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

At the risk of behaving like the cat I' the adage perpetuating a cliche, I envy you, mookie.

quite so

when was that ever not appropriate? I mean he was mookie's kryptonite!

the great minds of the thread are standing in a line watching you go by, mookie

The the whole point about the mookieproofs, as I have had occasion to remark before, is that they are not lesser men. They keep their heads. They think quickly, and they act quickly. Napoleon was the same.

:)

The Code of the Mookies

I don't understand the last 7 posts.

riffing on this: ILX cosmology: the origins of your user name

That's great. I always thought it was somehow a Mookie Wilson reference.

Finally reading let us now praise famous men. picked it up on a whim the other day and found i couldn’t put it down. kind of in love with this endearingly deranged book, though I admit there are moments when i flip ahead mid-paragraph and go “huh. this part goes on for five more pages?” Once you've recovered from that one, maybe you'll dig Agee On Film, which is equally energetic in searching for visionz *and* fault---eventually finding fault with some of his own earlier flights in this same doorstop. Also interesting to compare his bop sermon prosody in the New Republic with relatively restrained reports for Time, when dealing with the same subjects.

Maybe I'll get the local library to spring for this Library of America round-up:
https://www.loa.org/books/228-film-writing-and-selected-journalism
Which also has his screenplay for Night of the Hunter, uncollected film writing, book reviews, and lots more. (Where's the screenplay for African Queen?) Think I'm going to read A Death In The Family pretty soon, and re-read The Morning Watch (LoA's second volume incl. those with "the expanded 1960 edition" of Let Us... and some shorter fiction).

I've now looked at the thread about names, but I still don't understand the posts above on this thread.

pinefox have you read no wodehouse?

Seems to be the case (couldn’t think of how to say in Wodehouse-ese)

when non-wodehouse-reader (me) is calling to non-wodehouse-reader (the pinefox) like mastodons bellowing across primeval swamps

Heh, lol

Mark S: No.

If the statement is that the posts above refer to lines of Wodehouse, that's one thing. But then, I still don't see how they connect to the other thread that poster Aimless linked to.

In the case of my post, at least, I can safely say it was a dumb play on the title of the book with zero cleverness behind it.

pinefox, wodehouse is quite good! you should give him a try.

omigod

I envy pinefox, discovering Wodehouse

Pinefox, don't bother trying to arrive at an understanding of the mookieproof bantering. It's trivial stuff and not worth a second thought.

omigod

I envy pinefox, discovering Wodehouse

Thanks, fellow ILB posters, for these generous responses.

Wodehouse seems hugely popular; it seems that I have never quite found time to try him.

I did reread a chapter of David Thomson, NICOLE KIDMAN (2006) yesterday, and more John Donne - currently mostly addressing his god, which I find less convincing than when he addresses a woman.

Joy in the Morning is his most perfect book, I think, if you need somewhere to start.

That and TCooW, I guess.

Sorry, that looks awful. And wrong too, should be TCotW, or even just CotW,

I'm now reading "The Price of Salt" (aka "Carol") by Patricia Highsmith. It's part of a big collection that contains here first 2 novels and a bunch of stories. Should I be surprised that it's also great but in a completely different way than "Strangers on A Train"?

I finished The Catherine Wheel last night. There was something to love about it on almost every page. Her subsidiary characters were outstanding and the book was full of perceptive touches about humans and their relationships.

The ending did not work as well for me as that in The Mountain Lion, possibly because the overall themes of obsession and repression have been explored in literature so frequently and exhaustively that the climactic few pages felt more perfunctory than climactic. Because the book was so full and rich in other ways, this small glitch at the end didn't really impair my enjoyment of the book at all.

Toni Morrison Mouth Full Of Blood
Various non-fiction writings from 90s, 00ies and teens compiled in a book taht ahs different names in other territories.
Quite enjoying it, not really read her before.

Mark Mordue Boy On Fire
Early Nick Cave bio which had initially been supposed to be a fulllife one until Arthur, Cave's son died.
Mordue realised he couldn't continue with the fuller version of teh bio but had the early years researched and it would hang together as a book. So he went with that.
Quite enjoying it, haven't read the other 2 main biographies in a while so not sure how much of this ground got covered. I know he did a lot of his own research but both Ian Johnston and Robert Brokenmouth have been cited quite a bit.
It does hang together really well anyway.
I've just got to the point where Cave is getting into heroin after Rowland S Howard has joined the Boys Next door and the lp has been released. Think i'm about 40 pages from the end.
Wish he'd rethink doing a memoir or Mick Harvey might consider doing one.

Charles C Mann 1491
Finished this earlier this week. Enjoyed it. Am now seeing it cited in the An Indigenous People's History of the UNited States.
& seeing that book mentioned in Exterminate All The brutes and its writer being involved in the production.
Started taht then bought the Nick cave book so will get back to it.

Last night I started and almost finished The Means of Escape, a very slender collection of short stories by Penelope Fitzgerald. The stories are brief, but each is told in her typical voice, which is one I have always enjoyed in her novels. I'll polish off the rest tonight.

Getting to the part in Blood Meridian where the kid and Sproule are walking around the parched hellscape in Mexico with Sproule's arm rotting off and its like Stephen King written by a wannabe Faulkner (ie sign me up).

Yup

I liked some of those stories, Aimless- is there one set in New Zealand?- but I don't know about the whole thing, can't remember.

The title story, Means of Escape, is set in Hobart, NZ when the penal colony was still active. The others aren't in NZ.

Right, that’s the one. Some kind of Magwitch situation, iirc. Maybe I should reread. But have been having trouble reading these days for various reasons, but still enjoy reading about you guys reading, the way some people love to be in love, hope you don’t mind my kibitzing/rubbernecking.

rubberneck away, Mr. Redd!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DART7FA9Krs
Thanks!

I finished the Fitzgerald stories and moved on to Lolly Willowes, Sylvia Townsend Warner. Nicely formed story so far.

Lolly Willowes is magnificent. I read it a month or so ago and haven't been able to stop thinking about it.

I'm reading a few things: Trans by Juliet Jacques (struggling a bit with the narrative voice but learning a huge amount); Authentocrats by Joe Kennedy (written pre-pandemic and already feels like it could with an update. Things move too fast.); Geometry of Shadows, a book of Giorgio de Chirico's poems (still finding my way around these).

I'm rereading Maurice. At twenty-one and closeted, it can be a fussy, silly book. Now I can see the tensions dissolving the velleities of Forster's prose.

How's Anna Kavan's Ice?

First chapter is grebt!

I'll see if the library has Maurice, hadn't thought to look. Way back, Gore Vidal mentioned that he has met Forster, who mentioned that he had, way way way back, written a novel about gays. "What do they do?, " I asked, intrigued. "They---talk," he replied, with some satisfaction. Not actually seeing those exact words now, but pretty sure that was it.

The earlier books by Kavan that I tried to read kept one foot apiece in reality and fantasy. With Ice, she seems to be more confident that she can display the symbols and dreamlike actions without having to explain them. I read it at the same time that I read her biography, so the two bled together a bit. Ice makes me think of Beckett trying to write sci-fi, minus the humour.

I'll see if the library has Maurice, hadn't thought to look. Way back, Gore Vidal mentioned that he has met Forster, who mentioned that he had, way way way back, written a novel about gays. "What do they do?, " I asked, intrigued. "They---talk," he replied, with some satisfaction. Not actually seeing those exact words now, but pretty sure that was it.

I remember him saying that one of the main rules he set for himself when writing it was that it should have a happy ending. I found it very moving especially in the context of Forster's wider work, so much of which is about ppl beating themselves up for who they are and failing to live up to their expectations.

I liked some of those stories, Aimless- is there one set in New Zealand?- but I don't know about the whole thing, can't remember.

― Working in the POLL Mine (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 10 May 2021 18:11 (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

The title story, Means of Escape, is set in Hobart, NZ when the penal colony was still active. The others aren't in NZ.

― sharpening the contraindications (Aimless), Monday, 10 May 2021 20:31 (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's set in Tasmania (then known as Van Diemen's Land) rather than New Zealand (don't think NZ was ever used for penal colony purposes)

I'll see if the library has Maurice, hadn't thought to look. Way back, Gore Vidal mentioned that he has met Forster, who mentioned that he had, way way way back, written a novel about gays. "What do they do?, " I asked, intrigued. "They---talk," he replied, with some satisfaction. Not actually seeing those exact words now, but pretty sure that was it.

― dow,

Actually, the novel's clear about Maurice's frustrations: he wants to get laid, not sit around tousling each other's hair.

A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race & the Soul of America by Craig Werner
Book I've had out being ignored throughout the pandemic and for a while before. Which is not good since picking it up i find it quite compelling. History of mainly black music over the later half of the 20th century mainly.
Am enjoying it now and hopefully going to get through it before I need to return it. But should have got to it sooner.
Seems to be a bit weird chronologically like he's just been talking about 1969 rock and gone back to look at Coltrane.

Mouth Full Of Blood Toni Morrison
Collection of various non fiction writings over about a 20 year period straddling the millenium. Also quiite compellling in places.
Think I need to read some of her fiction too .

my partner lent me luster so i'm reading it despite my total allergy to contemporary literary fiction, and... i like it! it's very funny