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

thanks dow. i need to get over there don't i.

but yes you really should check The Three Body Problem. It's really good. 'Majestic confection' is a good phrase appropriate to that as well. Delighted there's two more in the series.

just saw those books getting raved about in the LRB. Need to read them too.

Dunno about "raved about" - reviewer seemed less than sympathetic towards the emphasis on technological innovation, the view of human rights as a luxury and (this was the most unfair bit I thought) suggests Liu "hates communism" because the book portrays the Cultural Revolution as a terrifying era (WHICH IT WAS). Did make me want to check it out tho!

But they did say they were gripping and very well written!

I am reading "Clash" by Ellen Wilkinson, late 20s domestic-political literature set during a general strike. Halfway through and I'm loving it, despite (because of) occasional stiltedness.

Finishing the annexes to Forster's The Longest Journey. I watched a BBC doc on the guy when I was a teen and it talked about it as his most difficult and unsuccessful novel, but also the one he appreciated the most, so of course pretentious youngster that I was I had to pick it up. What strikes me about it and Where Angels Fear To Tread now is Forster's hatred for a sort of buttoned up middle class Englishness - he was doing screeds against the suburbs fifty years before that became fashionable. In Where Angels... this is contrasted with Italy and in Longest Journey with a working class character - there's a bit of fetishism involved in both but I'm hardly the best authority to comment. Many years ago I started a thread on Forster on here where I complained about his sexism, and that's still there too - there's likeable female characters but they're few and far in between and don't have the presence of his female villains. Part of it I guess has to have to do with his sexuality and the compulsive heterosexuality of his time - settling down with a wife seen as the burgeois opposite of discussing philosophy with your (all male) friend group and seeking something more. But it's still a bummer. Anyway I dunno if I still think Longest Journey is a masterpiece, or even my fav Forster, but there's some achingly beautiful writing in there and I fully suscribe to dude's "school is terrible, uni is great" worldview.

Taking a break from Forster now to read Jeff VanderMeer's Anhiliation, years after all the cool people have gotten 'round to it and just in time to finish it before I catch the movie.

Finished book 6 of Proust, Albertine disparue, and I feel like the novel is beginning to resolve in a satisfying way. I wasn't sure if Proust was going to be able to tie things together or if it would just keep going until it stopped. I like the symmetry of reintroducing Gilberte and Norpois at just the right point to counterbalance their initial appearances in books 1 and 2, and the other symmetry of the two 'côtés' which are now collapsing together. The Venice excursion is nice after the long and complex psychological sections which preceded it.

oh he keeps (periodically) tying things together (sometimes too reliant on small world etc., although that's life, that's his alibi) right to the end.
In The Captive and The Fugitive, I stuck around for every dusty moment of the narrator's tedious torture of self and other---unlike Albertine, and good for her, but meanwhile I got the point already, of how numbing this sort of obsession can be, got the point early enough that I wasn't surprised to read that he hadn't originally meant to go on at nearly such length about this apartment interlude(but again, that's life...)

Many years ago I started a thread on Forster on here where I complained about his sexism, and that's still there too - there's likeable female characters but they're few and far in between and don't have the presence of his female villains.

so how do you explain Margaret Schlegel?

Finished We Have Always Lived In the Castle. As close to a perfect thing as I have ever read, I think.

Ooh yeah. Jackson is superb. For a very different, funny side of her (but still wonderfully written) try her autobiographical 'Living with Savages', or for a very funny but increasingly super-dark novel, 'The Way Through the Wall'.

so how do you explain Margaret Schlegel?

By pointing out she's not in Where Angels Fear To Tread or The Longest Journey :) I'll ket you know once I get to Howard's End.

just finished bolano's the savage detectives and thoroughly enjoyed every single minute of it. next i picked up javier cercas' soldiers of salamis in which bolano makes an appearance. i had no clue about it, kind of a funny coincidence

Finished Master of the Senate, third volume of Robert Caro's LBJ biography. Probably the best yet, yeah. Also finished reading the Torah, as I work my way through religious texts. I should read the rest of the old testament, but I have a prose retelling of the Ramayana, which does seem a bit more fun right now. And I read Robert Rosenstones 'Visions of the Past' which is a collection of articles about the way History is depicted in movies, which would probably be better if he didn't return to the same five films in every article...

I wasn't surprised to read that he hadn't originally meant to go on at nearly such length about this apartment interlude(but again, that's life...)

That's really interesting. I admire that section a lot, as grueling as it was. I felt like it needed to be difficult. It was important that this wasn't a problem he could self-analyze his way out of. He doesn't ultimately win out over this obsession by active moral self-analysis and acceptance of Albertine's separate being. She changes the dynamic, and then external circumstances intervene, and he gradually stops caring.

I am now reading Willa Cather's Sapphira and the Slave Girl, set in 1859 Virginia. It was published in 1940, not so very long after Gone with the Wind was a smash sensation best-selling phenomenon. Judging from the opening chapters, this will be a very different novel and much better written, too.

xp yes it needed to be difficult, grueling, and his rule is always, "It takes as long as it takes." But sometimes I get to "Fine, I'll just sit here 'til it's over, hoping the Baron shows up. Where's that waiter."

I read David Peace's 1974. It's been a while since I read any Peace and christ, I need a bath.

Also read Mark Fisher's Ghosts of My Life. I have the same problems with him I always did and this absolutely lacks cohesion but he was in a pretty unique position I think, and damn I think we'll - increasingly - miss him.

I love pushing Cather on friends. About time she got the devotion that Hemingway did.

^^^^^^^^^ x 1000

next i picked up javier cercas' soldiers of salamis in which bolano makes an appearance. i had no clue about it, kind of a funny coincidence

Same! That's a really dope book imo.

Need to try him again. I read one Cercas book where the ending was basically 'But Betsy's been dead for 10 years!', which was really irritating, but it was good up to then.

bought the big new directions clarice lispector complete short stories collection this weekend and read some of the early ones last night; very sultry

I'm not sure that Hemingway deserves devotion.

pf - i assume that's the michael wood slight? the geoffrey hill poem wasn't all that, but i wasn't really interested in hearing what michael wood had to say on a book about which i was feeling quite emotional. or do you not like gillian rose?

Fizzles - purely about Wood. He is probably my favourite critic ever, when it comes down to it - so from my POV, buying a book with him in it and reading everything except his contribution is a definition of readerly perversity. I don't see him as antithetical to emotion, either: far from it.

I don't know enough Hill to talk about him. Rose I have always felt overrated but again don't know the work as well as you do.

I don't think anyone's been devoted to Hemingway in the last fifty years or so, except Simone DeRochefort and that's just a sex thing iirc.

I can attest that Hemingway's reputation among the young was in deep eclipse by 1970. He did not fit the tenor of the times and he'd been so widely imitated for so long that when people wanted something new and different, he was swept aside in the general flood of crazy. The 1970s feminist revival put the last nail in his coffin.

Recently read The Collected Stories, starting with the most recent (in late 1930s), then jumping back to ther very beginning, zig-zagging through scenes from Nick Adams' life, for instance---incl. experiences in and after Great War, his and other participants'---the hairline fractures in and of continuity could come from Wartime, influencing views of pre-War too, but think it's mostly presented in order of publication?.

The one about American couples at loose ends/endings abroad that stands out (before the late 30s subset) has a guy trying to talk a woman into an abortion, and she deflects, feints (they're having another liquid meal), 'til finally tells him she'll do whatever he wants, *if* he'll just shut up---but it's too high a price, he can't shut up, just loses his nerve when he sees her distress---and starts trying to talk her into believing it'll be okay if she has the baby (despite all the opposite talking points he's just made).

There's also one about a man in the hospital who listens to live and live-seeming) radio shows every night, from all over the continent (AM radio travels further at night), imagining the lives of dancing couples, especially in a particular ballroom---he listens with volume always set at lowest possible level of audibility.

The most recent are most impressive, in some ways---would like to read more stories, though after being absorbed by the ones involving bullfighters, looked through the apparently nonfiction Death In The Afternoon, dunno about that.

Stories re Spanish Civil War were striking, but have read that his journalism from that gets too agitprop. True?

Pity the nation: Lebanon at war by Robert Fisk

Books about Hemingway still get farted out as much as books about Virgiina Woolf.

It is easy enough to guess who might be writing all those Hemingway books (hint: publish or perish), but I am puzzled as to who buys those books?

Dunno but this is one of my all-time favorite Hemingway anecdotes:

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1995-08-13/entertainment/9508130046_1_budd-schulberg-papa-hemingway-screenplay

The first words out of his mouth were short, sharp jabs. `So you're Schulberg? The book writer?'

" `I've written a few books.'

"Now the hard right: `What do you know about prizefighting--for Christ's sweet sake?' "

Finished that Annihilation. It's scary and smart like everyone says, don't have much to add.

Going back to my Forster task now with A Room With A View.

a guy trying to talk a woman into an abortion

is there more than one?!

More than one whut

There are several about American couples in Europe, but I think (although I can't always read between his lines) that only one of these involves an abortion, if that's what you mean. And that's the one of this subset that I remember the best.

That is “Hills Like White Elephants” I believe

Right, thanks, I had already checked the book back in, should have gone back and made sure of titles before posting. It's not The Collected..., but The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway(Scribner's, 1966)--as listed in library catalog:

The short happy life of Francis Macomber -- The capitol of the world -- The snows of Kilimanjaro -- Old man at the bridge -- Up in Michigan -- On the Quai at Smyrna -- Indian camp -- The doctor and the doctor's wife -- The end of something -- The three-day blow -- The battler -- A very short story -- Soldier's home -- The revolutionist -- Mr. and Mrs. Elliot -- Cat in the rain -- Out of season -- Cross-country snow -- My old man -- Big two-hearted river: part I -- Big two-hearted river: part II -- The undefeated -- In another country -- Hills like white elephants -- The killers. Che ti dice la patria? -- Fifty grand -- A simple enquiry -- Ten indians -- A canary for one -- An alpine idyll -- A pursuit race -- Today is friday -- Banal story -- Now I lay me -- After the storm -- A clean, well-lighted place -- The light of the world -- God rest you merry, gentlemen -- The sea change -- A way you'll never be -- The mother of a queen -- One reader writes -- Homage to Switzerland -- A day's wait -- A natural history of the dead -- Wine of Wyoming -- The gambler, the nun, and the radio -- Fathers and sons.

I finished Sapphira and the Slave Girl and it was excellent in many ways, but marred by an unconscious complacence about racism that Cather disguised beneath a complex condemnation of slavery. The strength of the book lies in its sympathetic understanding of its white characters and the ways in which maintaining slavery imposed difficult moral and social problems upon them for which they had no adequate answers.

The weakness of the book is that the black characters are much too simple, too imperfectly explored, and too easily explained. They are not mere stereotypes and foils for the white characters; they do achieve a certain amount of reality and sympathy, but it is a thin and insubstantial reality, just a short step above stereotype.

The book I have now begin to read is A Nervous Splendor, which observes Vienna and some famous Viennese figures, during a ten month period in 1888-89. In order to provide adequate background, the author must of course pull in many facts from outside this period, but the conceit is that this short time encapsulates everything of importance the author wants to examine. My only quarrel so far is the writing style is a bit too overtly stylish for my taste and the details adduced are made to support conclusions they are not always sturdy enough to uphold.

I am 600 pages into Crucible of War by Fred Anderson. I think I lost a bit of interest when the War itself ended and the focus turned to politics, but I am too far in to bail out now.

I'm not sure that Hemingway deserves devotion.

― the pinefox, Wednesday, March 7, 2018

He's still fine as an way to trim excesses in student short story writing.

*a way

nadanadanada

UR Ananthamurthy - Bhava
Carlo Gadda - The Experience of Pain

Loved A Nervous Splendour: heard about it originally from other folks raving about it on ILB several years ago. The sequel, about 1913/14 is excellent too.

I need some good recs for recent gay male lit.

Can it be YA? If so, Vanilla by Billy Merrill is very interesting. Written in blank verse.

sure!