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

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?

he has it at Sackville (later O'Connell) Street/Eden Quay. I was trying to think where the next branch was when i was there. I don't think there is another one anything like that close since O'Connell st isn't really all that long and the GPO is half way up one side of it.

& he has communication between the GPO and the branch that has been taken over in the book

I finished The Ten Thousand Things, Maria Dermoût. Its interest for me was mainly her intimate knowledge of the Moluccas (aka 'Spice Islands') and her ability to convey a strong, living sense of that place and everything that dwells there, and to do it with graceful and economical style. It starts rather slowly and diffusely; it took me a second attempt before I got get past the first several pages. But it gathered steam and soon came into better focus.

finished Lonely Castle in the Mirror, liked it a lot though the ending while fine enough didn't blow me away.

have read everything murakami has ever published but had to draw the line when I saw his latest had arrived in the shop and was about all the t-shirts he has owned!!

Reading sections of a book about Flann O'Brien called PROBLEMS WITH AUTHORITY.

Delving back into reading lately, thanks to back in office lunch times again, so starting with a familiar read from PKD "Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said"

then possibly Virtual Light by Gibson

Not exactly in tip-top reading shape but made my way through Iain Sinclair's London Overground. Not top table Sinclair but still full of what I go to him for.

Also read The Sign of Four which was fine but didn't really warrant full novella status.

Now reading Nairn's London. I have no real frame of reference for Nairn, aside from the drinking stories and the almost saint-like bearing he has with people I like (Meades, Hatherley); I wasn't expecting him to be so sentimental - about mythical cockneys, about Britain (he cites Shakespeare, Churchill and Handel in the first 3 pages). No quarrel with the writing though, which is the right side of florid and learned.

Yesterday I started Eric Newby's A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. It follows in the tradition of most travel books by English authors, where the author travels through exotic lands full of uncivilized foreigners speaking uncouth and incomprehensible languages, living in squalor, and eating nasty foods, which surroundings the author endures, cheerfully admitting that he must be a hopeless fool for having chosen this adventure, while the lucky reader can sit by the fireside and enjoy all this dirt, discomfort and danger vicariously, while having a good chuckle at the author's expense. I find myself yearning for a few sentences revealing a single honest emotion. Everything real or direct is hidden behind a theatrical scrim.

Sounds good!
Late Thanksgiving night got hooked on my aunt's copy of The Young Romantics, by Daisy Hay: group bio dynamics, how some of the best writing and worst interpersonal damage got done in small interlocking circles of friends, lovers, frenenimies, children, older siblings---all of these people v. young for most of the book---also their struggles in context of outside world, class strictures getting worse in reaction to revolutions and any public dissent/nonconformity---spooked by all the fucked-over girls and young women killing themselves---more publicly unspeakable behavior, of course---incl. via drownings and attempted drowning---making the later-seen-as-UR-Romantique end of classy rebel Percy seem that much more recklessly entitled, in my reading.

(later, of course as also tracked, his radicalism is played down for Victorians: he's this moody spirit, him and Keats, wandering alone, although old associates kept doing their bits for the cottage industries.)

gone back to reading Ibram X kendi Stamped From The Beginning.
Just read about the American Civil war and Lincoln's gradual movement towards recognising that ex-enslaved have a place in the US.
& the cynicism previous to that of the emancipation proclamation like it is only supposed to be effective where Lincoln has no power to enfoirce it and is supposed not to be in effect in the areas where he is going to need the votes of those who are enslaving people.
Gosh, like racism seems to have been an active part of the inconvenient parts of US history as well as the ones where it can be fobbed off by the wrong people being at fault.
I quite enjoy Kendi

Another Tuneless Racket Steven H Gardner
more of his pounk history. I've just been reading about Eddie & The Hot Rods who I was semi aware of but didn't know very well. They were doing stripped down r'n'r at the time things were taking off but didn't see themselves as punk. Enjpyoing this book, have the 2nd volume too. I thought the other 2 were alreaqdy out but they're yet to come. i was turned onto them by a review i Ugly Things and got the books pretty cheap which was great I think they went up in price almost imediately afterwards. Alkso got the first volume of the compiled fanzines of the writer.

East West Street Philippe Sands
I heard teh podcast thsi ties in with and thought it interesting and taht I needed to read teh book if i got the chancel. Found it cheap so getting teh chance to read it. Writing is similar to the presenting voice. Which works for me ok.
Tracing the history of a Nazi who i think was directly responsible for the death of his grandfather

Back to Coe's MR WILDER AND ME. He's still showing a tendency to telegraph too much. The story is interesting though. Don't know quite what's going to happen. And the portrait of Wilder and his collaborator Diamond, I enjoy. Coe could work harder, though, at describing people like William Holden - he doesn't bother doing it at all!

I forgot to mention above that I also read all of John Millington Synge's unpublished and unstaged plays and scenarios, in a scholarly edition from 1968.

Most substantial is the one-act play WHEN THE MOON HAS SET, which also once existed in a more dramatic two-act version. It's set in a Big House where one COLM comes back and woos the nun SISTER EILEEN away from her holy orders and into marriage with him. It also involves shades of the past in an Ibsenesque way. The play becomes increasingly preposterous and ends amid incredible sexism as SISTER EILEEN accepts her true destiny of marriage.

I think it has never been staged.

The edition also contains several scenarios for plays that never get beyond a summary of the idea. Another ludicrous play is LUASNAD, CAPA AND LAINE in which some ancient Spanish people who have discovered Ireland for the first time (but have Irish, not Spanish names) are swamped by a storm on the coast. The ludicrous thing is that the big leader LUASNAD turns in about one page from mourning his wife to wooing someone else's widow, then at the end the storm sweeps them away too. One of the most ridiculous playlets I've ever come across.

A couple of satirical sketches are better. One called DEAF MUTES FOR IRELAND is a satire of the Gaelic League that is almost in Flann O'Brien mode, and NATIONAL DRAMA: A FARCE also goes in that direction, but Synge isn't yet able to develop it.

All these works are from the 1890s and early 1900s.

570 pages into Jerusalem and there's a Beanoesque troupe of ghost kids called the Dead Dead Gang spying on Oliver Cromwell.

enjoyed "the king at the edge of the world", historical spy novel set in elizabethan england/scotland. at no point does it rise to the literary genre level of le carre or hilary mantel, but it was a ripping yarn and you might like it if you like those two.

Arthur Miller Echoes Down The Corridor Essays 1944-2000
have had this sitting around ear teh bed for way too long. Probably out of the library for a year now and neglected it. Cos when i do pick it up and read any of it the writing is really good. Various things on the wake of WWII and the Democratic conference in 1968 and him growing up in Brooklyn and things. I really should have got through this and returned it a while back but now still got it to read through and it is pretty good. Hopefully have it finished by next week and can return it to have space to get something else i've ordered out.
I read his memoir Timebends a couple of decades ago and that was really good too.

Sway Pragya Agarwal
one of a few books about unconscious bias I'm half way through reading

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!

Has anyone ever read "Nobody's Family Is Going to Change"? It sounds quite different from her other books.

I finished "Divorcing" by Susan Taubes. A lovely, haunting book that skips around in time and occasionally into fantasy, but everything is held together by being about one person's experience and the strong emotions that are never far from the surface. The narrator seems to be inviting the reader to play armchair psychoanalyst, to explain why she seems unhappy and adrift. Its probably not a coincidence that her father is a trained Freudian who analyzes her childhood for her in real time as she's growing up. The book also touches on themes of feminism, the Holocaust, and the Jewish immigrant experience.

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.

― Tim, Thursday, 25 November 2021 14:56 (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

read the sunday of life in the summer and had a great time - I liked the ending even tho yes it is kind of a non-ending

currently halfway thru amos tutuola my life in the bush of ghosts love it love it love it.

Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner.

I’ve only read Red Shift, but I thought it would be fun to go back and read all his books from the beginning, given they’re all short and there’s not many of them. Anyway - comparing Red Shift to Weirdstone is a bit like comparing Castafiore’s Emerald to Tintin in America. It’s strange reading Garner’s juvenilia when he seems like the sort of person who’s been seventy all his life. And it’s quite a slog - halfway through I was close to giving up - the long, boring sequence where the children escape from a series of caves reminded me of getting stuck in an isometric Spectrum game where every room looks like same. The second half is pacier and I adored the sudden ending. Also loved the bit where the up-until-then characterless Susan is suddenly, like, “you know what, fuck this, I’m out of here”. I think Garner is one of the only tolerable authors with no discernible sense of humour.

O. Nate: "Nobody's Family Is Going to Change" - I don't think I've actually read it, but the book was around when I was a child and the title has always stayed with me.

the moon of gomrath is streets better than weirdstone

I finished Rabih Alameddine's AN UNNECESSARY WOMAN this morning. A great book and character study, and also a surprisingly moving paean to the joys of reading. It made me want to read some of the longer novels I've never taken a stab at...Anna Karenina in 2022? Maybe.

Anyway, Alameddine is clearly a gifted writer, can recommend his books without reserve.

I read Patrick Hamilton's Slaves of Solitude. It's set in a boarding house in Henley-on-Thames in 1942, populated by the aged, the grotesque and the despairing, all struggling with nightly blackouts. Like Hangover Square, world events hover in the background but this is much more a miniature in its study of manners and etiquette - something like a companion to Elizabeth Taylor's Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, albeit the central character in this is in her late 30s. It's grim and cruel and very funny in places.

Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek by Manu Saadia; was getting quite frustrated trying to understand how gold pressed latinum works in a world with replicators, so thought I'd dig out this book I got sent for supporting a podcast ages ago. Saadia starts by giving the history of the "no money in Star Trek" idea (started as a joke in the fourth film, enthusiastically embraced as canon by TNG, DS9 retcons all the references to it in the original series away) and then expounds on the ST universe having such unlimited resources that all goods and services end up at zero cost. This leads to the first conclusion of his that I can't really get with - he suggests scarce resources such as wine from Picard's vineyard or a spot at Sisko's restaurant also remain free because the Federation has eliminated consumerism; status is acheived through achievement, not posessions, and so demand won't ever outstrip supply. But this to me ignores that someone might want Picard's wine because they like the taste better than of any other wine in the galaxy, or that they might want a spot at Sisko's because they love the atmosphere or think he's the greatest cook. Status surely a big part of why ppl value scarce resources but not ALL of it?

Also reading An English Murder by Cyril Hare for book club which so far is very much hitting the spot.

Status surely a big part of why ppl value scarce resources but not ALL of it?

In one of Banks' post scarcity Culture books the AIs have a good old laugh about people reinventing money when a market develops around tickets for a once in a lifetime concert.

Nairn's London was magnificent - angry and sad and poetic and all those things. I'm desperate for a pint in the Grapes or Ye Old Mitre.

Reading Antal Szerb's Journey by Moonlight.

Garcia Marquez's Clandestine in Chile, his version of Miguel Littín’s secret return to Pinochet's Chile in the 1980s to film conditions.

Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, her long-ass travelogue about Yugoslavia during the years entre les guerres.

Shirley Hazzard's dull The Evening of the Holiday.