elephant. The main character Andrei is a dim-witted, easily angered enthusiast for The Experiment, and gradually rises through the ranks. One of the book's main weaknesses is his imbecility. But its very good. Cynical and throwing absurdity at bureaucracy and planned societies.

Burned through The Left Hand of Darkness yesterday. Weird, sad, a thrill.

Le G.'sThe Dispossessed is pretty amazing too. Ditto the Strugatskys' Hard To A God.

Incidentally there was a Soviet propaganda poster v like that Roerich painting in the current (very good) Tate exhibition Red Star Over Russia. A vicious snake (presumably capitalism) coiled round an industrial city on a mount.