Spring 2021: Forging ahead to Bloomsday as we read these books

thanks v much Tim for your recs (and also yr generous offer to lend books - going to send some money influx’s way and if i don’t pick up some stuff you’ve got will take advantage of yr kind offer).

best thing i’ve read in the last day or so, possibly this year, possibly in many years, is anne carson’s intro to tragedy “Tragedy: A Curious Art Form” from her translation - titled Grief Lessons - of Euripides’ plays. the intro is teo two pages and as concise and potent as you could ever want and opens with the following four-liner:

Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage? Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.

I have numerous problems with Carson, but sometimes she's just *great*. I feel the same way about her as I do about Susan Howe.

The Apprentice Fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald

That sounds interesting, thanks. I still need to get to "The Beautiful and Damned" too.

Aztecs: An Interpretation by Inga Clendinnen. Excellent historical anthropology influenced by Geertz and Victor Turner.

'The priests kept their night watches on the dark hills, and the great fire at the palace was never allowed to die. Tenochtlan's guard could never be lowered.'

incidentally the carson quote above as you could probably tell was mistranscribed and lost the catechistic rhythm:

Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.

I'm 15 pages into the Patricia Lockwood and I've loled 3 times already. It should be required reading for ilxors.

also designing designing by john chris jones. on his initial letter about the car. he was asked to participate in a consultation to manage congestion in London from 1959. his approach is *very* holistic and looks unworkable and RONG (though many aspects of travel awareness that he talks about have come into being). But he says something interesting when he looks at why his suggestions were thrown out:

In this I am presuming that it is the presence of each of us that is accepted as "the real" and that "the system" is taken as variable, a fiction, a story that is being re-written all the time to suit the convenience of everyone. But not the conveniences of the professionals who run it. That was the snag.

later on, he's looking at why he is not longer interested in the practical aspects of industrial design, based on what he considers the limiting definition "design as the initiation of change in man-made things."

he's transcribed a tape a friend sent him, about home, and driving, in response to his own tapes as he went round Wales in the footsteps of Giraldus Cambrensis in 1188.

on my right I've
just passed a

house

that is called a mobile home

and

it's
it doesn't move

and I
used to think about that
and think about how awful it was that that existed

and then

and now

I start thinking about that
only in relationship to what I think could be the case

and what could be the case
is never

nearly never

as interesting
as what is the case

known
in relationship
to what could be the case

Well! I didn't mean to transcribe all that but now I have I can see it's [sic] relevance, to this, to everything. "Future of car", "wilderness", "comfort of seats", "traffic", "accidents", "automation", none of these seems as real as it did. None of them is me, or you, or any of us.

And that is the question. Why are "we" so out of it, so uncentral to what's going on, in this century, this time, this world of objects, systems, goals (but always economic, never for the love of it, the love of ourselves, of each other).

It was that last paragraph that prompted me to post it here, and specifically the phrase "Why are "we" so out of it ...?"

I was also thinking about the Aztecs, whose 'fictional system' was so alien to the Spanish that they had to invent a crazed theodisy to explain it. So much of their system, in one possible reading, is a relationship of crafting - to the gods, to other social groups, to valuable objects like feathers and different animals, in relation to a mythic past. but for all that, you get a sense that "they" were *in* it, in the system, the system was around them, rather than abstracted.

Finished the Hejinian/Scalapino, and between yesterday evening and start of my workday today, I finished another collaborative book of poems. This one is titled AUSTERITY BRUNCH, and was written by Zan de Parry and Matthew Hodgson. Good stuff, laughed out loud and sighed a few times.

I'm taking Lorrie Moore slowly, partly because life but also because she has that quality of rushing you onwards and I want to resist it.

I'm teaching a top set this year and am currently trying to get them to think about their creative writing. It's a thankless task because they resist, and well, teaching writing is bloody hard - particularly when you only have two hours a week or something stupid. I've been thinking about this passage from Frog Hospital and how I might use it to encourage invention and (shudder) style and the more I look at it, the more I look beyond the bones of it, the more I don't think I could use it: the rush and tumble of the central sentence, looking like indiscipline; the weight of similes (SIX 'likes' - are you mental?); that 'show-offy' that looks gawky in isolation; the giant kerbstone adverb 'thwartedly'; the repetition of 'good dog' at the end that takes my breath away but could you honestly suggest it to a student?

Certainly 'safe' is what I am now - or am supposed to be. Safety is in me, holds me straight, like a spine. My blood travels no new routes, simply knows its way, lingers, grows drowsy and fond. Though there are times, even recently, in the small city where we live, when I've left my husband for a late walk, the moon out hanging upside down like some garish, show-offy bird, like some fantastical mistake - what life of offices and dull tasks could have a moon in it, flooding the sky and streets, without its seeming preposterous? - and in my walks, toward the silent corners, the cold mulchy smells, the treetops suddenly waving in a wind, I've felt an old wildness again. Revenant and drunken. It isn't sexual, not really. It has more to do with adventure and escape, like a boy's desire to run away, revving thwartedly like a wish, twisting in me like a bolt, some shadow fastened at the feet and gunning for the rest, though, finally, it has always stayed to one side, as if it were some other impossible life and knew it, like a good dog, good dog, good dog. It has always stayed.

Chinaski, I suppose what you make me think, put very simply, is that good art isn't always a good influence. You and I love this Lorrie Moore book (I hadn't recalled this particular passage), but someone else trying to write like it might not be a good idea.

I agree it's a terrible idea but it's really a wider question about teaching writing and how - particularly - teaching style is difficult approaching impossible. You can teach mechanics and ways to experiment with form but when it comes to sharing good examples of style, you either end up with bland (and they can already do bland) or something that you're desperate to share because it sings and leaps off the page (like Moore) and, in isolation, the idiosyncracies can make it seem clumsy or unreachable.

I asked a writer for some help once and she said she always turns down creative writing teaching opportunities because it's too bloody hard.

Henrik Pontoppidan - Lucky Per.

Finished it just now. Despite some of the 'male gaze' matter around the young, male protagonist that is sorta grating this slots right in what the 19th century novel often does. Its like a bridge between Dostoevsky and Musil, where an enginner from a devout family goes to the city, loves and loses, gets rid of religion but the questions around what remains of the spirit in a godless time abound. Has an interesting portrait of liberal Copenhagen as well (Edvard Munch by Peter Watkins has a similar thing going on too. I mention it as its on MUBI right now)

Agathe = Jakobe as a Musil link, and is actually the element that really pushes this novel on. So I should give it more than a mention.

Chinaski could you just have them read the story or book and be prepared to comment on it, so they know you want to know they've actually read it, and just be, "make of it what you will/fyi"--not nec, go thou and get loose, get more Moore, but, if they do try to loosen up, provide an indicator that you aren't going to ridicule, that risk is something a writer needs at some points, inescapable, really, keeping the creative part of it in there? They should know the possibilties--but yeah also incl. discussion of influence and its perils, unless really assimilated, when it comes to the high-flying stylists, Joyce etc. But they should know about the possibilties.
I mean I see enough (published, paid) "creative writing" that just seems like the stereotype of academic painting at best, wth tour guide at my elbow or on earbuds,providing the smoother, even richer sort of spoon-feeding.

I would probably just have them read the book, or part of it, and then go "Hey, let's dig into this idea of 'style,'" and have them look at that passage - what stands out to them about the choices she made, what effect do those stylistic choices have on you as a reader and why, what part do those stylistic choices play in conveying the meaning of the passage as a whole and its place in the work, and what are potential risks/rewards to writing like that? Basically, I would probably steer them toward recognizing how little "scene" that passage has, and yet how vivid it is, and how much her style contributes to that vividness. And also that every oddity in that passage serves a purpose and is not just there for the sake of "style."

And then maybe assign them a writing exercise where they have to write about a train of thought, a transient feeling, an epiphany or something similarly interior. If that makes sense. Maybe make a list of words that could function in the same way "safe" does in that passage, and have them choose one as a prompt?

I haven't read the book, though, so maybe that's way off base.

It's wild just how little we work with at GCSE (14-16) - even with a top set. We've read longer texts, but even something short like Jekyll & Hyde we read together and it takes more than a month. Which is to say, I like the idea of a more hands-off approach - 'what do you notice and how does it work' - but it would probably be just the passage, maybe a page.

I wonder if I misunderstand style or we're talking about different things? It may have sounded like I was sneering at style when what I meant is that (particularly with someone like Moore) style is inseparable from how a writer creates meaning - and how hard that is to notice and develop your own version of. It might even be the whole deal with developing a voice?

If it's already not abundantly clear, I've really not taught enough pure 'writing' to know what I'm talking about.

That was what I meant too! Sorry if I wasn't clear.

I was just thinking about how to get students to recognize that.

"Hey, let's dig into this idea of 'style,'" and have them look at that passage

In my experience, I have always found it more fruitful to think in terms of "voice" instead of "style". Authors with a style impose that style on every piece of their writing and their writing usually suffers from that. For me, the writer needs to find a voice that connects to the reader and delivers what the writer wants that piece to deliver.

Because no writer will be equally proficient at every kind of voice, their voices will tend to converge on those they best understand how to write. If that voice gets narrowed down to just one consistent unvarying one, then that is what turns it into a "style".

You were clear Lily Dale - it's me being 'end of term' foggy! I have totally derailed the thread; what I actually need is a thread like La Lechera's amazing thread about her music class!

One thing this has certainly cleared up for me: we simply don't (or don't have the time to) discuss the fundamental nature of style as a generator of meaning. Which is kind of staggering, now I think of it.

I agree, Aimless, I usually talk about voice as well. I was thinking it more as myth-busting about style, for students who may have picked up the idea that they are supposed to have a style but don't really know what that means.

Chinaski, you may find some useful thoughts provoked by the wide-ranging discussion in this ILB thread: Creative writing considered as an industry

That looks great - thanks Aimless.

I'm probably guilty of conflating style and voice to some extent.

The best lit courses I took were based on texts discussed in class times required reading lists (books; short stories, essays, topics, themes)---not everything in the list was required, but you had pick some of it for papers due at midterm and end of semester: I'm thinking especially of Modern British Fiction, the one course I ever took that still comes back into my head like literature or music. It didn't have to be anything all that elaborate, but we at least found/had to make the time, out of class, to read whole pieces, not just passages, with some degree of selectivity, which was pleasing, as was just reading, absorbing in a quiet way, w/o thinking about what we were going to say in class.

The only writing class I took, re poetry, had 0 required reading; it was based, as it happened, pretty much on personal experience, just reading each other's latest, then hearing the writer read it aloud (Students: "Oh, now I get it, cool." Teacher "But it has to work on paper!" was a frequent thing)Lots of comments, some rude, some people got better, maybe as a result of those.

That thread is populated with lunatics from what I can make out (YMP and Aimless excepted). I always figured the best use of a creative writing course would be the deadlines.

That and permission to write, think of yourself as a writer, take time away from other things so that you can devote sustained time to writing.

I've never done an MFA program but I hung around a lot of MFA candidates when I was adjuncting, and one thing I noticed was that regardless of the quality of teaching they were getting, they all got way better at writing over the three years.

Forgot about that thread.

xpost Yeah, and great idea to have a La Lechera-type Help Me With My Class thread for reading and writing (and other things): thinking about her questions and how to respond and reading other responses always made for a good learning experience, brane exercise anyway.

(YMP and Aimless excepted)

Nabisco had many cogent observations, too, I thought.

As for Gringos, it is less satiric than the other Portis novels that aren't True Grit. The characters have just enough humanity in their portrayal to give them life and dimension and just enough absurdity to illustrate Portis's worldview. He's pretty hard on the hippies though and it's clear he found them a complete waste.

Re LUCKY PER, that he mistook who his central character should have been and then the book defaltes in its last fifth after she dies is its main problem. Enjoyed it a lot despite that, and despite the anti-anti-semitic author also endlessly needing to point out that various people were Jewish.

That thread is populated with lunatics from what I can make out (YMP and Aimless excepted). I always figured the best use of a creative writing course would be the deadlines.

― Vanishing Point (Chinaski),

Good morning!

Lunatic tic tic

Lol. I didn't make it all the way through - I got sockpuppet fever and bailed. Also a little bit of sockpuppet nostalgia if I'm honest.

Finished AUSTERITY BRUNCH, then read a long poem by Jeremy Hoevenaar, COLD MOUNTAIN MIRROR DISPLACEMENT. Interesting work from him, I am now much more excited about his new book than I was previously.

Then read a short little squib of Stephen Rodefer, FOR MORE LECTURES, which continues where his FOUR LECTURES left off. Only ten or so pages, but nice to read.

I have too many opinions about teaching writing to further detail the thread, but what I will say is this: in the workshops that I facilitate, the goal is always to help the poet (or writer) write the best version of what they want to see in the world.

Am I crazy or is the tone of the first part of No One is Talking About This similar to the tone in the first part of White Noise?

I avoid contemporary literary fiction like the plague...though I wouldn't be surprised if you were right, much has been taken from DeLillo.

I'm currently reading "Brighton Rock" by Graham Greene, the 3rd best novel of 1938, according to this message board.

Love that book. The film, with Dicky Attenborough, also worth seeing - the closest the UK ever came to the kinetic energy of Warner Bros gangster flicks.

The film sounds intriguing. So far the book reminds me of certain movies, specifically Coen brothers movies like "Fargo". You have an implacably ruthless character (ie. Pinkie) kind of standing in for the immanence of evil, drawn into a conflict with a flawed but determined person trying to do a decent thing. The theological undertones seem rather Coen-esque, and the somewhat distant and slightly condescending treatment of the characters, who align perhaps a bit too perfectly with their sociologically-determined stereotypes and flaws.

yeah, but it goes even narrower, like a needle, or a hatpin.

I'm still only halfway through the book, so my opinion could shift. I'm not surprised though to find that Greene had a rather patrician upbringing. The rough side of Brighton depicted in the novel is keenly observed, but doesn't feel lived in. Still that's a nitpick, and maybe my own personal bugbear. I enjoyed this description of Greene's writing method, as described by Michael Korda in this wonderful New Yorker profile (the scene depicted takes place on Korda's uncle's yacht in the Mediterranean):

An early riser, he appeared on deck at first light, found a seat in the shade of an awning, and took from his pocket a small black leather notebook and a black fountain pen, the top of which he unscrewed carefully. Slowly, word by word, without crossing out anything, and in neat, square handwriting, the letters so tiny and cramped that it looked as if he were attempting to write the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin, Graham wrote, over the next hour or so, exactly five hundred words. He counted each word according to some arcane system of his own, and then screwed the cap back onto his pen, stood up and stretched, and, turning to me, said, "That's it, then. Shall we have breakfast?" I did not, of course, know that he was completing "The End of the Affair," the controversial novel based on his own tormenting love affair, nor did I know that the manuscript would end, typically, with an exact word count (63,162) and the time he finished it (August 19th, 7:55 a.m., aboard Elsewhere).

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/03/25/the-third-man-4

I started reading Our Spoons Came from Woolworth's, Barbara Comyns. It is quite a different-feeling first-person narrative voice from that in I Capture the Castle.

Interesting. I just started reading something else that somehow led me to another one of her books, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead.

Isn't the actor who played Mr. Memory in The Thirty-Nine Steps also in Brighton Rock? Wylie something, not Wiggins.

Wylie Watson

The Diary of Anne Frank, incredibly powerful. Would recommend for anyone who didn't read it in school, even male middle aged old farts like me.

Cotter's England by Christina Stead. It's reminding a little of Angel by Elizabeth Taylor, but I can't tell if that's just because I'm reading the Stead in a similar Virago edition to the Taylor

https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1497731940l/35453358._SY475_.jpg

https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1504698408l/8313057._SY475_.jpg

At last I finish Siri Hustvedt, MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE (2019). I suppose I'd have to say that this ends less well than it begins. It starts like a multi-layered memoir, mainly of NYC in the late 1970s, but with aspects of the present (especially SH's old mother in a home) well rendered. This memoir form works well, with the sense of place and time especially, and the young writer's love of poetry and modernism.

But the book gets rather overwhelmed by the saga of her next door neighbour, who turns out to have various friends who are all in a witches' coven - which sounds dramatic, but these people never become very vivid or interesting, though they take up so much of the book. Other elements include the writer's own attempts to write a (YA?) detective story, which reaches a kind of resolution but not a really satisfactory one; and a very long-running, strong-minded, broad-brush feminist polemic, which might appeal to many people but I'm afraid doesn't appeal to me - it's too undifferentiated and lacking nuance, notably about historical changes which have made such polemic mainstream by now.

There is some real interest and thought in this book, especially about time, memory, narrative - abstract cogitation that is true enough to the legacy of Virginia Woolf, and which sometimes comes off quite well. And as a 'blend of fact and fiction' it's more intriguingly indeterminate than almost any I've ever read - I can't tell what I should take as real, if anything, and what invented. But it doesn't all come together as well as I'd hoped.

XXpostThe Diary of Anne Frankas part of the complete works, tracked here, intriguingly: https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/diary/complete-works-anne-frank/