Autumn 2020: Is Everything Getting Dimmer or Is It Just Me?

Like watching a Scott Adkins film and only seeing him walk around gardens and sit in the dark in a tower.

I finished A Scanner Darkly last night. For my purposes as a reader the sci-fi elements were the least important aspect of the book, merely an excuse to allow the book to fit into the genre where his audience was. The plot was only important to supply the bare bones of a story so there was something to hang the rest of the book upon. Everything I valued in it was its capacity to describe the lives of the drug addicts who give the book life. This aspect dominates the book, consumes most of the word count, and makes it well worth reading.

I'd say it has quite a bit in common with Wm. S. Burroughs' Junky, with the largest difference being the drugs being taken and how those drugs affected their users -- basically opiates in Junky versus meth, and hallucinogens (with weed providing a daily baseline) in Scanner. Since these drugs come to drive their addicts and how they behave, this difference is very noticeable.

Very true. And as Burroughs observed somewhere, there are some old junkies, not so many old speed freaks---"meth" then meant the original crystal methedrine, whenever possible, rather than the later predominance of bathtub bennies and other homemade concoctions, although none of it is less corrosive than other kinds, apparently, if you use it that much. The oldest speed freaks I ever knew were a friends' parents, a truck-driving team in the early 70s, with scars like highways on their arms, don't think they made it out of their 50s, early 50s, like PKD. And I seem to recall him mentioning awareness of the damage already done, to himself and some of his colleagues, contributing to the momentum of this book.

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee. I've only read the first three of these essays, but they're good, particularly the first, which is about a school exchange summer in Mexico, and about finding out who you are by not being yourself, by feeling the shape around who you are. to take a version of this thinking, there's a really good bit where he's hanging out around the slightly older mexican boys, who are drinking and getting ready for their night out:

I watched for the moment the girls would arrive, the way the group of boys at the overlook would change when they did. I already knew at this point that I was gay, and so I was forever looking for other signs of it in the landscape. What I was looking for was what seemed to vanish then.

The second essay is one on tarot reading, which bears such a similarity to my own fantasy reading going into tarot reading via the crowley pack that it was intrinsically fascinating. the third is a nice piece on the hard work of writing, of learning to be a writer, of the sense of becoming a writer. recommend.

I truly dislike Chee and his writing.

oh wow, really? i must admit in these essays i’m not sure what i’d pick on to dislike.

A shrill noise broke out close to Maigret's ear, and he stirred crossly, as though startled, and flapping one arm outside the bedclothes. He was aware of being in bed, and his wife's presence at his side, wider awake than himself, lying in the dark without venturing to speak.
Where he was mistaken---at least for a few seconds---was about the nature of the insistent, aggressive, imperious sound. And it was always in winter, in very cold weather, that he made this mistake.
He thought his alarm clock was ringing, although never since his marriage had there been one at his bedside The idea went back even further than his boyhood---to the time, when, as a small choirboy, he used to serve at mass at six o'clock in the morning.
Yet he had served at mass in spring, summer, and autumn as well. Why did this one memory persist, returning to him unbidden---a memory of darkness, frost, stiff fingers, and thin ice in the lane, cracking underfoot?
He upset his glass of water, as often happened, and Madame Maigret switched on the bedside lamp just as his fumbling hand reached the telephone.
'Maigret here...Yes...'
It was ten minutes past four, and the silence outside was the special silence of the coldest winter nights.
'This is Funnel, Superintendent...'
'What d'you say?'
He could scarcely hear. It sounded as if the caller had a handkerchief stuffed in his mouth.
'Funnel of the 18th...'

As Maigret and Simenon enter the homestretch of their careers, the past keeps pushing its way into and through A Maigret Trio: Three Novels Published in the United States For The First Time (1973--- individual French editions from 1956, 1960, and 1963 respectively). Maigret's Failure began with the unbidden-and-then-some reunion with an obnoxious schoolmate, the butcher's son, very unpopular, who always had M. pegged as the solid citizen, son of the steward of the local swells' estate. Now, known by the press and their voracious public, always ready for news involving Maigret and colleagues, as The Meat King, with a string of butcher shops, all over France, he's gotten the Superintendent's boss's boss to give him concierge service, via old chum M. Later, Maigret considers that he let his personal attitude affect this professional judgement, and this is his "failure," although nobody else seems to think that, but fuck them.

Maigret In Society has him unexpectedly having to deal with swells, but these are tottery, like his father's bosses would be if still around, yet moving right along, behaving like "characters in a bad romance novel, published in 1900!" The solution to the mystery seems a little dubious to me, but that makes the story's implicit point more likey: This time Maigret *needs* to believe.

The Lazy Burglar, the opening of which is excerpted above, has him drawn into a case he's not supposed to be working, according to the new order of ubersuits---this is the murder of a punk, a petty thief, very convenient, and explained to the press by an ubersuit as the result of "a gangland vendetta"---short 'n' sweet, the end---while the priorty and then some is property crimes, like the big lively deadly heist that is the great concern of law enforcement and the media just now, and sure he does his bit---but the secret life, the layers of it, the droning, tunneling, purposeful pacing of this little crim whom M. has encountered over the years---the one with the "slow vowels," giving the "suggestion of laziness" to his Swiss immigrant accent---finally reaching an end, but how? This, the Superintendent's own secret resistance to change, as he nears and becomes readied for retirement, is his fascination and refreshment, as he also becomes more attuned to, for instance, the lives of women in the cases he's working, the ones who support, without knowing it all, who are discovering more about the men they knew so well, working the cases with him, in various ways: a mother, wives, girlfriends, a mistress or two figuring in, also another old acquaintance, now a moll at least---and a genre staple, the sharp-eyed prostitute.

Secret lives in all three novels, always ringing a bell: A Maigret Trio indeed.

"implicit point more *likely*", I meant--these days, when ppl commonly type "judgey" and even xpost "pacy" on purpose, be it known that "likey" is a typo.

I finished the collection of Leskov stories (in the recent NYRB edition). I think the title story "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" may be my favorite - it shows Leskov's penchant for indulging rather shocking wickedness with vicarious glee before reining things in with a quasi-moralistic ending, perhaps to get past the Tsarist censors - but they all have something to offer. "The Enchanted Wanderer" is a rather amusing shaggy-dog story, or I guess you could say a wide-ranging picaresque novella. Leskov's sardonic yet humane fables are addictive. Now I've started reading Happiness, As Such by Natalia Ginzburg, having greatly enjoyed Valentino and Sagittarius which I read earlier this year.

Which of Edward Tufte's previous books is your favorite?

― dow, Sunday, 13 December 2020 20:52 bookmarkflaglink

apologies dow, i never answered this, mainly because i couldn't remember the titles and the books, but i think it was actually Envisioning Information!

love, love Leskov. I read a collection a couple of years ago, and each story seemed to add to the last, until i just had to stop because i felt overwhelmed with thoughts about them, which i wanted to capture, but didn't. i think my favourite of those stories was The Sealed Angel but I loved The Enchanted Wanderer as well.

After watching Mindhunter, I'm reading James Baldwin's Evidence of Things Unseen. I don't want to say *rambling* but it does, in what is a short book, have something of that quality to it. I also wonder if his exile in France has meant a blunting of his vision slightly (and age)? The Baldwin sentence is still a thing of beauty.

Also reading Robert Aickman's Cold Hand in Mind. The opening story, 'The Swords', is horrifying in all manner of ways. A man stumbles into a grotty fairground in a desolate part of Wolverhampton and in a tent sees a bunch of seedy men pay to plunge a sword into a woman, who is, apparently, unharmed. It functions as a free-floating metaphor for male violence and sexuality I suppose but it's grimmer than that. I'm still making sense of the denouement.

The Finest Years, Charles Drazin - only recently became aware that the 1940's are viewed as a golden age for British cinema - my experience is much more with the 60's, US money coming in, swinging London films, the Woodfall social realist stuff, Hammer. The author's reasoning does feel quite stuffy and old fashioned in places: "quality" in this context associated with costume dramas, literary adaptations. Don't think I'll ever be able to care about David Lean. But it's well written and now that he's talking Carol Reed, which I'm more interested in.

Reading J. Gordon Faylor's 'The Antoecians,' which seems to be something of a published daybooks. At turns evocative and hermetic. Actually having a great time with it!

Having noted Fizzles' kindly comments on it, I'm now reading Because Internet: Understanding How Language is Changing by Gretchen McCulloch. I'll admit that some of the details of internet usage she is fascinated by are a bit too fine-grained to fascinate me, but I am gleaning some good information and gaining enjoyment from it.

pleased you like it! i think it’s a book that probably could have been done very badly, but it’s done well, with thought about what framework you need to make sense of the territory.

bartleby the scrivener - very good!

made men: the story of goodfellas - i don't think kenny quite had enough to say to sustain a longish book.

the guns of august by barbara tuchman - the buildup and first weeks of WW1. i very much enjoyed her social/political history of the 14th century, a distant mirror. this felt like not quite her strong suit. and she really doesn't like germany! the narrative reminded me of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFrcl6VGrDQ

Bleak House. It's been long enough that I remember vague plot points but none of the writing, which I'm enjoying, but it's still early yet and he probably wrote these parts ahead of time and wasn't making things up month by month (my memory is that the last 25% is ropey)

(is also good to get back into the actual novels after about 3 years of reading the Christmas editions (admittedly not all by him) and journalism)

Hi Alfred, what was that Sherwood Anderson collection you were reading, and what did you end up thinking about it?

while you're at it, how was the warhol bio?

Which of Edward Tufte's previous books is your favorite?

― dow, Sunday, 13 December 2020 20:52 bookmarkflaglink

apologies dow, i never answered this, mainly because i couldn't remember the titles and the books, but i think it was actually Envisioning Information!

― Fizzles, Monday, December 21, 2020 4:52 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

ive never checked out his books but i went to his sculpture park this year, it was cool - https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/hogpen-hill-farms

Hi Alfred, what was that Sherwood Anderson collection you were reading, and what did you end up thinking about it?

― dow,

The Library of America edition. Got it at the library.

Mordew by Alex Pheby

thought i’d try it for christmas seeing an eley williams capsule recommendation on the foyles blog

As the nights start drawing in and frosts weave new chills into the evening air, what could be better than a descent into a catacombed city, full of unseen scuttling and theological travesties, where the frailties of human hopefulness are examined and writ large on an epic, sprawling scale? Welcome to the snarling, sludgy and shifting world of Mordew. The first instalment of a trilogy by Wellcome Book Prize-winning author Alex Pheby, the scope and sophistication of Mordew has earned deserved comparisons to Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast novels and the stories set in M. John Harrison’s city Viriconium. Tense and thrilling, and a fully immersive vision of decadence and decay – the provocative and beguiling Mordew awaits.

it sounded right up my alley, i remain a firm fan of the gormnghast trilogy. and yet i’m finding mordew oddly unsatisfying. something about the way the topography of the place is depicted, or the way i feel i’m reading the written rendition of a mental cartoon, even a computer game. i should dig down into why i’m feeling this and i’m not ready to give up on it yet, but i’d struggle to recommend it. rather like the city itself he seems to throw up characters will-i nil-i and dispose of them as carelessly, and there’s little sense of warmth and comfort in the book anywhere.

also, it’s got children in having an adventure, but it’s a pretty grisly children’s book. there is nothing to say that adult books cannot concern children, but the point of children going through a fantastic adventure, the finding of power out of innocence in the fact of an adult world, seems to me to belong to children’s literature. that may be my problem. even so i’m not sure what pheby is about here.

Jonathan Lethem, THE ARREST (2020).

I keep telling myself it's OK to give up on a book if you're not enjoying it, it's not productive to hate read, but I found myself enjoying one and tolerating a second of the three intertwining narratives in Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer enough to crawl through and finally finish last night, but man was that "Old Chestnuts" thread bad. Like freshman creative writing assignment hackneyed garbage, totally sinking an otherwise more or less tolerable novel.

Anyway, going to read a couple Muriel Spark short stories and wait and see if I get the new Mantel or Ferrante for Christmas.

How is The Arrest? (xpost)

Just started the new wilderness by Diane cook (pastoral post environmental collapse sci-fi? thing)

Michael Alig finally died, which reminded me that the son of Paul Auster and Lydia Davis was "in the same apartment" when Alig and roomie killed Angel M., and that his stepmother Siri Hustvedt included something related to this in one of her novels. I've recently been reading several profiles of her and Auster, though mainly her, as the Guardian checks in over the years---what should I read by Hustvedt and Auster?

Stared Ali Smith's Autumn yesterday morn to see what the fuss is about.

I finished Because Internet: Understanding How Language is Changing by Gretchen McCulloch. Like most non-fic books about contemporary subjects, it was a bit padded out and the internet linguistics content gave way more and more to internet sociology as it progressed, but it all fit comfortably under the general heading of 'communications', so it's not like the subject matter drift was unwarranted.

The most surprising part of my reaction to the book was how much it drove home how different my mindset is when it comes to informal written communication, when compared to full participants in the world of chat rooms, texting, and social media. It was enough to induce a few hours of despair.

As any ilxor who has noticed me soon learns, my posts are wordy. I like to think they are also shapely, nuanced, informative and sometimes witty, because I value those qualities in writing and I've spent a lifetime honing my ability to manipulate language to deliver those values. The author of this book, Gretchen McCulluch, hammers away at the view that almost no one on the internet has the slightest interest in using language to that degree of skill; in fact, they are suspicious, bewildered or contemptuous when they encounter it outside of books, journalism, or professional writing. That's when the despair hit me.

On the plus side, it helped explain to me some of the hostility I get from some ilxors. Their expectations of ilx are more fully framed by all their other social media participation, where the social aspect is (roughly speaking) the be-all and end-all, and all communication is flattened down to just hanging out and chatting with yer chums. I have zero talent for small talk. Or mall talk. I avoid situations where I will be trapped into such conversations for more than a few minutes, because I can barely tolerate more than that.

After some bad hours wondering whether ilx would soon morph itself into yet another snapchat, facebook, instagram or chatroom, leaving me at last homeless on the internet, I pulled out of my dive and realized that, even as shrunken as it has become in the past five years or so, ilx is still home to enough freaks like me that I can look forward to at least a few more years of pleasure in spending time here. Especially here in I Love Books!

Thank you, bookish ilxors for congregating here. Your company means a lot to me. We are kin.

Huge fan ur longwinded erudite posting style aimless. also always enjoy reading your book reviews itt :)

The author of this book, Gretchen McCulluch, hammers away at the view that almost no one on the internet has the slightest interest in using language to that degree of skill; in fact, they are suspicious, bewildered or contemptuous when they encounter it outside of books, journalism, or professional writing. That's when the despair hit me.

pleased you got rewarding stuff out of it aimless. i have to say, from my reading anyway, i don’t think the above is right at all - mculluch suggests throughout that people have are very interested in how best to communicate and show high levels of inventiveness and linguistic skill adapting to different online environments. where miscommunication or bewilderment can exist is communicating across the periods or platforms belonging to those periods.

show high levels of inventiveness and linguistic skill adapting to different online environments

but, according to Ms. McCulloch's thesis and her examples, none of their strategies involve crafting sentences with subordinate clauses, but rather such abstruse tactics as deliberately removing periods imposed by grammar-nanny software, because periods suggest too harsh a finality and an unfriendly tone of voice. Such inventiveness only bewilders me.

I like reading a good sentence whatever the circumstances, so crack on!

I finished Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams (finally). It's beautiful and luminous and made me think about how a lot of my favourite books are travel-related and how this is a dying/dead genre - something I've seen change and pretty much disappear in my lifetime. It's a hyperbolic statement but what does travel even mean in our current context?

Anyway, speaking of good (and earnest - I like earnest) sentences, Lopez has the chops: No culture has yet solved the dilemma each has faced with the growth of the conscious mind: how to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in all life when one finds darkness not only in one's own culture but within oneself. If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the middle of such a paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of a leaning into the light.

I was a bit *shrug* about Autumn, Alfred. Intrigued as to what you make of it.

Chinaski, have you 'Coming into the Country' by John McPhee? I always pair that with 'Arctic Dreams' in my head. Both are excellent.

Obviously meant 'have you READ....'

Anyway, I am pausing on the daybooks-esque work of Faylor mentioned upthread to consider my holiday gifts.

I finished Denise Riley's 'Say Something Back/ Time Lived, Without it's Flow,' and I must say that it might be one of the better books about grief and mourning I've ever encountered. The first section is poetry, and then the second is a sort of essay and notes around the subject of losing her son. Might be one of the more extraordinary books I've ever read, to be honest. Anyway, here is a link: https://www.nyrb.com/products/say-something-back

Now, after some deliberation, I'm going to start Jeff Vandermeer's 'Annihilation,' because a dear friend recommended it. I always ask for one book outside of my usual genre interests, and this is the one for this year.

Hope some of you might have also had good books delivered to you in recent days.

Ah damn---good quotes from Lopez and others on All Things Considered just now, audio not up yet, but here's a (partial?) transcript:
https://www.npr.org/2020/12/26/948863127/barry-lopez-acclaimed-author-and-traveler-beyond-many-horizons-dies-at-75

No, I think it is the whole segment on him.

December reads:

Dickens - Great Expectations
Dickens - Hard Times
Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye
Salinger - Nine Stories
Orwell - Nineteen Eighty-Four

The Salingers and Orwell were rereads, books I loved as a teenager to kick start my reading routine. I've failed with Dickens before so I'm glad to say I greatly enjoyed GE and HT

currently reading:

Dickens - Our Mutual Friend

about to start:

Salinger - Franny & Zooey

Grebt Expectations probably my choice of introduction to Dickens as there's a lot of good stuff in it. OMF was my first and possibly my favourite.

Bogged down slightly with Bleak House at the moment, probably just because I'm not at parents for Christmas and therefore not looking to escape by reading Victorian novels.

I finished Happiness, As Such. I think I will have to get my hands on more Ginzburg books. It was good, but in a different way than Valentino and Sagittarius. Her inimitable voice is there of course, but this book is more formally unconventional and oblique, and she's working with material that might not seem automatically promising for a novel. It still hangs together remarkably well. Now I'm reading Dissipatio H.G. by Guido Morselli. The last-man-on-earth premise seems a bit tired (I recently read a Bradbury story with a similar premise) but the book is short enough I will stay with it to see if he puts some unique spin on it.

I love John McPhee, table - need to read more. I hadn't even realised Lopez had died when I posted about Arctic Dreams. Damn. RIP.

Angela Saini Inferior
Her book on the science of gender trying to dismiss the tradition that men are superior etc. I found Superior her book on Race Science very good which is why I was thinking i needed to get this too, I ordered it and was told it wouldn't arrive before Xmas but got here on Xmas Eve which some things I had due didn't.
So far only read the introduction but it seems to be pretty clearly written and I'm looking forward to reading the rest.

THere are probably other books along these lines that I also need to read. May be in the bibliography here so may be what I read next year at least in part.
Also really want to get the 2nd part of the BBC series on Eugenics that she was one of the people presenting, thought first part was great but missed the 2nds showing. Now potential d/lds aren't moving.

THE ARREST: I'm halfway through. It's a kind of post-mild-apocalypse, describing rural Maine after the world's technology has suddenly all stopped working. That could be enough of a premise in itself, but Lethem combines it with a dangerous old friend arriving from across the USA in a nuclear-powered 'supercar'.

The chapters are very short - say, two pages. In this it resembles much of the previous novel, THE FERAL DETECTIVE (2018).

It carries echoes of other novels: a character name from GUN, WITH OCCASIONAL MUSIC; motifs and to some extent overall set-up from AMNESIA MOON.

I'm not sure how it will pan out. It's very readable.

I read a book I received for Christmas: R.F. Foster, ON SEAMUS HEANEY (2020).

I revere Foster as stylist and encyclopedically knowledeable historian. And I'm fond of Heaney, with a slight scepticism. This should have been a perfect book for me. It was very readable, fluent, smooth. It's a chronological account of Heaney's life and work. It contains almost no really new opinion or critical angle. It replicates what you already knew about Heaney. If you wanted a new introduction to Heaney, you could use this.

Two flaws: one, it's reverential - praising Heaney highly for almost everything he does or says. The only real exception is the volume ELECTRIC LIGHT (2001), which Foster echoes others in finding unsatisfactory. Foster agrees with all critics - except when they criticize Heaney. Then he attacks them, and defends him. Second, it's not really analytical. It uses critical terms (tercets, terza rima, quatrains), but almost never gets into quotation and analysis of small phrases, as against quotation of large chunks or whole poems.

The book has one real novelty and distinction: it draws on the Heaney archive, the Friel papers, letters and drafts that most of us have never seen. Repeatedly Foster drops such material in - it's by far his strongest suit. But he doesn't exactly do it systematically, or indicate a general way that the archive would change our view of Heaney. Perhaps, on the whole, it wouldn't.

The thing that I have always thought about Heaney, which I never found anyone else to think, is:

He is quite obscure! I mean, lots of his lines drift off into saying something that I can't make out. Quite often he does this with a last line, thus leaving me with a sense of obscurity about a whole poem. Or he says something but I can't tell why. The poem has ended, but what was it for?

I'm unsure how much this is deliberate: a wish not to be easy and understood. Or how far it's just intuitive, the way he writes and thinks.

The contrast with Larkin, whose work Heaney liked a lot, would be the most instructive. By the end of a Larkin poem you almost always know what he's said, or why. That's what I don't, so much, with Heaney.

Pinefox, I am really intrigued by this book, but could you flesh out a bit what you mean by Heaney trailing off? I’ve always thought it is the way he writes, but if you have any specific examples, it’s a cold morning in tier 4 and I’d love to talk about them.