Now the year is turning and the eeriness comes: what are you reading in autumn 2021?

yeah but he sure knew how to bite

you mean bite from Sylvia's poetry?

(Really, it's his editing of the original collected poems that makes him an unforgivable character to me, on top of all the other known horrible things he did— to edit your suicided ex-wife's poems to make yourself look better and not culpable in any way for her desperation is pretty fucked)

No, as in bites! During their first hookup Plath and Hughes bit each other hard enough to draw blood.

I'm mostly indifferent to his poetry; it's D.H. Lawerence's animal poetry but studied and self-conscious. I did like his translation of the Oresteia.

i read malcolm's book many years ago and absolutely loved it. i remember being quite surprised and at least sort of convinced by her more sympathetic take on ted hughes. that said, it came out a few years back that hughes was apparently physically abusive to plath during their marriage, so I’m not sure how i would feel about malcolm’s take on him now.

ftr Malcolm doesn't at al try to redeem Hughes. His presence is defined as absence: he doesn't speak, he has emissaries. Instead, she suggests -- an unassailable point based on the surviving letters and testimony from contemporaries -- Hughes did love Plath and was destroyed by her suicide.

Ngl, totally uninterested in anything seeking to redeem Ted Hughes. Shitty poet (especially in comparison to Plath) and shitty human, period.

Sort of sounds like it is, tho, based on what everyone is saying.

"Oh he loved her"

Then he should have treated her with more dignity and respect, end of story.

The Malcolm book explicitly picks its way through the evidence of what he published and left in, in order to make the case that he was torn between the real two impulses of telling the truth and protecting himself and their kids. It’s a very interesting analysis.

At the time of Malcolm's book the letters in which Plath alleges physical abuse hadn't emerged yet.

ftr Malcolm doesn't at al try to redeem Hughes. His presence is defined as absence: he doesn't speak, he has emissaries. Instead, she suggests -- an unassailable point based on the surviving letters and testimony from contemporaries -- Hughes did love Plath and was destroyed by her suicide.

At the time of Malcolm's book the letters in which Plath alleges physical abuse hadn't emerged yet.

It seems we're not going to agree on this point— the more you describe the book, the more it seems like apologia for Hughes and his atrocious decisions.

(Not you doing the apologia, but Malcolm).

An apologia for Hughes would've been, "He did these terrible things; let me explain why you should bear X, Y, Z."

The Malcolm book is closer to, "He did these terrible things; here's how his sister and her war on biographers has shielded him."

I’m not really interested in going into this further, but there was none of that in this book, and nobody has posted itt alluding to it as such.

Hughes is never directly interviewed in the Malcolm book. He is at turns silent and then torrents of ferocity through his letters to intermediaries or his sister.

She might've titled it The Silent Man.

The title I thought kind of alludes to what the book is really about, the gaps in between what is known, as well as the telling memory of Plath that Olwyn had.

gyac, you yourself mentioned Malcolm's sympathy toward Hughes and his siblings *twice* in your initial post, which is what got me worked up in the first place.

Sympathy isn’t apologism.

A vast biography of Plath appeared last year. Not mentioned here.

Only one sustained discussion on ILB about Hughes as poet, as opposed to 'ogre-husband of Plath'. He got very mixed reviews, a few of his poems admired, but most of his output not. What think you of Ted Hughes?

I finished R.F. Foster's biography of Yeats, vol 1: THE APPRENTICE MAGE. The best biography I've read.

I finished Steven Connor, THE MADNESS OF KNOWLEDGE. Dazzling opening; the rest of the book not quite at the same level; but many hilarious self-referential moments.

I read Daniel Corkery, SYNGE AND ANGLO-IRISH LITERATURE: the most sectarian work of criticism I've ever read, but terrifically entertaining and rich.

I read J.M. Synge, THE ARAN ISLANDS: simply written, but a bit of a slog because, to be honest, rarely exciting. But a pretty good and significant piece of travel writing or exploration.

I've started Jonathan Coe, MR WILDER AND ME: a novel about meeting Billy Wilder. Very readable. I wonder a bit about Coe's tendency to over-emphasise things when it's not necessary.

ay yi yi I don't know if I'm smart, educated or English enough to read Ian Sinclair. Really enjoy his prose but there is probably an average of a reference to something I don't know in every other paragraph

Isn't his whole thing psychogeography? That can be rough going if you're not living where it's written about...

'He could joke very happily in those days when his sentence was a straight young thing that could run where it liked, instead of a delicate creature swathed in relative clauses as an invalid in shawls' - from Rebecca West's acrid little book on Henry James.

finished Small Island (where the Before bits were always more insteresting than the 1948 bits). only heard about it on the Imagine episode, which also acted as an obit given that she died before it aired.

started Accidental Tourist re-read. probably my favourite Tyler. (a slipping down life?)

Yeah, a slipping down life for me (also the novel). Liked Searching For Caleb too.
Life x works of Elizabeth Hardwick in The New Yorker---in this context, I can infer maybe why she committed to the notorious Lowell, despite all warnings and protests---mainly, I'm intrigued by description and quotes of Sleepless Nights---is it good??

(Also, she's described as thinking it could be Lives of the Artists, though she did all business of living so he could write.)

She's a far better critic than fiction writer, but that one had moments

What collections of her criticism should I read?

NYRB has helpfully collected the best stuff.

Finished Louise Fitzhugh's The Long Secret (as discussed on the literary treats thread) and pleased to discover it's just as goddamn wonderful as everyone said it was. Different pleasures from the first book, but just as good. I love

Foiled, Harriet stood in the middle of the group. Everyone looked down at her. She felt like a spilled drink.

Such a perceptive, funny, original writer.

Got all my library books extended to the start of the new year. So can relax and read at my own speed. Got Raymond Queneau book We Always Treat Women Too Well out too. So will read that over next few days and hopefully get bell hooks Ain't I'm A Woman as an interlibrary loan in a few days too.

Enjoying the Steven H Gardner Another Tuneless Racket cos he's covering bands I don't know well.

Also the book Sway on unconscious bias.

Finished Holly Melgard's "Divisions of Labor," a small conceptual poetry abecedarium of language used by people giving birth.

More notably, finished Dodie Bellamy's "Bee Reaved." If you're into Bellamy at all, it's pretty amazing— very moving and thrilling and also frustrating! Here is an excerpt from the jewel of the book, its final essay: https://www.moussemagazine.it/magazine/we-run-for-our-lives-dodie-bellamy-2021/

Don't know what I'll be on next. Maybe another Rabih Alameddine.

Oh yeah, great TNY essay on Bellamy too, thanks for the link, tables!

xxx[post one thing about EH's criticism I wondered about:
She seems to be projecting a lot in that profile's quotes (again, context invites me to think this, but profiler seems to think so too,though not in a negative way) Also as described, seems that Hardwick was big on author's origins, background: thought Plath suffered from no definite regional identity? The Almanac of American Politics observed that of Poppy Bush in 1980, and did seem to figure into enduring-recurring Conservative suspicions of him as Beltway careerist weasel, lacking "the Vision thing," as he put it---but Plath? Oh well, that's the approach of these New Yorker pieces too, good gateways.

She may have meant that Plath didn't have that aspect of definition to counter, the way Hardwick herself is shown vs. Southern conformity, incl. the usual rules, roles for and of girls and women.

(She may not have had opportunity to see Plath's letters, diaries; I don't know how the publication dates jibe w Hardwick's span as critic)

i read both harriet the spy and the long secret several years ago on alfred's recommendation and adored them both. both harriet and beth ellen are wonderful characters. i dearly wish there were more louise fitzhugh books to read!

something fitzhugh has in common with plath: both wrote novels that somehow disappeared after their deaths. fitzhugh wrote an adult novel called amelia that was rejected by a publisher and apparently got lost, and plath at least started writing two other novels besides the bell jar that haven't survived.

I read The Bell Jar in Febrruary at last. It's solid! She has an acrid wit she should've expended on more prose.

That scene after the clambake where Harriet and Mr. Roque discuss the existence of God is A+. Here's how JFK-era live-and-let-live-ism plays.

Stevolende:

>>> Got Raymond Queneau book We Always Treat Women Too Well out too.

Haven't read it myself, but this is supposed to be fascinating and extraordinary -- a thriller set during the Easter Rising and using characters from Ulysses? I could hardly believe it when I first heard of it.

It is fascinating; "thriller" might be putting it a bit strongly. As often happens with Queneau it sets off with an incredible energy that doesn't quite persist through to the end of the book. Then again, landing a satisfying ending is probably not what he was trying for.

Reading Alameddine's "An Unnecessary Woman." Pretty good so far, only 40 pages in but moving fast. A lot of work and family shit to do over the next two days, but hopefully I'll get some R&R time in.

XP yeah quite interesting but doesn't seem to maintain tension like a thriller/ It was written pseudonymously as Sally Mara and appears to be part of a trilogy. it was intended to be like a penny dreadful or something but atmosphere seems really weird.
I was at a book launch before the pandemic of a book on the trilogy written by an ex lecturer at the local university. Unfortunately because it is an academic book I couldn't afford a copy. have been hoping a cheap one might appear somewhere. Funny also I'd been talking to the writer at something completely not connected to it a few weeks earlier, maybe the anniversary of the an Taibhearc theatre. That was definitely the building we were in when we were talking, just not sure that was the event though.
Have wanted to read more Queneau since discovering him which was probably related to Rowland S Howard having his first novel the Bark Tree on his Portrait of the Artist As A Consumer. Wish i 'd finished the book I had loaned from Walthamstow library in the mid 80s though. Same thing is out asa different translation as Witch grass at the moment.

THis is an interesting book with a few civilians getting pretty casually killed in the name of the revolution and as collateral damage.
Queneau's also invented a Post Office branch that they've taken over. Not sure if Queneau really understands the geography of Dublin since he's got the British forces arriving at a point I'd be surprised was anything like in range

Yeah I can't imagine RQ was much interested in real Dublin geography, or at least not for these purposes.

I’ve read about half his novels, but years ago. I remember really liking Pierrot Mon Ami, Saint Glinglin and The Sunday of Life, though tbh I can’t remember much about any of them. Of course you can’t go wrong with Zazie in the Metro.

As I say a lot of them are great fun as long as you’re alright with novels that just peter out.

Ever seen Matt Madden's comic strip riff on Queneau’s Exercises in Style? It's pretty well done:

https://mattmadden.com/comics/99x/

>>> invented a Post Office branch that they've taken over

Not the GPO? Another post office? What's it called?