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

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

"What do they do?, " I asked, intrigued. "They---talk," he replied, with some satisfaction. That characterization of the reply may be off, but I do remember taking it as, "It's not smut, and not desire under the covers of florid rhetoric: whatever else does or doesn't happen at any time, they talk; they're people."

Which doesn't mean it's all happy talk, of course.

finished Sesshu Foster's ELADATL, then also Taylor Brady's In the Red, a great book of poems, and am not onto 'A Poetics of the Press: Interviews with Poets, Printers, & Publishers.' Great book about, well, books, particularly in the context of printing and distribution to poetry communities.

A Poetics of the Press sounds very intriguing, thanks.
Finished my first reading of Jack, the latest installment to date in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead cycle: kind of a prequel, in the sense that it's set eight years before the prodigal returns to his "hometown"/place of origin, dusty little old Gilead, Iowa (where, as a child, he could hardly find anything worth stealing, but he did it anyway, esp./but not onlu if it at least had sentimental value for the owner).

To be a true prequel to the first book, Gilead this one would have to go back to or before the grandfather of Jack's namesake, the Rev. John Ames, had a vision of Christ in chains, and came West from Maine to get involved with John Brown. Yadda yadda, life with a visionary set young John Ames on a different path, an unpretentiously, carefully self-and-other-observant poetic evolution, as expressed in late-life letters to his very young surprise son, letters as legacy (in the mid-50s, in his own mid-70s, figures he better) which have started turning into a journal, by the time Jack is back, unsolicited and then some, as far as even/especially Rev John is concerned.
Jack is a test, sent by his Creator and creator as a signal: What's wrong with this picture? The light-fingered, cute little devil quickly became as notorious for getting let off as he did for what he got caught for---"Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, " many muttered, hearing his glib apologies, and his father, Rev. Boughton, stretch Scripture like balloon animals to cover the kid again---but also, if the local "authorities" were to try to do something to this one son of the upper middle class, where would it end--? And his seven siblings, certainly reasonably good children, found themselves performing goodness, as they discussed among themselves (but with their parents), all having the family brains.
Later Jack did something really bad, and stayed away for twenty years.
The reason for his unseasonable return is confided to Rev. John, who finds it, well, kinda underwhelming, although readers don't.

The second book, Home picks up the storu of return from the POV of Glory, youngest of the brood, who has come back to take care of their widower father, and for another reason. He and she and Jack become true desperadoes under the eaves.

Lila is the backstory of Rev. John's somewhat mysterious young wife, once a child of the pre-Depression road culture, but also takes her to Gilead and what seems to be a pretty good marriage, judging by the conversations--but then, Robinson always comes up with good, searching conversations (tending to and around the scary in Home)

Jack takes place mainly in St. Louis, with important trips to Chicago, and dread flashbacks to/thoughts of Gilead, like little seizures. From the beginning, (reading an excerpt of this before any of the books), I seemed to be hearing a player piano ranging through several emotional keys, always coming back through the same streets he pounds, also parlors, bars, rooming houses, a dance studio where he instructs (and a graveyard, good for an all-night conversation in an improbable opening tour-de-force). He has and is an ever-more cultivated sense of danger, who still sees vulnerability in all the just-so places, and always took predestination to heart---a kind of theft, maybe--in ways that exasperated his Presbyterian Rev. Dad and Congregationalist Rev. John, and he's "transparent, and an enigma": a tragicomic figure to keep an eye on at all times, as he does---he wants to do right! Kind of an even more alarming descendant of Wodehouse's Uncle Fred.

but *not* with their parents

important trips to Chicago *and Memphis* dammit sorry

*desperados*, if I'm going to be true to the song title I lifted.

Also, Jack has a Better Call Saul Effect: after reading the other books, you may still find yourself thinking, "Awww, this is going nice", then remembering what's ahead (not that you wouldn't get a sense of increasing peril even if you started with this one, and they could be read in any order, with no loss of effect, I think).

I finished "Price of Salt" (aka "Carol"). It's a lovely book. I was a bit disappointed to see in the afterword that Highsmith claims she never wrote another book like it, though that won't stop me from reading more of her work. A classic coming of age theme of falling in love, set against the background of moral panic over homosexuality (as Therese answers Carol in the book, when she asks her to define a classic, "A classic is something with a basic human situation").

I finished Lolly Willowes last night. Her descriptions of the social condition of women in England, as it was still emerging from the stultification of women during Victoria's reign, were quietly eloquent. Warner's use of Satan as a character and her philosophizing about his meaning were fascinating and suggestive, though not very filled in.

Now I'm reading a biography of Murray Gell-Mann, probably the most significant theoretical physicist who failed to achieve any large measure of public fame. Apparently it rankled him that Feynman managed to emerge into the public consciousness as a known figure, while he lagged far behind in that regard. By the end of the book I'll know much more about him, I'm sure.

I finished Jonathan Coe's MIDDLE ENGLAND (2018). It is the third in a trilogy with THE ROTTERS' CLUB (2001) and THE CLOSED CIRCLE (2004). Coe hadn't expected to write a third novel, but explains in a final note how events led him to it.

The novel narrates a fictionalised version of events in the UK between 2010 and 2018. Coe has often done 'ambitious state of the nation novels' but in a way this is more ambitious than ever, as it seems to want to take on every major event in the country over that time - sometimes just through a narration of news events, often through the way its characters experience them. Such events include the 2010 election; austerity (Coe already discussed foodbanks extensively in the novel NUMBER ELEVEN); the 2011 riots; the 2012 Olympics (Coe seems quite close to what is now viewed as the credulous response that the opening ceremony showed the best of Britain); the 2015 election (but very little, I think, on the 2014 Scottish referendum, which now seems quite a pivotal event into a new era of political surprises); the 2016 EU referendum, including the murder of Jo Cox MP and the resignation of PM Cameron; glancing reference to Donald Trump.

The major event in all that that is barely referred to at all is the 2017 election, when the Labour Party greatly increased its vote share and destroyed the government's majority, despite being subjected to false and malicious attacks from all sides. You could say that Coe doesn't refer to this because he doesn't want to give credit to socialists - which is odd, as his early work seemed sympathetic to socialism. But I don't make this objection, as the book is in part satire, and as a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party I'd rather it was kept safely out of the firing line - which is largely the case. The one character who supports JC is a very privileged teenage girl who is largely not a very sympathetic character and who, to an odd extent, rather fades out of the novel as it goes on.

Though ambitious in what it takes on, you could say that this novel is technically less ambitious than other Coe. It's completely linear. It contains few changes of style or format, by his standards - with one exception, an ingenious late section where we read a character's email with parentheses containing what she's really thinking as she writes it, and ditto for her reading of the reply. This amounts to a surprise, as the character, Sophie, seems primed for a new adventure with a US partner, but the idea falls flat. She winds up knocking on the Birmingham door of her estranged but not divorced husband, Ian, and at the novel's end they are reunited. I think this is a good outcome, as it shows compromise, imperfection, the idea that sometimes the best you can do is to try to make the best of what you have (though this might not really be true for Sophie; such a woman probably could find another partner if she wanted to). It also acknowledges that this position itself is limited: Sophie and Ian are both going to work in Hartlepool, she teaching for the husband of her gay friend Sohan, but she isn't sure, as the story ends, how long it will last, whether the compromise can work out. I like this sense of imperfection and uncertainty.

Benjamin Trotter was the central character of THE ROTTERS' CLUB - though certainly part of a larger cast. Is he still the central character here? I think perhaps he is, just about, though the novel is very much an ensemble; as a new chapter you don't know which characters are going to be featuring next. Benjamin is quite an appealing, distinctive character, I find, in being so detached, dreamy, ineffectual, distracted; something of a failure in life, but he has managed to find a kind of happiness on his own, in a house by the River Severn, and when his friend Philip Chase publishes his novel he unexpectedly finds a degree of fame with it. In a way Benjamin still feels close to Coe, a figure for the author and artist, unsure of how far he should be trying to get involved in a wider society he hardly understands - though maybe that would be disingenuous, as Coe's fiction *is* always trying to do that. Another main character who returns is Doug Anderton: as a political columnist who has regular meetings with a Coalition or Conservative spokesman, Nigel Ives, he is a convenient way to keep political discussion going. He is also given the last word in his confrontation with old classmate Ronald Culpepper, now a multimillionaire sponsor of Brexit, at a school reunion which deliberately takes the novel back to the 1970s schooldays roots of the trilogy.

MIDDLE ENGLAND is immensely easy to read. I perhaps forget how readable novels can be - bestsellers, novels on display at railway stations - because I spend more time thinking about slightly more recondite books. But reading this is often very enjoyable, and it's nice to be able to sail through a book. At times it clunks and falls flat in tone, above all on Brexit - perhaps this is Coe's weak point, where he's too committed to a view to be subtle? He quotes a tweet from author Robert Harris and treats it as significant wisdom. Perhaps this novel isn't going to give you great political insight - though what it does try to give is breadth, a range of views, and that may be enough of a challenge for some of us. I think what I appreciate more is just the interest of the story of a character like Sophie as she makes her way through the decade; and Coe's unabashed use of heavy comic devices, notably repetition and bathos. He deliberately seasons the story with a kind of programmatic silliness, that slightly skews it generically, deflects its portentousness, and does much for its entertainment value.

My perception of Coe, after enjoying House of Sleep & What a Carve Up, but generally disliking everything he wrote before or after, is that he’s all craft and no soul, except that sometimes he’s pretty bad at the craft too. I don’t know if it’s his relentless centrism, or the overuse of cheap irony, but something about him definitely curdled in me after Rotter’s Club. And yet I’m genuinely still curious about what he does next, even though the last time I enjoyed a novel of his was... 1999? I’ll be interested to know more about Number 11, I guess.

Curious what ILB thinks of Brookner. I started A Friend From England yesterday and it’s relentlessly drab in exactly the way Brookner gets parodied for... what am I missing?

I suppose the Trotter books look quite nimble compared to their similars though (Sebastian Faulk, Lanchester, someone like that?)

What is Coe's 'relentless centrism'?

If we can agree on what's meant by political centrism nowadays (I think we can), then I would tend to agree that MIDDLE ENGLAND tends that way, and this may be a weakness.

But to be relentless this would presumably have to be true of his other work also. That's a lot less clear to me. WHAT A CARVE UP! was an anti-Thatcherism novel that allowed its imagination to be violent (through comedy). Implicitly you could say it was a novel of the political Left. His first novel THE ACCIDENTAL WOMAN was extreme in a rather different way, in essaying a kind of nihilism (though he didn't retain this mood into later work).

Or maybe 'centrism' here means something else.

I would tend to agree that WACU! and also HOUSE OF SLEEP are technical high points. He showed a lot of craft then - very much agreed. I don't agree that those particular books lack 'soul', assuming that I know what that is. WACU! contains a lot of poignancy and is arguably powered by quite a lot of feeling.

What you call 'cheap irony' I think I would call his deliberate embrace of broad comedy. I suppose I agree that it's cheap, but I feel like it's meant to seem cheap, and that's part of the joke. But there may be other irony in him that is less well judged even by my lights.

I agree also that because Coe is basically a comic writer and satirist, he is, in a certain way, nimbler than Lanchester et al (though I don't really know most of them).

I don't want to defend everything he's done. I think he often has craft (it's a good word) but also sometimes lacks it (true), along with the necessary brio.

Richard Thompson Beeswing
Enjoying this greatly. Glad it is reasonably in depth. I think I'm still in mid 68, they've just put out What We Did On Our Holidays and are touring heavily. So odd that Thompson is broadly hinting about events on the road being foreboding cos I thought the main thing there was after Unhalfbricking. That does still feature Lamble.
Anyway was looking forward to RT writing a memoir and this does seem to have been worth the wait.
I thought I bought the paperback and this is the hardback, so that's cool too

Alexandra Wilson In Black & White
memoir by mixed race Essex raised young barrister. Very interesting so far and she has done some good talks on webinars and podcasts that I've caught.
This is the paperback which is supposed to have a load of bonus material added since the hardback last year.

I enjoyed beeswing, he comes across as a thoughtful guy

The accident was after Unhalfbricking was recorded, but before the cover picture was taken and it was released.

I'd quite like to read Thompson's book ... but I still have Elvis Costello's to get through!

A Long Petal Of The Sea, Isabel Allende - Starts off quite unsatisfyingly, the setting is the Spanish Civil War and there's tons of wikipedia style paragraphs breaking down the conflict. At one point a character's dying and his last words are a geopolitical analysis of the conflict, "I hear Eleanor Roosevelt is trying to get her husband to intervene but public opinion is against him". Now the setting has changed to an upper class Chilean family and Allende feels much more natural describing their customs and neuroses, tho tbf I know next to nothing about Chile so who knows.

interesting coe conversation. my boss keeps insisting i read him so i'll probably do a couple over the summer--he's partial to the rain before it falls, which seems like an uncharacteristic place to start.

just finished by night in chile, which i'd been saving out of a confidence in its quality that it affirmed, and dear cyborgs by eugene lim, which i expected to be slight fun but ended up among my favorite novels from the past few years. has anyone read?

A good friend of mine has his first essay collection out today, I've read all the pieces as they came out in magazines and they're excellent, but looking forward to reading the full published versions:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/667701/lost-in-summerland-by-barrett-swanson/

(NYT review today too)

Vivian: yes, THE RAIN BEFORE IT FALLS is very uncharacteristic indeed, because it doesn't contain a single joke, and Coe is primarily a comic writer. It's quite good, though. And it shares one or two characters with his other novels -- he has become one of those extended-universe writers, sometimes obviously and sometimes less so.

I hadn't heard of Dear Cyborgs, but I was intrigued by the idea of something that sounded like slight fun but ended up better than that, and I was blown away by it. Thanks for the recommendation!

Laurence Sterne - Tristam Shandy
Dasa Drnic - EEG

Sterne was really great, it felt like the first time a writer was applying anarchy as a free for all on page after page and getting away with it. Its so good to read someone who loves Quixote, Rabelais and Burton and end up on their level -- and it was really nice feeling to see the sources you have read and enjoyed over the years coming off the page too, and then wanting to get back to them, re-read so as to find something deeper. Books conversing with one another.

EEG was, in the end, a mixture of Sebald and Bolano. A sorta academic investigator of crimes writes down his travels and research and by doing so sorta flattens all that suffering and pain out on the page. This is better than Sebald's amblings but nowhere near Bolano. The one bit that was different from either was a 30 page section list as a table of apartments and itinerary of books being confiscated from Jewish homes (as well as the people inside of those homes?), and of course there is a lot of Yugoslav history, and she is rude about Knausgaard lol. Its on the give away pile but I will read more by her.