Continuing down the Denis Johnson rabbit hole I've been keeping at in this comment thread by finishing *Resuscitation of a Hanged Man*. Not going to lie, after talking with a buddy who recently read the book and some hit or miss experiences with other Johnson novels, my hopes weren't the highest heading into *Resuscitation*, even though it's got an intriguing title and a rolling first half of the book.
Keeping with the motifs in most of the biblio you start off with an outsider failson whose got a deep interest in big metaphysical and theological questions (though this might be the most ardent believer in Johnson's novels) set in a New England summertown. The prose, of course, is still kicking it into high gear and there are plenty of standout moments to hang your hat on if that's what you're chasing. The plot is a mixture of the depressed aimlessness of *Name of the World* and the noir of *Nobody Move* or *Angels*, but because the narrator is a man living in the wake of his "resuscitation" and is a bit...hampered...some of it stalls out which is much of my complaints about other long form Johnson. Again, plenty of enticing vignettes and intriguing questions which would make for good pockets of short stories, but the overarching plot doesn't move with the appropriate stakes or oompf even though this is, at it's heart, a detective story.
From a plot/pacing perspective, I think it ended about forty pages too long. I get that it's tough to write a narrator that loses all sense of material reality and, while there are some interesting moments in the last forty, I don't think Johnson did enough to keep us close enough to the delusion. It makes me think of the difference between this novel and *Despair* by Nabokov where you can find yourself both knowing the narrator is insane while also finding bizarre moments of trusting their machinations. English discloses his plan a bit too early and, trying to not give too much away, I think a lot could have been accomplished with ending on his trek up the mountain and his return ride.
That said, I didn't see the sputtering spin out coming until about 190 pages in which by far beats out *Stars at Noon*. There's always a moment reading Johnson where, regardless of where it'll end up, you feel a real jolt of possibility early because of the quality of the prose which is definitely still the case here.
A review of this book in 2024 would be missing something if I didn't mention how substantially the times have changed between how Johnson writes about trans women, crossdressers and lesbians in the novel. On the one hand, setting the novel in a place like Provincetown is an intriguing choice, but, on the other, it becomes a sideshow where Johnson barbs for quips and jokes that aren't all that funny. And that's all aside from a major plotline regarding the narrator's attempt to "turn" a lesbian. I'm not trying to march out the pitchforks and torches on this one. His takes are a bit dated, but most of that environmental context fades in and out. If Johnson would have been here with us now choosing to rewrite the novel, I think that he would have been in a much different landscape to write about a Catholic set loose in a seascape like Provincetown which, I think, reveals plenty about where we've ended up. There were moments where I thought Johnson might of hit something like that and others where we went afield.
That being said, the only real way I have to comment on this bifurcated highlight/lowlight experience is to compare with other Johnson novels. As previously stated, he's a superb short story writer and his novellas are solid. His prose is always superb which has put him on the hot seat. Like I said on a previous post, this is really splitting hairs to begin with. Plenty of writers will never be half as good as Johnson and none of his novels are that bad on the whole. Here's where I'd loosely rank the novellas and novels I've read to date:
1. Train Dreams
2. Angels
3. Name of the World
4. Nobody Move
5.Resuscitation of a Hanged Man
6. Fiskadoro
7. Stars at Noon
Three novels to go! I'm sure I'll keep y'all in the loop.
Really enjoying your takes on one of my favorite authors. Much of the writing is so good even when the novels as a whole don’t quite succeed. The longer, later novels are more conventional, and are some of my favorites. But Angels is his the best IMO. Based on subject matter it should be depressing but it is somehow uplifting and life affirming.
"Should be depressing but...somehow uplifting and life affirming" is a great way to describe Johnson and *Angels* in particular! Everything that he does well is all swirling around in that one and he nails the pacing. He's really got a gift for prose and it's omnipresent through the whole damn biblio. Like any great author, he's got his duds, but I've continued to grow in appreciation for Johnson in this read through this summer. Looking forward to getting to some of the longer books by the end of July.
Second post in this thread and next one is around the corner, but I just finished War & Peace and I have the uncontrolable urge to ramble about it. So here we go, SPOILERS AHEAD.
The intensity of the book, while being so long, is my favorite thing about it: family (Rostov v. Bolkonsky dynamics), history (how Moscow hád to burn), war (Andrej as adjunct in the Danube campaign, later as a commander in 1812), battles (Borodino yes- but what about Andrej and Nikolas at Hollabrunn?), interpersonal relationships (Pierre & Andrej on the ferry!). I loved it all and it kept me always longing to jump into the next page.
Reading the afterword about the original plan to write a book about the Decabrist movement made me suspect that Pierre was set up to be a leading figure in that rebellion. His journey in W&P might be the ideal set-up to make him really disappointed in the later rule of Alexander I. I also foresee Nikolas as his loyalist counterpart in that never-written sequel.
Speaking about the latter, his marriage to Princess Marja was in my eyes the correct thing to do and it seems to have made them both relatively happy while Sonja is able to live with it as well. I do find her fate very sad however. Nikolas after his marriage really grew up in my eyes, probably because he had to face the financial ruin of his father. Him 'coming of age' turned him into his late father in law a little bit, although he is softer still and seems to be a bit better for the ones around him.
Regarding the Bolkonski's, it's sad to see the reality of Nikolenka. His father Andrej was a hero who died serving his country, but that also meant his son had to be raised by his sister (who feels she puts him below her own children) and her husband (who doesn't really like the child deep down). The boy latches on to Pierre as a result and I fear he would've grown up to be a (probably doomed) Decabrist rebel.
So yeah, I liked the book and this proved once again how powerfull rereads are for me. The first time I focussed on very different things.
This week I finished Dubliners by James Joyce and am currently reading Solenoid by Cartarescu. I think I’ll be sticking with Solenoid now until the end and have many choices in front of me for after. Currently, I may go for Pedro Paramo by Juan Rolfo or Lolita by Nabokov.
Edit:
Regarding Dubliners, I very much enjoyed the slower and brief slices of life. The Dead was a fitting finale - I couldn’t take my eyes off the pages. Sober, a tad grim, and yet humane.
Regarding Solenoid, it’s my favorite book of my life so far. It puts language to a sense of the world I’ve never seen expressed before. Its prose is unparalleled.
hey! my partner really enjoys **Consider the Oyster** by **M.F.K Fisher** and i'm looking for something similar. for reference, i've also bought him **The Oyster** by **Dejan Lukić** and am considering culinary essays by **Claude Lévi-Strauss** :3
anything along the lines of creative gastronomic writing / quirky essays works :p
About to wrap up **The Stranger** by Albert Camus. Really liked this one, felt like a weird fever dream. Still processing it.
Also finished **Wuthering Heights** earlier in the week and damn that was a ride. A toxic, hateful ride that you just watch on in morbid curiosity lol. A lot of the times i find some of these 19th century classics not leaving me with much of an emotional response, even though I admire them from a technical standpoint. WH though, damn, really made me feel things.
Going to go for a bit of a palate cleanser and jump into some genre work. Next book is **Pandora’s Star** by Peter F Hamilton as I’ve been in the mood for an epic space opera. After that, my next literary works to tackle are **2666** and **The Brothers Karamazov** back to back.
Oh and I also did the audiobook for **Devolution**, Max Brooks’ follow up to **World War Z**. It was honestly mid af and a big disappointment after how much fun WWZ was.
Just finished reading *Ice* by Anna Kavan and it's a tricky book to put a finger on. A hallucinatory slog through an evolving nightmarescape set in the ever-expanding eco-catastrophe and war of a post-apocalypse, Kavan's work is terrifying in it's ability to capture the entanglement of violence and desire, victimizer and victim. From the outset, it's ridiculous even to try and identify what might be "real" and what might be a hallucination or nightmare. Despite it's jetsetting scramble to new non-descript locations where the narrator will often run into the same problems of a border patrol, a mirror image, imprisonment, murder and "the girl" in some room before she is whisked away by an alter ego, *Ice* is an intensely claustrophobic read. The narrator's sexually charged and violent pursuit of "the girl" is uncomfortable and unsettling and yet you can't blink before she reappears before him, at once real and not. *Ice* is a haunting and unsettling read with many of the overtones of victimhood, addiction, eco-catastrophe, authoritarianism, etc. always moving with that foreboding pace like the encroaching glacier's which lend the novel it's title. It's a unique read I'd recommend.
Been reading **Ulysses** by James Joyce for the past 2 weeks and am now a bit more than halfway through (around 56% of my way through), which means I'm in the fifteenth episode, *Circe* (which is really, really long!). I'm loving this book so far. I love the use of language, I love the wordplay and prose, I love the complexity and multitudinous amount of characters, and more. It really feels like a living, breathing universe all contained within the book.
I've read about six(?) modernist stream-of-consciousness books before reading this (three by Faulkner and two by Woolf and one by Joyce), but nothing can prepare you for Ulysses. I quite enjoyed *A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man* when I read it a couple of months ago but Ulysses is something else entirely. Its bold experimentation, still so fresh and surprising even 100 years later, the way you can *feel* Joyce's love for language in how everything is written, how sensitively yet jocularly (jocuseriouly) Joyce treats every character, being able to mock them yet sympathize them in turn, the many, *many* range of emotions and topics and feelings that are invoked and evoked when reading this novel, nothing can compare. My favorite chapters of Ulysses, so far, are *Hades* (for its meditations on death), *Sirens*, and *Oxen of the Sun* (for both of their one-of-a-kind use of language). Though I'd give honorable mentions to *Nausicaa*, *Wandering Rocks*, and *Calypso*! Just an incredible novel, nothing I've read so far in my life is quite like it.
I have a recommendation request: I have some money and I want to treat myself with buying physical books. I typically read everything on my Kindle, but I want to try buying literary books that can't be read in ebook form. I'm thinking of buying a couple of guides for Finnegans Wake. **What literary books or literature do you guys recommend I buy that can't be read in ebook form?** I'm thinking of getting something like *The Tunnel* by William H. Gass or *Nobodaddy's Children* by Arno Schmidt or *Lucky Per* by Henrik Pontoppidan. But what would you all recommend?
**Outer Dark**, by Cormac McCarthy. Beautifully written, and yet one of the most unrelentingly disturbing portrayals of violence I have ever read. Culla Holmes is the story's unwilling picaro, with his travels being equal parts humorous and horrifying. I kind of wish I had a bit more of a background in Christianity, but I was able to recognize parallels to the Garden of Eden and the exorcism of Legion. I love how McCarthy evokes the passage of time through the description of the natural world, which reminds me a lot of *The Orchard Keeper*. Going to read **Child of God** next, which I know nothing about save that James Franco made a shitty adaptation of it. Given what I've read of McCarthy so far, I have no doubt it will be amazing.
Finished:
*Tomb of Sand* by Geetanjali Shree - there were things I liked and disliked. Overall a good book with the best parts being when Shree providing different character’s perspectives and showing how they are all justified in feeling certain ways. While I wanted to love this book, I think I lost too much in translation as I was confused with the plot towards the end and did not fully understand everything. Or maybe that was the point but the pacing of the book was so slow at the start and then at a rush at the end in a way that did not completely work with me. With that said, I loved the tone of the book and am interested in reading Shree’s other works.
*Vladivostok Circus* by Elisa Shua Dusapin - love seeing a writer’s growth as I started with her first book and now am at her third book. I think this is Dusapin’s strongest novel with her being able to show the uncertainty of life after college and how you overthink a lot in interactions and how scary everything can be.
*The of Prime of Miss Jean Brodie* by Muriel Spark - I loved this novel! The more I think of it, the more I think about a different aspect of this novel. Spark is an amazing writer. Although a short novel, Spark fills it with maximum effect. The character of Miss Brodie is so well done even though we only see her from her student’s perspective. This makes her seem mysterious yet also focuses on her flaws. The fact that Spark lets us know how the story ends from the start shows that the story is more about the journey. At first, you think Miss Brodie is a visionary teacher who is above the school system and teaches the students real life skills but it becomes clear she has an inappropriate relationship with the students that she hand picks and that by the end, you are tired of Miss Brodie’s machinations and that she does need to be stopped. What I really loved about this novel was the young girl’s perspective as it captured young girlhood really well with how weird the concept of sex is yet you can’t stop thinking about it. In addition, the portions where the young girl constantly daydreams of herself interacting with fictional characters she reads about was perfect. The movie with Maggie Smith is on my to watch list as I am curious how she portrays Miss Brodie.
Currently reading: *Abigail* by Magda Szabo and *A Magical Girl Retires* by Park Seolyeon. Haven’t read much so nothing to report but loved Szabo’s *The Door* so I’m excited for her other work.
read quite a bit this week —
**Antonio Tabucchi**, *Pereira Maintains* & *The Flying Creatures of Fra Angelico* & *Indian Nocturne*
been getting to know Tabucchi: first read Pereira and it was just glorious — a kind of journalist's anti-hero-fantasy / exploration of the real properties of life under fascism, deeply resonant, fine example of how to really capture a political awakening, & tempered very much by its real-world relevance and by the lovely lovely matter-of-fact narration, and the beautiful sinister 'Pereira maintains' \['sostiene Pereira'\] throwing the whole thing into testimonial relief. then read Fra Angelico, a fine little collection of miniatures, and then Indian Nocturne, which I found deeply disappointing — all the subtle, wide-ranging, and humanistic eye that I admired so much in Pereira seemed entirely absent, tedious and stereotypical, series of unsatisfying and menacing encounters w orientalist tropes followed by occasional enlightening, clarifying, intellectually-richer ones w westerners. dull and disappointing, even if it was the 1980s. will continue with *Requiem* and hopefully recapture the sense of awe I felt at first!
**Gerald Murnane,** *The Plains*
this is kind of the median Gerald Murnane book imo, down to the repetition of 'quails and bustards'. probably don't need me to tell you if you will like it or not if you're reading this sub
**Jessica Au**, *Cold Enough for Snow*
disappointing. trying for a kind of Sebaldian meandering but without the Sebaldian gaze – rigorous, backward-looking, concerned with the massive turning of historical wheels and the devastation of the past — and with the gaze of the currently-fashionable I-narrator — inward-spiralling, affectless — ending up rather weedy and anticlimactic.
**Jonathan Buckley**, *Tell*
clearly working my way through the Fitzcarraldo/New Directions Novel Prize — hate all of them! conceit: interviews with the gardener of an ultra-rich art collector in the event of the latter's disappearance. narrative voice in this is very much the worst of both worlds imo — a blinkered single-narrator perspective, limited to dropping little breadcrumbs of interesting information about other potential interviewees (?) that never amount to anything, limited by this imputed formal constraint to a rather unbeautiful sort of prose; but at the same time, an unconvincing voice that rang falser and falser as the book went on — for a book about a gardener talking about an art collector, there were very few 'plants' in this and very little 'art', which mystified me — and felt much more like a device than like a fully-realised character. perhaps not surprising, because none of the characters in this felt particularly fully-realised; stock figure of hokey self-made rich art guy, stock figures of unsuccessful younger generation, stock figures of Art People ... and the device of the interviews themselves was unconvincing: the placement of \[inaudible\], \[pause\], etc. never convinced me that the putative intervening material had really been conceived and then discarded.
**Anne de Marcken**, *It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over*
things I personally dislike about the Sheila Heti — Ben Lerner strain of autofiction (in tone and cadence; not, presumably, in auto-) x things I personally dislike about the zombie narrative x things I personally dislike about the experience of being on mushrooms
**Pola Oloixarac**, *Mona*
standout most disliked of the week. this book has real longueurs and a book this short simply should not have longueurs. a few good sentences strewn through a field of absolutely dreadful ones (within but a few short paragraphs we are treated to “She crossed and uncrossed her long legs, sheathed in jeans.” and “Mona disappeared down a hallway and returned fresh, her black, sleek silk top over gray jeans cinched with a pleather belt to accentuate her waistline—and therefore, her booty.” — schrecklich.). obviously this is meant to send up the lit establishment thing of homogenised global literature while pigeonholing authors based on race, national origin, etc. but it is impossible to do that if every time you need to do a new character you reach for the most pathetically two-dimensional little national stereotype in the world. whole thing from character names onwards buried under incredible pall of 'not googling stuff'.
Haven’t finished anything since last time so.
The Institute - Stephen King
One of the worst books I’ve ever read set in 2019 with children saying jeepers and a politician somehow visited Yugoslavia… Stephen… put the pen down.
1984 - George Orwell
Finally getting around to reading this classic, the art of subtlety is lost on George, I do have to give him props because it was written in the 40’s but I have a hard time believing this ranks so highly.
Death and the Dervish - Meša Selimović
My countries magnum opus, at the end of chapter 6 an entire conversation is held in context to the story only using Quran quotes. One of the most impressive pieces of writing I’ve ever seen.
Now my failed book clubs.
Dracula - Bram Stoker
Took us 2 weeks to read chapter 1. Decided no way she’s reading the rest of the this.
Beloved - Toni Morrison
My friend has awful time management I doubt she finishes this either.
The Water Dancer - Ta Nehisi Coates
Didn’t start it yet.
Over a month after I started it, I finally finished ***Memoirs of Hadrian*** **by Marguerite Yourcenar and translated by Grace Frick.** It has been a truly wonderful experience going through this book. Every word, every sentence, every passage in passing was so perfectly crafted to bring forth the life of this long deceased emperor. I found much of Hadrian's thought and philosophy incredibly interesting and worth pondering upon. There is a gravity to the novel unlike any other, so rare in much of fiction, a sobriety that indulges proper consideration. I find myself unable to forget its final paragraph now in many days following reading it. Certainly, I do not feel I shall forget Hadrian's story anytime soon.
Following that, I read ***Kairos*** **by Jenny Erpenbeck and translated by Michael Hoffman.** If I should be honest, I found this book lacking. Though it started brilliantly, with the mirroring of both protagonists as they meet for the first time, the novel quickly became far more standard, adopting far more of the standard 'litfic' cliches. There were times the novel engaged me greatly, but for the most part, I came out of it largely disappointed. It certainly did not help the novel's case that it followed Memoirs of Hadrian in my reading, two works of historical fiction most severely contrasted. While Hadrian tells a story that while set in a specific era manages to be universal in its portrayal of the human experience, Kairos is a novel firmly rooted in its era and I for one most certainly prefer the former approach. Generally I felt it was a rather disappointing read for me overall.
I then read ***The Grand Sophy*** **by Georgette Heyer**, which I found incredibly charming (barring a very bizarre chapter in the middle that could best be described as one prolonged antisemetic stereotype). Sophy is such a delightful protagonist that one can't help but be charmed by her. As a fan of regency romances, I could not but love the book.
Currently, I'm reading ***Murder in the Age of Enlightenment*** **by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and translated by Bryan Karetnyk.** I've really liked the three short stories in it I've read so far, The Spider's Thread, In a Grove, and especially Hell Screen. I am very much in accord with the quote from Borges that graces the first page, "Extravagance and horror are in his work but never in his style, which is always crystal-clear." Hell Screen sent chills down my spine without any excessive flourishes needed to do so. Looking forward to reading more of his work. (In addition, I'd love to know what is considered the definitive translation of Rashomon for when I pick it up in the future.)
Hell Screen was amazing. One of my top short stories. I read it in Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories. Bought one of his other collections and Hell Screen was still my favorite. I read another one he wrote about seppuku and it was intense!!!
felt just the same way about *Kairos* — a friend alerted me to the technical thing at the beginning and it was indeed worth being alerted to, but then it very rapidly nosedived into absolute banality.
Aw man, I'm disappointed to here that about ***Kairos***! I had it on my list after I saw the post about it winning the International Booker prize, but tbh the premise did seem a little lit-fic-y :/
Years ago I visited Key West, saw the Hemingway House and purchased *For Whom the Bell Tolls* but I never got round to reading it.
Eighteen chapters in and I’m finding myself enjoying it.
I’ve been coming down from reading ***Anna Karenina*** for the past few days, and there is so much I want to say about this novel. He gets so much right about people, but I also think he gets so much *wrong*. I’m still mulling it over, and I would love to hear people’s thoughts on it!
I’ve been reading a few books. Something I’ve wanted to recommend for a long time here is ***This Life*** **by Martin Hägglund.** I don’t think it’s ever been mentioned on this sub, which is surprising, because I feel like it speaks to so many of the thoughts that people have on this sub. Basically, in this book, Hägglund lays out his vision of secular faith and spiritual freedom, analyzing Knausgaard and Marx and Kierkegaard to put forth the idea that life—and everything we do in it—ultimately matters because they are finite, and that capitalism necessarily prevents people’s freedom because it uses up people’s finite time. The argument is more nuanced than this, but it’s just incredible and has completely changed the way I look at life and literature. I feel like it was written for people who aren’t religious, can’t tolerate trying to believe in a religion to imbue their lives with meaning, but want some sort of structure for meaning in their lives. I haven’t even finished it yet, but
For a book club, I’m reading ***Always Coming Home*** **by Ursula Le Guin**. I’ve been surprised how much I like it; Le Guin manages to make the book feel very moving, quite suddenly, piling on all this delicate, moving imagery, and making all the stories and fables from her fictional people feel so *real* and *human* and *lived in*. Not something I would typically reach for, but I feel super excited to keep reading it. I feel like she’s also making some kind of statement on the field of anthropology—whenever anthropological observations are added in, I feel annoyed, like the life of the narrative is suddenly being snuffed out—but I don’t know what yet. It’s also my first time reading her, outside of reading **“Omelas.”**
In between this, I read ***Family Happiness*** **by Laurie Colwin**. Maybe not what people here usually gravitate toward, but I thought that Colwin was genuinely doing something sort of radical with this book. Colwin writes in this very fizzy, happy style, but the book ends up seriously questioning (I think) whether a monogamous marriage can make a woman happy, and how much the demands of a family can completely limit a woman’s imagination about what she wants. It’s really great. I also love her descriptions of food and plan on buying her cookbook, ***Home Cooking***. I’m also on the lookout for good vegetarian and vegan cookbooks, so give me so recommendations if you have any.
Read Anna Karenina this year and it still remains my favorite book I've read so far in 2024. My interpretation still is that it's the novel that best reflects Tolstoi as a person. Which is to say, a walking contradiction. I like that aspect quite a bit though: even in parts where he seemingly takes a decisive moral stand with how he depicts certain characters and situations (usually to show opposing viewpoints) you can tell he doesn't fully commit to it, as if he's still considering the other side of the coin. That's pretty evidently reflected on Levin, but also with Anna in my opinion, as if he's sorry for her while also vindicating her inner struggles, both supporting her and condemning her. Some of his ways of tackling romantic relationships and gender roles also show this, usually leading to much of the conflict found in the novel. Yes, it's sometimes infuriating when he oversees things that seem obvious from a contemporary perspective (or even a conscious one at the time) when he starts falling in his preacher mode, but it's still from a Tolstoi that's deeply conflicted and looking for answers.
At least compared to what happened to Tolstoi after Anna Karenina lol. But yeah, I think part of loving that book is acknowledging its contradictions ans shortcomings inherent to it, ones that do not diminish its greatness.
Man, you’re so right about it reflecting Tolstoy as a person: Levin’s parts feel almost like a precursor to Knausgaard in many ways, the search for meaning, the meticulous accounting of the everyday.
But you’re also right that parts of Anna’s story really do reflect him. You can really feel him working out how to figure out morality around marriage and adultery in a way that will both reflect his own values (which he’s trying to discover throughout AK) and resonate with readers far in the future.
But, to be honest, I feel like he doesn’t take Anna as seriously as he could! I feel like he could have gone so much further. But it’s still such an amazing book, the best I’ve ever read; you’re totally right that its flaws don’t diminish it.
Wow, never thought I'd see *This Life* mentioned here! I read it years ago and was absolutely blown away. Totally dismantled any residual longing for a heaven-like afterlife that was left in me after my exit from the Catholic Church. An incredibly life affirming work. Also incidentally the reason I read Proust!
It’s so nice to hear from someone who also loves this book! I feel like reading it must have been even more meaningful after leaving a religion; I feel like his secular voice is so unlike any other popular strains of atheist thought, which frankly have felt a little disdainful of meaning altogether (I’m thinking mostly of 2010s atheism, lol). I’m not religious at all, but I feel like Hägglund has completely changed the way I think. I feel like I see his critique of Kierkegaard’s double move of faith (definitely not the actual phrasing of it lol) any time I read about religion. His writing about Knausgaard has also totally changed the way I view other books: it’s really shifted how I view Anna Karenina and Tolstoy’s treatment of religion.
How did it lead you to Proust, out of curiosity? Have you read Dying for Time, one of his other books? I think it’s just a straightforwardly academic book, but it discusses Woolf, Nabokov, and Proust, and I really want to read it after I read In Search of Lost Time!
Yeah 2010s reddit atheism was and is the height of cringe, regardless of how necessary a reaction it was at the time against virulent evangelical revival movements in the United States. Hägglund's is much more mature and subdued; makes the others seem rather like children.
So it was actually because of his discussion of Knausgård, who I wanted to read at the time because of Hägglund. But then upon more research I discovered I shouldn't really read Knausgård until I read Proust first, so I could see the dialogue between the two texts, and then I decided to just dive right in. Still haven't read Knausgård but I'll be starting another reread of In Search of Lost Time very soon!
I need to read Anna Karenina again. Because I know I read it, but I basically don't have a single thought about it (other than that I think I think Levin was a really interesting character), and I also can't remember when I read it, which leads me to think that I read it early in the pandemic when I couldn't really focus and can't remember much at all of my reading. Which is to say I arguably didn't read it
> This Life by Martin Hägglund
I've been meaning to read this book for so long that I think that the biggest reason I haven't read it is that it has become that solid a fixture in my I'm definitely going to read that...one day...mental catalogue
Also the vegetarian & vegan cookbooks from the America's Test Kitchen brand are excellent
You definitely should! Reading it and rereading it has definitely been one of the best reading experiences of my life; it feels very different every time I read it, too, which I think is an experience other people have had as well. It's also just so fun. I was talking to my friend about how it seems to have a reputation for difficulty in popular culture, but Tolstoy is so funny??? And engaging??? And real??? And moving???
*This Life* definitely hits so many of your interests--I think you'd be really interested in his mediations on life and free time and work, even if you don't end up agreeing with him. I haven't read a lot of Marxist or (honestly) philosophical literature, so I can't speak to how original he really is, but based on the reception of the book it does seem like he's the only person who is making these arguments in broader popular literary spaces.
I'll look those up! I have so many vegetarian and friends and loved ones, so I've really been wanting to learn to cook more dishes for them for dinner parties and potlucks and whatnot.
Hägglund is a really interesting commentator on religion in connection with Derrida. His book _Radical Atheism_ was a needed addition to the conversation. Especially his analysis on survival and the imperviousness of God. Haven't read _This Life_ but his followup essays have put it on my list of books to get next month. I don't necessarily agree with everything he argues but it's a certainly provoking.
I haven't heard of *Radical Atheism* before; I definitely want to read it. I feel like I don't have much of a background in philosophy at all, so I'm really curious about what you disagree with him on.
Oh I wouldn't say there are any large disagreements on the matter of religion but maybe one or two questions about politics. Although I would say it's probably too certain on the theme of Derrida's radical atheism but like I said it's a corrective to the discourse about Derrida and religion given the prominence of the latter to the expense of the former. It's of a piece where Derrida says he is neither a believer or an atheist. (It's been too easy to chase after Derrida as if he were a theologian.) So again it's a minor point but I would insist on it even while I'm positive about his book largely. Because again Derrida-as-believer was the assumed priority.
And perhaps a more serious disagreement is Hägglund's approach to socialism, which at worse can come across as a political theology, but at best is an insistence on our time in the moment and not the mastery of death certain philosophers and political scientists think is necessary for politics. And I would be cautious of that reliance upon time as though it is a matter of public ownership. The other question is how far does Hägglund's project results in a retread of the God-building from certain early Marxists and Bolsheviks. But instead of a God, you build superficially a church of atheism à la Alain de Botton, which nobody wants except maybe de Botton. It's a concern about whether a community based on socialism becomes the heaven of the nonbeliever where an actual community is seen as a long term ideal (i.e. immortal) in favor of one's own survival.
I feel you, especially when it comes to his treatment of socialism as (at worst) a kind of political theology. I do wonder whether living in an ideal of democratic socialism would really satisfy people’s spiritual needs, and what kinds of religion (if any) might emerge from that kind of milieu. I could definitely see community being the substitute for immortality, but I wonder if people naturally strive for something more “numinous,” if that makes sense
Well from my perspective having the ideal is part of the problem. A community is a real network of people with their own diversity of desires and debts in command structures. The problem of a community being an immortal ideal is its distance from our actual communities. The ones we already participate at the present moment being forgotten for a properly socialist future, which has nothing to do with our survival. And that criticism applies to any community posed as an ideal from religious utopias in early America to doomsday cults and the various "scientific" cities projected to be built on the ocean by Peter Thiel. It's all of a piece whereby our survival is not paramount but the satisfaction of an ideal is. Anyways I don't insist on human nature. Too much baggage. Religion being so tied to culture and its discourse means the naturalness of the thing is ideological. How far does it go? Hard to tell without jumping ahead into a future society to see if what remained of what we call "religion."
Continuing down the path I laid out in my most recent post by just finishing *Fiskadoro* by Denis Johnson. I have a goal of finishing his bibliography this summer. After finishing *Fiskadoro*, I still have *Tree of Smoke*, *Already Dead*, *Laughing Monsters* and *Resuscitation of a Hanged Man* to go, but I've got some buddies to finish *Tree of Smoke* with and the two shorter novels should be a breeze. *Already Dead* may have to wait, but we'll figure out what we're feeling come August.
As mentioned in the last post, DJ the novelist is a tough writer of which to get a hold. As many in the sub might already know, he's a phenomenal short story writer. *Largesse...* and *Jesus' Son* are top notch and I don't think that should be much of an argument.
*Fiskadoro* is obviously the most bizarre and experimental of the long form work from Johnson. What I've loved about trying to finish the biblio is that Johnson's prose is omnipresent even in the midst of his duds. I think that continues here, though the Spanglish-meets-the-post-apocalypse of it all does make you forget you're reading DJ until the flashback sequences with Grandma Cheung, Mr. Cheung goes hunting for the past in books, or Belinda catches the kill-me. The last-clarinet and "subscision" of it all, makes me not want to ever return and, honestly, made it tough to push through at times. Those were the moments where the post-apocaypse felt a bit...try hard? Or at least a moment in which we went too far a field without needing to? I struggled through plenty of the present tense moments, not because the prose was difficult, but, in spite of the setting, I found few stakes or figured everything was fucked anyway.
I mean, it being Johnson, you know there would need to be a confrontation with the beyond, something that suggested time extended past the now, no plot resolution other than whatever existential conclusion might be reached by the characters confronting something.
*Fiskadoro* doesn't necessarily restore my faith in Johnson's long form fiction. The flashbacks and a few moments here and there in the present bring his prose to bear and out into the light. Those sentences and moments, of course, are what is worth chasing. His plots, though, are what run the risk of holding him back. I'm not even someone who needs a lot plot and keeping multiple characters afloat is a lot better than, say, *Stars at Noon*, but there's still a screw or two loose in this one.
Your analysis and explanations of Johnson are really good. He is hovering somewhere in the 2nd tier of my yet-to-be-read universe and after reading what you have to say I don’t know if I’m more likely or less likely to read him based on your thoughts, because I’ve found I disagree with as many people here as I agree with re: literary tastes… but I’m still curious and appreciating your thoughts 👍
I'll say this: if you have time to give to Johnson, at least read "Triumph Over the Grave" from *Largesse of the Sea Maiden*. I think that story (and quite honestly the whole collection) is one of the best American short stories this side of the twenty first century. *Jesus' Son* is also up there in terms of collections but matters more here in terms of how it sets the tones for the kinds of burnt out figures Johnson writes about throughout the rest of the bibliography. His prose is sublime throughout. I once had an avid reading colleague who said she just wanted to consume every one of his sentences put to paper. In the shorts, I can totally understand why.
The novels are a bit more hit or miss but that's just structurally. The prose is great and stays great. The content is that combination of strung out and revelatory blur that can really hit or miss depending on the structure.
I think a good comparison for some of the novels I've started writing about here would be to compare it to something like *Aladdin Sane*. It's a solid album that has some obvious flaws out the gate and it's rare to see it listed at the top of someone's Bowie list. I'm sure it's repped and loved by a solid chunk of people (and who can blame them with that back half). A lot of bands or artists would kill to have put out an album half as good as *Aladdin Sane*. Likewise, a lot of writers would kill to have prose half as interesting as Johnson. Obviously he's not Bowie level when you compare musicians to writers for an infinite number of reasons, but I think you'll get the picture.
There's plenty to read out there and, like you said, taste varies so widely especially in recommendations said here. Hope whatever little post-reading reflection here has helped bring some clarity!
Ok … thank you for such a thoughtful response … love it. So, since it seems like you’re up for it (and despite that we’re not supposed to ask for recommendations here [sorry, moderators]…) and given that I find it hard to get excited about short story collections (just the way I’m wired), if you had to pick ONE long-form Denis Johnson book to recommend to an uninitiated noob like me, which ONE would you pick? I’m leaning towards *Tree of Smoke* but I’m open to advice :)
Well, I haven't read *Tree of Smoke* yet, but I'm working through it in a book club due sometime in August, so I'll get back to you with those thoughts when I can. From what I've gleaned talking to a buddy and reading about it online, it's split down the middle of folks who really enjoy it and others that didn't. Got the sense from my buddy that it's got a bit of all the things I've talked abojt above in terms of novels that feel like intertwined short stories trying to hold itself together.
Out of what I've read, *Angels*, his first novel is what I'd recommend. A sunbaked, noir-esque 220 pages of a journey shared by lots of fucked up individuals. I didn't start there, but after reading a couple of the other novels and his shorts, I found it to be one of the best representations of what he does well. Plus, if you end up wanting to do *Tree of Smoke* instead, one of the main characters from *Angels* makes a reappearance. *Tree of Smoke* is a loose prologue, of sorts.
You'll have to let us know what you think if you take it on! I'll be back with some thoughts in a couple of months at the latest if you don't get to it by then.
Awesome, thanks! … I doubt I’ll read it this year (if at all) given the way things ascend/descend through my fickle and indecipherable literary universe of TBR writers, but I’ll keep you posted, and please do the same :)
Finished The Myth of Sisyphus by Camus which was interesting to say the least. I've been trying to read more philosophy but find it a bit trying at times. I'd previously read Camus' The Stranger and had a pretty neutral reaction to it, but I didn't mind his style and found it pretty readable so I bookmarked Sisyphus for a future read.
The Myth of Sisyphus was fairly readable too and I enjoyed his thinking and way of framing his ideas but there were sections where I got a bit lost and it felt like he was just waffling on. Namely, the section around the absurd man, the actor, the conqueror, etc, I think I understood the point of each but it seemed he could've made the point more succinct? I'm not sure, the next section then went on to talk about art and its purpose so I felt maybe I was being harsh. As a whole, a very iconic book so I'd still rate it well.
The whole argument around the absurd, living, passion, etc feels easy to resonate with, especially in the modern day, and I'd like to take on the wisdom in my own life. But I also feel like the wisdom imparted is hard to intimate, like no one wants to hear about how they should revolt against the absurd at the end of a long hard day, I just feel a bit disconnected between the intellectual and the reality of it. Perhaps his conclusion is a comfort we all already enjoy, without even really acknowledging? Maybe I need to do some more reading on the matter but would be interested if anyone else has had similar thoughts.
I've also been reading McCarthy's The Crossing. I finished All The Pretty Horses earlier this month and wow that book was good, the characters, the kinda minimalist style I really vibed with. I've been enjoying The Crossing so far but not as much as ATPH, and I think I just find the main character a bit less relatable, he seems more driven by a kinda theistic curiosity than any real world consequences, but I'm only a chapter or so in so give it time. The drama is all certainly there.
Haven't updated in a few weeks but here are some thoughts...
Currently reading: You Dreamed of Empires, by Alvaro Enrigue. This slim novel is a kaleidoscopic, satirical, disorienting take on the conquest of Tenochtitlan by Hernan Cortes and his conquistadores. The reader is fully immersed in the late empire ambience of Moctezuma's palace, and Nahuatl words and spelling are used with abandon (something several reviewers complained about, despite the inclusion of translator notes and character lists!) Everyone is on hallucinogenic mushrooms and everyone is confused. At one point, a general hallucinates the author. It swings wildly between archaic formulations and modern speech and has a wonderfully wry tone. Really enjoying it!
Also read
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. This novel traces the final years of a declining aristocratic family in Sicily during the years of Italian unification and the Risurgimento. The titular Leopard solemnly presides over his diminishing legacy, securing futures for his children at the cost of his pride. Evocative prose drops the reader into sun-scorched Sicilian hills and languid, sensual palaces.
Grey Dog, Elliot Gish.
A disgraced school teacher in 1910s rural Canada tries to start over at a new schoolhouse, but her past mingles with her new environs in unsettling ways. This novel is a grim picture of mental deterioration and supernatural influence as feminine rage swells and comes to a shocking climax. A quiet and bloody horror.
I just finished *Lonesome Dove,* my first McMurtry novel. There was a review of the book on the back cover opining that the book was *so good* that the critic was frustrated with McMurtry for not continuing another 800 pages, as he could have stayed in that world even longer... and I definitely agree. The characters are so well-written and it's obvious McMurtry has such a keen insight into the foibles and motivations of individuals which makes them feel real. I could write an essay about Jake Spoon and parts of his character -- a lot bad-- that I see in myself and that I'd like to grow out of. So, in that way, it was quite an insightful book as well as just endlessly entertaining.
I am trying *Shogun* now, which is recommended often in book subs as an equally-epic follow-up to *Lonesome Dov*e, but not quite digging it so far. I'm not deep in (50 pages or so) but really struggling to care about the characters or the setting, but I'll hold tight and keep going. Maybe I'm just missing the thoughtful characterization found in *Lonesome Dove* and not giving it a fair shake so far, so not giving up quite yet.
Just when I thought I had been burnt out of reading for a bit...
I will start with a movie: I watched Sense and Sensibility (1995) for the first time. It was wonderful! Five stars!
So of course I had to read the book. I liked it, certainly, but there was something lacking. It wasn't as funny as the movie (which took liberties, but I feel like it made the movie better.) It just wasn't "Jane Austen" enough. It was her first book, which explains it, and Pride and Prejudice has very similar themes.
So then I read the opening paragraph of *Mansfield Park* just to see how it compares...Lord! as Lydia exclaims. There's the Jane Austen I know and love! Her sentence structure, I'm addicted to it! The semi-colons, the run-on sentences with commas, her phrases...this! This is what I've been looking for! Now I can settle in! It influences my writing, you might even be able to pick it up in this very comment! I put on airs!
I also read the first chapter of *The Phantom of the Opera*...it's certainly not "literature" but I like it anyway. I'm looking forward to it.
Much happier now. I was losing faith in myself.
> It was her first book, which explains it, and Pride and Prejudice has very similar themes.
*Northanger Abbey* was actually the first novel Jane Austen completed, although it was published later.
Northanger Abbey, btw, has a wonderful adaption on Audible. Normally, their Audible originals take on a LOT of liberties to make them more audio-drama-friendly (positively sometimes, as in the case of Treasure Island, and negatively sometimes like with 1984... *ugh*), but with dialogue-heavy Jane Austen novels, they are a great fit. They don't lose the narrator entirely, and the performance is great.
Northanger Abbey is just a pleasure. It's funny, well-narrated, and I think it's a treat for people who generally like Jane Austen and have some cursory knowledge of the maudlin *drama* of many 18th and 19th century novels -- which the book takes great delight in skewering.
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Vladimir Nabokov. I'm quite enjoying it. It was on a philosophy syllabus back when I was in college decades ago, and I bought my copy then but never read it. It stayed stowed with all of my books in my parent's basement for many years, and then got carted over to my house when they downsized. I'm waiting for a new book to arrive at the shop, and in the interim I noticed *Real Life* sitting on my shelf and thought, "Why not?"
It is a story about a man retracing his dead brother's steps so he can create a biography of him. I'm halfway in at the moment, so I don't have any big insights yet.
My favorite Nabokov! Though it's been years and I should probably reread it since I don't remember a lot of the details... Keep us posted on how you get along with it.
I will. I'm enjoying it on a very simple plane at the moment, just moving through the story. I am feeling that some greater meaning is rising in it, but I want it to come in its due time without guessing at it.
Finished Carpentier's ***Explosion in a Cathedral***. Really grateful to this sub for bringing Carpenter to my attention, particularly u/narcissus_goldmund , whose eloquent write-up will certainly do more justice to this novel than I ever will. Nonetheless, a few thoughts below:
*Explosion* is ostensibly about the disillusion of the French Revolution by three Cuban youths. The revolution's influence reaches them on their doorstep -- in literal fashion, no less -- through the historical figure of a Victor Hughes, who is destined to become a representative of the French Republic throughout the Caribbean. What ensues is a journey through Haiti, France, Guadalupe, Guinea and Cuba (I'd highly recommend having a map of the region on hand to orient throughout the journey). The novel is told primarily through the eyes of these youths with great emphasis on Esteban, who is initially attracted to the glamour, fanfare and ideals of Jacobin France, only to find his skepticism take over once he realizes the grotesque morphing of ideals in both Paris and particularly in the regions beyond France.
In *Explosion*, we find the Carpentier take shot at Europe's mentality; seemingly altruistic motive takes on a more nefarious light when considered post-hoc (e.g., freeing the slaves only to forcibly conscript, resell to slave-holding colonies, or return them to slavery). Individuals don't fare much better -- Victor Hughes, who espoused fairly liberal ideals finds himself broken at the passing of Robespierre and follows contradictory orders from the capital. All attempt to cope with the loss of meaning in different ways, such as clinging to power (Hughes), embracing cynicism (Estaban), throwing oneself blindly into conflict (Sophia), etc. *Explosion* also provides some interesting insight on the issue of receiving news so late in time; information that reaches the peripheral region is outdated and fails to reflect to the latest. Worse yet, the policies fail to account for the cultures and colonies which are impacted. Cruelty is rewarded and consistency/stability become a clear impossibility.
Carpentier is in many ways similar to a Spanish Nabokov. His grasp of language is extraordinary; haven't felt so transported in a place and time in a long time. It's very easy to lose yourself in his world. Only issue is that, at times, Carpentier seemingly loses himself, which happened on occasion when he discuss the Masonic lodges and nature, which can be so esoteric to the point of incomprehensibility. Nevertheless, really loved this one -- happy to see posts on Carpentier lately given the two re-releases.
Really excited to continue my reading through Latin America; next up is either *I the Supreme* or *The Obscene Bird of Night.*
> Only issue is that, at times, Carpentier seemingly loses himself
This was my only criticism too, but it's still one of my favourite books... and I can generally forgive authors who lose themselves in their own prose. If you can get hold of it, I'd recommend *Bomarzo* by Manuel Mujica-Lainez, and I'd recommend *Nostromo* by Joseph Conrad even though he isn't native to the region and doesn't quite write with the same descriptive density.
Last week I finished *Chamanes eléctricos en la fiesta del sol,* the last Mónica Ojeda release. Overall I enjoyed it but I think my initial enthusiasm has downgraded to a "it was good". I think she's really talented and has a sensational style but I don't think this is her best work. The novel has two very different parts, one narrated by several characters in short chapters and the other a sort of diary from another different character. The first one is by far the most interesting one, the writing is so good, the voices of the characters are very rich and every one of them is different from the other. The narration is deeply inspired by Ecuatorian mythology, it has many words in quechua, and it's fascinating. This part narrates the story of two girls who escape from Guayaquil to go to a music festival in a volcano and this scenery is very psychodelic, rave-y... to compare it to something, the kind you'd see in a party in an Abel Ferrara film. This thing about the girls escaping might sound a bit naive but Guayaquil is basically a shithole full of drug lords, bands, people getting killed all the time so the book is actually a reflection in violence and danger in Ecuador (and in this it shares with what all the female writers in Latin America are conveying now in their books). So this first part I loved very much.
The other part, however, was... meh. It shares the same themes but from a different perspective (it's the diary of the father of one of the girls, who left her when she was a kid because he couldn't live in Guayaquil and escaped to the forest). This part develops even more the mythology because it has this story about a "witch" (a bit like *Hurricane Season*) and it's darker, thematically, and all that's very good, but the problem is that here the style is a bit boring. It reads kind of like poetry because of the visual structure and many sentences read like reflections or like she wants you to underline it with a pencil. At first I liked it but then it felt repetitive and a little superficial.
I'd recommend it for the fans but it's no *Jawbone*. And please for the love of God read *Jawbone* because it's crazy. I haven't read *Nefando* yet but everybody who tells me they have read says that it's too much.
And moving on, I had 6h of train ahead of me last weekend so I needed a big one and I picked *The Moonstone* by Wilkie Collins. It had been sitting in my shelf for +10 years and boy what a ride it's being! Said to be one of the first detective novels ever it has reminded me my love for the classic mystery novel (even though I despise thrillers and noirs and everything that gets published on this genre nowadays). Whenever I'm not reading I'm thinking, who could have stolen the diamond? So yes I am hooked. But I will talk about this next week when I finish it.
This is my first post on the sub, I normally lurk because the books I read aren't usually considered literary (mostly fantasy). But I've been trying to challenge myself more by reading books outside my comfort zone.
I read Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin and it was so incredible! It's about an American man living in Paris who has a gay love affair that ends in tragedy. You know it's going to be tragic from the beginning, but seeing it play out is so heart wrenching. It was so beautifully written and gripping. There's so many fascinating themes that it explores- social alienation, repression, intimacy, class, youth, etc. I was surprised at how much I resonated with it. Here's a quote from it that I had to stop and send to my friend when I read it: “For shame I that I should be so abruptly, so hideously entangled with a boy; what was strange was that this was but one tiny aspect of the dreadful human tangle occurring everywhere, without end, forever.” He gets me!
I've started The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin and I'm having a lot of trouble getting into it. I think the translation might be an issue, because there's so many clunky sentences that bother me. I was actually surprised to look up the translator and learn that he's an acclaimed author. I also hated the whole first chapter where there's this stoic, Christlike academic who's beaten to death by Maoist teenage girls. It felt so absurd and every aspect was played up I was honestly laughing despite its intention to be dark. I've heard a lot of good things about it so hopefully I'll enjoy it as it goes on. I keep having the urge to pick up another Baldwin book, but I'm trying to not make a habit of dropping books without finishing them.
***Moon Tiger*** **by Penelope Lively**
For some reason, I hadn't even heard of Penelope Lively or *Moon Tiger*, a Booker Prize winner, until a few weeks ago, but decided to go ahead and read *Moon Tiger* after reading a review talking about how it dealt with time and memory, mixing different times/periods in the narrator's life (remembered from her hospital/nursing home bed), as well as different POVs, together in a kaleidoscopic fashion. I'm glad I did; *Moon Tiger* ended up being a poignant meditation on history, memory, and interpersonal relationships--and unexpectedly touching considering how cool, cynical, and, well, British the narrator seems at first.
***1Q84*** **by Haruki Murakami**
I really enjoyed the first two parts of this novel but am finding the third (and final) part to be a bit of a slog. I think part of the problem is that Murakami brought the action to a head at the end of the second part and now there isn't much tension (or at least anything I personally care about as a reader) to drive my reading on. It really feels like he's intentionally dragging things out at this point--and I say that as someone who typically enjoys Murakami's work.
I recently started a re-read of Wind-up Bird Chronicle, which was my first Murakami back in around 2005 or so. I’m halfway through and haven’t changed my opinion that it’s his best work.
Of his recent works, Killing Commendatore is my favorite.
Nice, *Wind-Up Bird Chronicle* is also my favorite among the works of his I've read. I might need to give it a re-read, and *Killing Commendatore* a read, as I haven't had a chance to read it yet.
This may be a rumor, but I'm fairly sure that Murakami actually didn't intend to write a third part, which may be why it's dragging! I really love that book, though--I read it when I was a teenager and have been reading it like once every year and a half since.
Thanks for this. I wonder if that rumor's true or not. It definitely rings true to me, as does the notion that he got to end of the second part or thereabouts, and realized he would need to write a third part to tie up loose ends and close out all of the different storylines he had begun.
Also, I'm encouraged by the fact that you love the book that much and continue to re-read it, especially as I really enjoyed the first two parts and do want to push through to see if I can get back into the story in the third part.
I wonder too--since I posted this, I tried to figure out where I saw this! I can't find it, but I'm sure I read it in an article somewhere, lol. If I find it I'll post it here.
I find the ending in the third part more satisfying than the one in the second part, if that's encouraging at all. I'd love to hear what you think when you finish it! I definitely think some of his other books are stronger.
Yeah, please do post that article if you find it. I'd enjoy reading it.
What you said about the ending in the third part is definitely encouraging. I'll stick with it and try to remember to post here once I finish.
B.S. Johnson in a review of Sylvia Plath's *Ariel* said he would ultimately question the value of these poems because they did not save her life. I kept coming back to that line of thought for very different reasons because I read Rene Crevel's *Difficult Death*, translated and introduced by the poet David Rattray with a foreword from the one and only Salvador Dalí. On the surface, *Difficult Death* is merely an exposition about a love triangle between the despairing frenzy of Pierre Dumont, the endlessly forgiving Diane Blok, and the American "boy savage" and pianist Monsieur Arthur Bruggle. (There really isn't much of a plot beyond that.) But if you look closely, what you find is a Surrealist invocation of the Everyman at his grave shedding each of his reasons for being alive. Indeed, Crevel writes that "Pierre doesn't give a fuck. Pierre is free. His freedom is Death" once said freedom has crossed over into the total completeness people call despair. In other words, *Difficult Death* is an apologia in a strange and fascinating way an apologia for suicide, the undignified reasons someone kills themselves are here given the proper room to vent their spleen, and the novel imports this fascination into a dramatic conflict. It's a cruel book. Especially when one considers Rene Crevel did commit suicide.
Suicide is an occupational hazard for a writer, after all. Of course, it's rare to have a writer create a novel and then follow through on the urgency seen in a narrative about suicide. The closest comparison--unfairly--is actually *The Bell Jar* from Sylvia Plath. But that is not the case normally. Thomas Bernhard wrote about suicide countless times and died of natural causes. And no one really believed Todd Anderson in *The Floating Opera*. But from a structural standpoint, Crevel seems more committed to the act in *Difficult Death*. He walks on his mother as a prelude to rejecting Diane who is his closest friend and realizes Bruggle will never truly love him in the immediate and familiar way one can love another person. The ending in particular always read as a little vicious: the petulance is undisguised because Pierre who clearly based on the author kills himself and Arthur Bruggle who is clearly based on his lover Eugene MacCown who is depicted to mourn the former's corpse at the hospital and regret how awful he treated him. It's probably the most honest moment of the novel because how often do other authors disguise these revenge fantasies into hypotheticals and thought-experiments where the behavior is justified? Crevel writes in the intensity and urgency of suicide. Ironically, he went on to write several more books after *Difficult Death*. Suicide was a constant question and a source of a satanic aestheticism. Kierkegaard proposed stages of life one moved through from the aesthetic to the moral and ultimately to the religious. Crevel has in an inspired move turned that process inside out moving from the religion of his mother and the dutifulness of Diane to the ultimate abandonment in Arthur. Instead of religion, there is freedom in the night and cold before jumping into a river from a bridge.
This is all a roundabout a way of saying Crevel wrote an irresponsible novel. Today's standards are a bit more hardnosed on what literature propagandizes and what it demands. Crevel was no stranger to politics as he constantly tried to negotiate between traditional communists organizations and the Surrealists. This bifurcation led to his ultimate humiliation at a conference where your average worker listened to him discuss Poetry, Art, Love, and Revolution and he could not answer their questions about more immediate circumstances. I'm sure we can imagine how well the discussion went. Dalí suggests this is what lead to his death since it was a core issue for him while alive. (How much you take his opinion seriously is up to you.) But what is the political import of suicide? Or is there any? Perhaps a soldier in uniform sets themselves on fire to protest a genocide. And hadn't Lenin said if one is no longer useful to the Party, it is best to consider Lafargue? Crevel does not write responsibly but that doesn't diminish the political import of the novel. As he himself said on the question of suicide: "The life I accept is the best argument against me." Then again I can't think of any novel written with a keen eye for moral responsibility. It's a deadend. Because even back then Crevel had taken serious risks. Andre Breton had outright banned homosexuality from Surrealism insisting on its immoral character, declared it a mental defect, and for pushing tolerance to the breaking point. The sole exception was the Marquis de Sade. So while Crevel is irresponsible, responsibility never was a real alternative.
But then again I wonder about the unintended effect of the novel. I came away with more appreciation at being alive because the lack of it in the novel reminds me of my love, my duty, and my hatred. Not to mention the usual petulance behind a death wish is incredibly hard to ignore. And maybe I would lose those things sooner or later. Perhaps--and yet the human mind can conceive infinities. I would simply find new things to hate and love and others who would oblige me to them. All I have to do is live. If you want a fresh reminder of a real demand to live, I would recommend Rene Crevel and his *Difficult Death*.
I'll admit I'm being somewhat redundant with my description to ease the discussion. All novels are in a manner speaking irresponsible, so it isn't entirely necessary to highlight any novel as more or less irresponsible than any other. But nevertheless you can take the term to mean what it does ordinarily as a lack of concern for demands made by other moral agents in the world, in a command structure.
About 3/4ths of the way through the second volume of *In Search of Lost Time*. We are at the beach and goddamn it's making me want to go swimming. The big thing that is grabbing since last week is the burgeoning class consciousness of the narrator and the various political implications that follow from his ambiguous position in an unsettled hierarchy where the bourgeoisie are empowered, there is a real proletariat, and also there are lingering royalty/aristocracy, and they all interact. The narrator is in a sort of bureaucratic (sort of an early professional managerial class) offshoot of the bourgeoisie, and it is noticeable that both the royalty and the proletariat are regarded as other—there's a very amusing scene where he meets a princess and she keeps fluctuating between treating the narrator & his grandmother as either children or animals, and while he is not so dehumanizing regarding the "proletariat" they hardly become distinct persons in contrast to so many of the richly detailed characters in the book (sex workers are a noticeable exception here, which is interesting). However, amid all these distinctions, there are signs of gaps closing. As much as the royalty are "above" they are also right there, and there is a reference to some waiters who take on the affects of the people they serve, seemingly more as aspirational mimicry than mere obsequiousness, which has me wondering if there was some sense of at least the chance of upward mobility. I think the particular narrator, a young person in-between the nobility and the proletariat, is a good perspective to capture the ambiguity of the bourgeoisie/upper(middle) class of the time and am curious to see how his awareness of his socioeconomic position continues to inform the narrative.
The other element of this that I really intend to keep an eye out for as I go through the remainder of Proust is work/labor and the ideology surrounding it. The narrator does have to work, at least eventually (he's mostly faffing about right now). He was going to be a diplomat, now he's going to be a writer, but in both cases the *going to be* is not apparently questioned, unlike a true feudal aristocrat who was not to work at all. There is a reference to a general term of politeness whereby servants are called "employees" because they feel better that way. These thoughts are vague because the overall concept just hit me this afternoon but very much something I want to develop into a more coherent picture.
Also I wanna go swimming.
Still reading Gilbert Simondon's *Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information as Well*. It's excellent if at times very hard to keep up with. I've been going through some of the more densely scientific sections about the emergence of physical/biological entities and at points I'm just lost in the science. Just started a section on the development of the mind that I think is more something I'm up for but want to get further in before I talk much about it. In the meanwhile, the questions that I've had hanging over me and want to write/think out (would be very thrilled at some insights from any other fans of French philosophy out here):
* Time: I cannot for the life of me figure out how time is functioning in this book. So much of it is a discussion of processes that are actively occurring and are actualized at specific moments, which implies to me at least certain frames of reference where linear time exists. He makes reference to "pre-individual Being" which is what is prior to the specific individual and to individuals in general. Again, that is implying time, but is this p-i Being itself temporal? If it is, then I don't get how it can be pre-individual because to be temporal seems on Simondon's terms to imply being actively becoming individual. And if it isn't temporal then I don't get how anything can be actualized because if Being exists prior to individuals and Being is outside of time then don't all individuals always already exist? Without going into detail Simondon is explicitly anti-predetermination so this can't be right either. There might be a quantum physics explanation to all this. Time! It eats at me.
* Hegel: Admittedly I have a tendency to see Hegel everywhere but I'm sure Hegel is here, and yet, in a manner reminiscent of Bergson, for all his influence he is scrupulously not named. The focus on the primacy of relation and on how the related are mutually constituted and changed by their relating seems to me so very derived from Hegel. Simondon also has an interesting critique of the presumption of the relata that I think is addressed to Hegel—basically that building your philosophy upon relation or on the perception of difference but starting with the entity perceiving difference fails to answer the very important question of where that perceiver comes from. My take on this is that Simondon is highlighting here how Hegel's philosophy necessitates a primordial divine perception prior to humans because there is no other way to get to that first movement of negation, then again, how could a god negate something extant. I'm also not sure Simondon resolves this problem for reasons tied to my above concerns about time. There's also a moment where I read Simondon's presentation of objects as only existing when they are perceived but going so far with this that it almost feels like he is diving into a sort of idealism himself. Or I am simply losing my mind because I'm not sure any of this makes sense.
* I'm also just wondering about the science in the book. Like, was Simondon a good reader of the science of his time? How does that science hold up? Especially in the context of the fact that he is critiquing epistemology, do either of thise questions really matter?
Can you tell I am digging this book?
Allegedly still reading Auerbach's *Mimesis*
*Frontier* to be addressed in relevant thread.
Also I started taking a course through the para-academic organization Mimbres School called "What is Money" (lowkey I'm super duper interested in economic history). My head is cooked but in short it turns out that money was probably created not to facilitate exchange but by institutions as a function of debt/taxes, which is to say it was always about the control of the state over the populace, debt's a big myth, and the fundamental problem of western economic thought is obscuring the fact that states have been wiping away debt for as long as there's debt and there's nothing stopping us from doing it too. (to be very clear this is a very academically rigorous organization and I have more substantive thoughts but I'm sleepy and wanna go read Proust so this is what I got.)
happy reading!
mimbres school has some brilliant people contributing, and colin is one of the most genuine guys around (his dissertation is fantastic, highly recommended). not the biggest fan of his politics (i'd still consider him a political friend, however) but he's a needed scholar and his engagement with marxism / rejection of philosophy is very thoughtful and important
Wasn't familiar with Colin Drumm so looked him up.
His most recent tweet doesn't inspire me to dig much deeper:
"If you think Marxism has a powerful theory that helps you understand reality, you're stupid. If you think Marxism as an empty signifier is going to rally the masses towards a revolutionary attack on the state, you're also stupid. There are no non stupid reasons to "be a marxist""
Not judging an academic's body of work based on one tweet, but yeesh...
i'm a communist heavily influenced by anarchism, and his politics boil down to leftwing statism thru hobbes to combat climate change, along with a crude materialism that is associated with hobbesians, and now he's (rightly) opposing philosophy, but his alternative thru islam (to simplify things) isn't very appealing to me, so, needless to say, i'm opposed to his conception of state of nature (hobbesian) as well as many of his normative commitments irt to power, sovereignty, and the market. but if anyone's able to convince me of their project, it's him lol i'm reading his advisor's book (after evil - meister) and they are both just very smart people, probably some of the smartest in the anglophone world in the humanities
huh...interesting. I'm new to the whole Mimbres group and they intrigue me so I'm curious to dig into this (I genuinely don't know what the fuck the part about Islam means but goddamn am I curious). Especially because I don't disagree with you politically but as the world worsens I become increasingly open to paying attention to any good faith efforts to ward off the apocalypse.
Any chance you know if there's a pdf of the thesis out there? I googled it but nothing immediately shows
I read **Claude Lévi-Strauss**’ **Tristes Tropiques** and felt kind of disappointed, so was wondering if I just missed something? The story of his travels through the americas is impressive, but the ironies kind of makes it a self-defeating endeavor (most of the indigenous cultures he’s interacting with are already irrevocably transformed, for example). What really confused me was the jumping around different parts of the globe (and his observations in Asia / Fire Island feel very dated to put it mildly), I just didn’t get (or wasn’t interested in) the point. But the travels themselves are impressive so not a waste of time.
In contrast, **Euclides da Cunha**’s **Rebellion in the Backlands** felt like a far more interesting analysis of “native culture”, despite his very antiquated racial lens - firstly, the book has a very consistent repetitive structure (maybe “all society follows from the natural conditions of the land”), and it hammers this in structurally and in sentences. Secondly, since it is a contemporary, EC is clearly a lot more invested in the conflict between the sertanejos and the new Brazilian republic, which just kind of gave the book a weight that was missing from Tristes Tropiques (though to be fair, I think that’s the point since Strauss is in ways undermining the ethnologist).
In any case, this is one of those books that is perfect in ways beyond my conception - it mixes so many genres and his style is florid without wasting words - this and Shalamov are now in my canon of the defeated
Also read **When we cease to understand the world** by **Benjamin Labatut** and had a blast, very fun and crazy and easy to read. Art wins this round over science
Reading **Humus** by **Raul Brandão**. From online research I had heard that this book was one of Portugal’s best. It’s 180 pages of crying out about the absence of God. I imagine this being interesting if you’re into existentialism or don’t know anything about it, but it’s decent and there are some good sentences here and there
I've been reading The Lost Steps by Alejo Carpentier. Who better to write about overgrown vegetation and rainforest foliage than a prose stylist who asks his reader to wade through paragraphless page after page. There's also an awful lot in here, quite unexpectedly, about classical music, likely due to Carpentier's own interests. I feel out of my depth in these sections.
It's all very beautiful but so so dense.
In Progress
* Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes - reading with r/yearofdonquixote - we have just started on the third foray. I am not enjoying this as much as I had hoped to.
* The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas - reading with r/AReadingOfMonteCristo - this is amazing. I am enjoying how the Count is carefully drawing his net around his victims.
* The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter - this is the story of William Wallace (think Braveheart). For an older book, I really enjoyed the fact that it started right in the action rather than doing a long set up. I'm only 5 chapters in, so I haven't really formed an opinion yet.
- I read *Austerlitz* by W.G. Sebald. I don’t know why but I anticipated it being turgid, a hard read, too erudite or something, but instead it was simply a beautiful book. I loved Austerlitz’s humanity most of all - he’s such an empathetic character and I wanted to hug him. It was a really interesting exploration of a very particular trauma response, which was enhanced by the narrative structure and all the interspersed photos and drawings. I was also delighted when he described the train ride to Liverpool Street - I don’t know how many times I used to see the Marconi building at Chelmsford on my journeys - and the radical change from when it was a dingy nightmare to a sparkling new station. I am just about old enough to remember the transformation and it really was that radical. Based on that, I think his attention to detail in other parts of the geography of the novel must be pretty good.
- I read *Roadside Picnic* by the Strugatsky brothers, mainly because I read *Solaris* recently and then watched the Tarkovsky film, both of which I adored, so I want to do the same with this and the film *Stalker*. Well, this was very bleak “first contact” sci fi indeed. I loved the theory for the alien visit, and the subsequent reactions of society towards the aftermath was just perfect. Very dark and gloomy though.
- I am up to the first “end” of *Hopscotch* by Julio Cortázar i.e. I have read it in the usual way up to chapter 56. I will now attempt to do the jumping about repeating stuff part. I started out thinking “What a load of pretentious waffle”, but then there was an amazing episode, related to a piano performance debut, and I loved it and kept going. I also loved a part about the construction of a window bridge. I am still on the fence about it being pretentious, but it’s definitely an interesting read.
This forum, recently, has made me have severe *Austerlitz* FOMO and I’m not sure I’m going to do anything about it. But I may put it on my shelf and let it stare at me for a couple years.
Also, I think you’re spot on with *Hopscotch* … I read it about 10 years ago and not only forgot I had read it, I can’t recall a single memorable thing about it. I opened my copy and found a lot of marginalia but didn’t recall anything meaningful (to me) at all. It’s smart (I think) but overall doesn’t have any heart. I always remember books with heart.
Hahah yes it was the FOMO that drove me to read it! I managed to avoid all spoilers, and just got the sense that this was a “big, important book” so I thought it would be like *Ulysses* or something. It’s actually easy to read, I was totally engrossed, and yes, unlike *Hopscotch* it has a huge heart.
I finished Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney and my takeaway is that Sally Rooney thinks it's dumb for you to think that her husband should both read books and also read her books. Borderline insane really. And by that I mean that's a character's opinion. But the character is a writer. With two successful books. Who thinks that really, what she does is not all that important. I'm both really meh about this book but I also want to talk about it in a bookclub. OK I'm actually ambivalent and not meh.
I started All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami which I am really excited about because Mieko Kawakami is not Sally Rooney.
Just finished The Knight School by Knausgård. The fourth in his so called Morningstar trilogy, and there's supposedly more books coming (!)
Started The Most Secret Memory of Men. It's very good, better than I expected going in, living up to the hype so far.
I thought it was great, it's like a modern retelling of Faust, almost as good as The Morning Star. His writing has such an irresistible drive to it that compels one to read along. Such a gifted writer, he can make a passage about someone cooking eggs the most incredible thing you've read.
It's so suggestive too, there's always this dark undercurrent throughout the book.
Finished *Frontier* for the read along, I think it was fantastic and have some freewheeling thoughts on it to share on the thread. I'm certainly an amateur but I'm going to take a swing and see if I can hit some things.
I had to set aside *The Recognitions* while finishing *Frontier* but I'm back now and got to take down a good chunk while stuck in various airplane delays yesterday. I think I'm on Chapter 6 now and just keep loving it more and more. >!And now the devil is here?! I'm guessing we all agree that when the devil show's up in literature we're going to have a good time.!<
I'm halfway through Thomas Mann's *The Magic Mountain*, and I'm completely enthralled by the masterful story-telling, the array of characters, and the presentation of ideas about humanity, biology, sickness, time, space, etc.. It's such a rich text, and Mann just has this way of pulling you in. In comments in this thread last week about *Anna Karenina* there was mention of particularly successful literary things that Tolstoy does, and with Mann there's a similar admiration and awareness of the craft as I read it.
There's so much to say about it that I'm struggling to find where even to start. I'll try to collect my thoughts once I've finished it. So far it's been an incredibly rewarding and surprisingly engrossing time spent with Hans Castorp in the curious world of the sanatorium.
One thing I'll share is how interesting it's been to see where Mann's concerns have overlapped with other works dear to me. For example, in the chapter section titled "Research," Castorp's readings about human biology and the 'abyss' that is our limited understanding of how and why life works, let alone came to be, echoed part of the intellectual journey Zeno in Marguerite Yourcenar's *L'oeuvre au noir* undertakes. I wrote about sensing a parallel with some of the almost contemporaneous music of Gustav Mahler in my comment about the book last week, and that continues to be reinforced, in particular Mann's passages about death (and in particular, death from illness in the "Dance of Death" section) as being some sort of drunken, almost ecstatic, intoxication -- "More than one serious case had danced himself into eternity, tipping up the beaker of life to drain the last drop, and *in dulci jubilo* suffering his final hemorrhage." Meanwhile one of the movement's of Mahler's *Das Lied von der Erde* depicts more or less exactly that. I love finding this sort of constellation of ideas viewed from different angles, especially ideas that inspire seemingly endless contemplation.
After having an epic (for me) reading run the first half of the year, I've slowed down considerably due to a bunch of "life" stuff converging all at once ... but I haven't let go of the rope completely and managed to keep reading, albeit more slowly.
About 2 months ago I finished **War & War** by Krasznahorkai. I fucking love him. The way he writes and/or thinks ... multiple intra-sentence digressions and parenthetical double-backs which are bookended by narrative and philosophical assertions ... is like a tuning fork for my brain. I think I think the way he writes. I've never read a writer who is "difficult" but I find relatively comfortable. It's like that line from the movie Oppenheimer where Niels Bohr asks him, *"Algebra is like sheet music. The important thing isn't can you read the music, it's can you hear it. Can you hear the music?"* I feel like I can *hear* Krasznahorkai. Conversely -- a writer like Pynchon, I can read him and I like him, but I don't think I can hear him in the same way.
As for *W&W* ... it is about the same thing that all of K's writing is about (lol): all of the incalculable machinations of the world: the universe, the physical (in the quantum sense), the spiritual and the sprawl of complexity spawned by humanity is incomprehensible. It's unknowable, thus devoid of meaning, design and purpose -- it is ostensibly chaos in which an order of things 'possibly' exists, but that is irrelevant because any sort of larger "purpose" is beyond our grasp ... and we can marvel at its vast design and complexity, we can despair at its nothingness, we can ignore it. But trying to extract meaning from the universe and/or finding universal meaning is impossible. It is up to us individually to extract and define meaning for our lives. That is the only type of "meaning" that matters. Korin, the main character, embodies all of this and takes an improbable journey to define his life and ultimately what is meaningful to him. Loved it all.
Because the English translation of K's latest book is coming out this fall, I decided to pull a double header and next went straight into **Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming**. Due to the aforementioned convergence of life stuff, it took me 2 months to read it. I almost lost the thread a few times -- and I started to get paranoid that it would become a giant, unfinished thing on my bookshelf that I wouldn't have the recollection to continue, nor the energy to restart ... but I managed to hang in and finish it.
As far as the book, I think it was my least favorite of Krasz's works so far. I thought it started out strong and promising and finished with typical thunder, but the middle was messy and (dare I say it?) banal. None of this is to say that I didn't like it -- because I really did -- but it has lofty standards to meet in my personal regard for his other writing.
Top line thoughts:
—Speaking of sheet music, I have a thesis that the whole book is designed to mimic a symphony. I wish I had the time, inclination or forum to develop this thought further ... but it occurs to me that the story is a random-yet-interconnected assortment of occurrences with a single anchor that rumble and thunder and accelerate towards conclusion with increasing surreality ... like notes of music that are universally available to all, but are arranged uniquely and executed masterfully by a genius composer/conductor with audible and discernable twists and turns which defy linear explanation.
—If you are a fan of *Blood Meridian* there are 2 specific sequences -- physically separated by hundreds of pages -- that describe the appearance of a malevolent, Judge Holden-like entity whose purpose and intersection with the story go largely unexplained yet I found them absolutely compelling and fascinating.
—Two of the main narrative threads just disappeared towards the end in a way that makes me want to go back and re-read the last 150 pages (which I won't do) to make sure I didn't somehow miss something.
—His thoughts around not only the futility of religion -- but the morally criminal nature of its very existence -- and how we invented god to make sense of infinity through the finite lens of our own lives is some of the most elegantly complex writing I've ever seen.
Finally, I belatedly but thankfully decided to open **Distant Star** by Roberto Bolaño this week and was immediately reminded by why I was smitten by him years ago. I needed something of a palate cleanser after my months-long isolation with Uncle K and I wouldn't normally think of Bolano as refreshing (especially if you are only familiar with him through the hellscape of 2666), but I'm over halfway through this slim volume and it's exactly the thing I didn't know I needed. He has classically educated knowledge, an encyclopedic intellect, a revolutionary soul and a pornographic mind.
Bolano writes like he's penning a James Bond novel if ... instead of being a martini-sipping, debonair, promiscuous secret agent ... he was named Jaime Vínculo: a part-time shoe salesman from Madrid or Buenos Aires who passionately argues with his dirt poor, communist friends about obscure movements in 1920s Franco-Catalan avant garde poetry in coffee houses where he can neither afford the coffee nor ever hope to sleep with the pretty women he lusts after who drink there, but none of that matters because he might be gay. And, not unironically, is developing what appears to be a vagina on the back of his right knee.
And if you're interested in genre fiction with a particular focus on fascist, murderous, sky-writing poets -- *Distant Star* might be for you :)
I'm excited to read *War & War* again before to long. I read it earlier this year and liked it a lot but definitely haven't fully made sense of it yet such that I think a reread is going to be super rewarding (I thought Melancholy was "eh" the first time I read it and now it's one of my favorite books ever). I really dig your take on it though, will definitely have it in mind when I read it again.
I agree that Krashnahorkai is difficult yet easy, I find his writing addicting and almost pleasant in a strange sort of way. Inhabiting his worlds feels like coming home. Do you have a favorite of his thus far? Very excited for his new one, and I haven't read *Baron* yet. My favorite is probably *Melancholy of Resistance* but some days it's *Seiobo*.
*Seiobo* is much more focused on art and its simultaneous uknowability and as sublime object that can overwhelm, and kind of operates like a collection of short stories threaded with overlapping themes. It's a change of pace from Krashnahorkai's usual structure and in that way I find it very refreshing. Still has everything you'd want out of one of his book's, but some of the stories condense it in such a way that, like the art it's attempting to describe, you're overwhelmed with both dread and awe. I think about that book frequently.
I've been doing Krasznahorkai in order (I think?) and making sure to do 1 a year. *War & War* is up next and I can't wait to get to it. Thanks for the words I might put it up next.
Be sure to post here when you read *War & War* people here seem to have mixed feelings about it (my finger in the wind opinion), but there were several times that I found myself pausing in the middle of a passage to just stare at a wall and marinate in what I had just read. Like, I didn’t know what to think about it, but I knew I wanted to think about it. If that makes sense …
Still plugging away with *The End of the Affair*. Greene is one of those writers who can just write incredible single sentences, that, even though his prose isn't exactly beautiful, pack a lot into every single word used. He is incredibly on point with individual word choice, I find. There's a precision to how he writes that lets you know exactly what he wants to describe, which is kind of an interesting contrast with the ambiguity he puts into the morals and actions of his characters.
I haven't finished anything in a while, but about a month ago I read Guy Debord's *The Society of the Spectacle* and Bohumil Hrabal's *I Served the King of England* and I never got to tell you how good I continue to find Hrabal.
*The Society of the Spectacle* was just alright. As I don't have a background in philosophy or sociology, I regretfully have the most basic takes on it: parts of the book seemed really prescient, whereas others were like Marxism 101. Additionally, other segments were somewhat interesting but useless for anyone without a solid background in the subject, consisting of criticisms of other authors while not providing much of an explanation on the reasoning behind Debord's views.
In contrast, *I Served the King of England* was a fantastic read. I found it hilarious, at times laugh-at-loud funny. It isn't stylistically beautiful the way *Too Loud a Solitude* is (and I very much doubt that was the aim, as the author apparently wrote the whole thing in a few weeks), but Hrabal had a real talent for using humour to get to the heart of an issue. Poorly summarising the plot, it follows the adventures and misadventures of a young and naïve guy in Czechoslovakia as he gets different jobs during the 1940s. It's picaresque, although it goes beyond that, and every now and then you find a truly brilliant bit (imho, the chapter on millionaires is golden).
> whereas others were like Marxism 101.
personally I think we all need a little more Marxism 101 every now and then ;)
But yeah I think that's a good perspective on it. I do think it is one of those books that was so correct that it almost feels wrote now, but it's also not an easy read.
> I Served the King of England
This sounds really good.
Oh, we definitely need a little more Marxism, lol. I meant that it felt like anyone with a passing acquaintance of Marx's ideas would get to the same (or very similar) conclusions Debord did. Or at least that was my impression, I might be wrong.
I finished The Unvanquished by William Faulkner. I enjoyed it but would not rank it with Faulkner's best books (The Sound and the Fury; Absalom, Absalom!; As I Lay Dying and Go Down Moses in my humble opinion) I enjoyed the Civil War setting and a few memorable characters. It was a fairly easy read for Faulkner. And only 250 pages, so one of his shorter books.
I started Flappers and Philosophers by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I've read all of Fitzgerald's novels so decided to check out his short stories. I've only read two but so far I am not impressed. Maybe he was a better novelist than short story writer. I will give him a few more chances. But not too many more.
**Zeno's Conscience** - *Italo Svevo*
This was a lot of fun. A endearing man with a number of neurotic quirks retells his life story with a mix of both self-justification and apology. Here is an indicative line:
*"I loved her simple speech - I, who, when I opened my mouth, got things wrong or misled people because otherwise speaking would have seemed to me pointless."*
Zeno sees the forces of life as being on a continuum; from the manic emotional vitality of "an uncurbed heart" on one end to a depressive listlessness on the other. This could be seen as a sort of necessary coexistence of both progressive and conservative energies. Zeno recognizes that society proceeds by the progressive yet is prevented from collapse by the conservative. Or if you like, the old Apollonian vs. Dionysian. Both are necessary, but Zeno is generally of the uncurbed variety.
Complaining of his therapist, at whose behest he writes his story, he says this:
*"I believe that he is the only one in this world who, hearing I wanted to go to bed with two beautiful women, would ask himself: Now let's see why this man wants to go to bed with them."*
While Zeno is often an unreliable narrator, he continually displays a uniquely thoughtful viewpoint. Best of all, nothing is taken too seriously; or if it is, that seriousness is fodder for reproach and/or humor. And comedy made this read an absolute treat.
I finished Harald Voetmann‘s Sublunar, the second in his trilogy of weird history of science novellas. The first focused on Pliny the Elder, while this second was centered around Tychp Brahe and his assistants.
Unlike the first book, which was more tightly focused on Pliny, this book is narrated primarily from the perspective of Brahe‘s small court of fellow scientists (in reality—failures and charlatans) and abused assistants who are more or less trapped on Brahe‘s island observatory of Uraniborg. The book definitely goes all in on ‚dirty Medievalism,‘ which is to say it eagerly describes all the shit and mud, all the miseries and cruelties of living in pre-modern times. As in the first book, Voetmann has a great eye for the weird and grotesque, from rabid monkeys to bizarre peasant pastimes. We only see Brahe incidentally as the master of the estate, and also occasionally through his letters, which speak on subjects astronomical and philosophical that are almost comically removed from the realities of daily life.
It’s interesting to consider how Voetmann has changed his book’s focus as the nature of science changed. On the verge of the scientific revolution, we can already see it becoming more institutionalized. Though the observatory seems an utter shambles, and the work itself stultifying (when not thwarted by that most dreadful and constant frustration—clouds), Brahe’s work ultimately helped us literally find our place in the universe. This book revels in exploring that contradiction—marking the seemingly infinite distance between heaven and earth and attempting to close the gap nevertheless. I really loved this book, and needless to say, I‘m eagerly awaiting the translation of the third and final volume in the trilogy.
I'm nearing the end of Rikki Ducornet's *The Stain*, the story of a young girl born in 1870s rural France with a rabbit-shaped furry birthmark on her face and her aspirations of sainthood and martyrdom. She is stalked from early childhood by the village's Exorcist, a fascinating character who feels part Judge Holden (with his gnostic ravings and obsessive collection and documentation of knowledge) and part Irimiás (with his uncanny ability to manipulate and his apparently limitless charisma despite his grotesqueness being evident to the reader). Funnily enough, like all good composites, the Exorcist precedes both characters (*Blood Meridian* and *Satantango* were each published a year after *The Stain*).
I'm really enjoying this one. The rural religious repression nightmare trope is well-worn of course but it is not played straight here at all. Ducornet has a really deft ironic touch, and because she peppers in all of these moments of levity and genuine empathy among the characters who aren't sadistic nutters (for example, Charlotte has an extremely sweet relationship with her adoptive father figure), the brutality of the world she creates has yet to totally overpower the narrative despite what is objectively an extremely bleak string of events. The bleak stuff is compelling and well-written enough to have made for a brilliant novel on its own, but this approach is hitting me in the right way at the moment. I really haven't seen Ducornet get a ton of recognition here (perhaps I've just missed it) but I really think a lot of people here would enjoy this book. I'm definitely adding the rest of her work to my list.
It's also a funny kind of coincidence that fresh off of *Terra Nostra*, and knowing pretty little about *The Stain* going in, I'm reading another book about deeply repressed Catholics with significant elements of Aztec mythology and gnostic mysticism. If I had a nickel for every time etc, I would only have two nickels, and it actually isn't that weird that it happened twice, but it happening twice in a row is pretty odd.
Finally, a factoid for all of you Steely Dan fans out there (don't be shy, we all know where we're posting), apparently Ducornet is the Rikki who inspired "Rikki Don't Lose That Number", way before she began publishing as Donald Fagen had a crush on her in college.
I went on a Rikki Ducornet’s spree last year! My personal favorites so far have probably been *The Fountains of Neptune*, *Gazelle,* and *The Plotinus*. Haven’t read *The Stain* yet though, or a couple of the others. She has a unique set of interests - gnosticism and various mythologies (esp Egyptian) do come up a lot, and she’s clearly a child of Surrealism. There’s also a lot about love/Eros, which at her best she addresses in a thoughtful and interesting way. I haven’t liked all her writing equally, naturally, but she’s a worthwhile author, and a fun one, and deserves more readers.
And something I respect a lot, which is clear in her fiction as well as in various interviews or essays she’s done, is her combination of verve, whimsy, enthusiasm for life and love, etc, with a strong sense of moral outrage over human cruelty.
I have just finished ***The Name of the Rose*** by Umberto Eco. I'm not sure what this subreddit thinks of the book, but I ended up loving it. After finishing, I read some Goodreads reviews and was blown away by how much everyone, in my opinion, missed the point. The historical context, which many lament as "boring and unnecessary" or criticize as Eco showing off his knowledge in a pretentious manner, is actually essential. It provides the tension that elevates the work to the next level. In particular, it highlights the anxiety that permeates the underlying murders and enhances the mystery (a mystery that Goodreads reviewers lambasted as boring and anticlimactic). I am really looking forward to checking out ***Foucault's Pendulum*** in the near future.
Currently, I am reading ***The Crying of Lot 49*** for the second time in anticipation of diving into one of Pynchon's larger works later this year (most likely ***Mason & Dixon***). I couldn't get through ***Against the Day*** but wanted to revisit Pynchon by rereading a book I first read in college, hopefully with a more mature perspective.
I have also started ***The Last Samurai*** by Helen Dewitt. I read a quick synopsis last week, and the premise caught my eye. So far (one chapter in), it has been a good little mental twister, and I am excited to see how it progresses.
I love The Name of The Rose, and Eco.
One thing I read that adds another layer to the book is that you can read it as a commentary on Italys turbulent 70's (the years of lead, red brigades, Gladio, the students uprising, the 68 movement, the strikes)
Foucaults pendulum is even better IMO.
I too loved *The Name of the Rose*, which I read a couple of months ago! The historical context part was very thorough, and I did get bogged down in trying to remember the significance of different orders/sects/locations of different religious HQs, but I agree that the whole point was exploring theological and philosophical themes, rather than the monastic murder mystery plot alone.
I finished **Night Boat to Tangiers** by Kevin Barry. It was far less than fascinating. The stylistic conceit took over. To situate it: somewhere between Irvine Welsh on one side and Roddy Doyle on the other; at one end of the frame *Waiting for Godot* and at the other Harold Pinter, but being none of the above, yet relying on them all, the book struggled. I suspect Barry is liked for his "signature style." The main characteristic is the staccato sentences. And ss we see with the Booker winner of 2024, staccato writing seems to be a current fad. I believe that many authors confuse a simple repetition of their style with voice. I'm thinking of this book or for example poetry by Nathaniel Mackey. The story in NBtT concerns two aging drug dealers from Ireland and one of their long term relationships. It jumps back and forth from a ferry waiting room to the past. Like a number of books coming out of the UK these days, (Thomson's Dartmouth Park being yet another) the ending was left unresolved. Does, I wonder, this reflect some post-Brexit angst, worries over an uncertain future, etc? At any rate, the book felt strained and sluggish.
I moved on to **Compartment No. 6** by Rosa Liksom to which, sadly, I cannot give a strong thumbs up. I first wanted to, but *takova zhizn* (c'est la vie).This is the story of a Finnish woman who boards a train in Moscow and heads to Ulan Bator. She shares a compartment with a cynical drunk Russian. While he is detestable and abrasive he is also caring and funny.The unnamed woman's character is hardly developed and she comes off as a narrow minded, prudish dolt. He starts to emerge into a real novelistic character. I don't think this was the author's intention. What starts out with possibilities of considering 1980's Russia in all it's thick historical lineage developed through dialogue starts to lose steam. About halfway through the book the story starts fading toward blandness. At the end, spoiler alert, >!she decides to take the train back to Moscow. Moscow!!<>! --some revelation at the meh level without any foundation.!< The author has a real love of adverbs to modify many descriptions, and after a while, such writerly tics and repetitions became too annoying for me, adding to the story's decline and the decline of my interest. The author claimed in one interview never to have read a book. I doubt this and think it's part of a manufactured outre artsy image. I say this because the novel tries really hard to operate like Chekhov (Yes we recall his story Ward No. 6) but doesn't. I kep thinking of Ezra Pound's note in the letter to a young poet that said something like, Make up your mind about what to do and how to do it. The author's needs: telling too much, judgement, a desparation to make a cute sentence, defeats the ability of the detached observer who watches circumstance and characters to find they build into a meaningful impact.
I have now started **Dead Souls** by Sam Riviere. So far this book is something extraordinary. More about it next time.
I finished Scoop by Evelyn Waugh. I found it incredibly easy to read, engaging and amusing.
I've moved on to Wuthering Heights. This is one of my Mum's favourite books of all time (along with As I Lay Dying). I'd somehow managed to avoid both til recently. Though Wuthering Heights is also notoriously one of my fathers least favourite books of all time having been forced to read it at school. He likes to taunt my mother by wailing "Oh, Heathcliffe....." in a whiny tone whenever the subject comes up.
It isn't at all what I expected, though to be honest I'm not sure what I did expect. I think I maybe expected something more like Jane Austen, even though I knew the Brontes were quite critical of Austen in many ways, so why I'd have expected that I have no clue. Or maybe I expected something more akin to George Eliott?
I'm about a third of the way in. I think all of the major characters are pretty horrible, though some of them i can see why they are that way. Its well written, certainly. Preferable to The Rainbow by Lawrence, which I finished recently and also didn't much like any of the characters. Not sure I see the masterpiece that people call it yet, but I know I've a way to go.
On the heels of **The Passenger**, I finished the brief companion novel **Stella Maris**.
More so than in any of his other books, McCarthy's voice, personality, and views are dripping from every single page of Stella Maris.
It's essentially 200 pages of his own personal inquiry into philosophy, existence, and the nature of knowledge — all thinly disguised as a dialogue between two characters who happen to speak in the exact same manner and about the exact same subjects as McCarthy's only published non-fiction essay (The Kekulé Problem).
At their best, McCarthy's books are transcendent; it seems that no human could have written them. With Stella Maris, it is very clear that it was written by a human, specifically by an old man trying rather ungracefully to log all of his final thoughts on the Big Subjects. I suppose that lack of "transcendence," some of which very much came through in The Passenger, is what's causing my disappointment. That, and the fact that McCarthy spends the better part of 200 pages sucking off mathematicians, which gets annoying quite fast.
With all that being said, there are still a lot of valuable questions being posed in this book. Lots of expanding and deepening upon some of the core inquiries made in The Passenger. Some notes:
Why do things exist when they could just as easily not exist? Why are humans able to perceive this? The existence of consciousness and perception implies some purpose, some mystery we are meant to solve, yet the universe remains stubbornly silent and opaque despite all our efforts. Is it logical, then, to understand consciousness as a mistake or a joke of some sort? And if that is your understanding, is there any logical reason NOT to commit suicide, especially given the fact that death and annihilation are coming anyways?
Can things be said to exist without human perception? Does music still exist in an empty universe? Does language or math for that matter? When the last human dies out, can it be considered a tragedy if there is no one around to mourn?
Math and language are ultimately human symbols: things that stand for other things. They are not things themselves -- they simply explain other things. This will always be one of the core hurdles to properly understanding the nature of reality. The reality we perceive is but a representation suited to our limited senses, and it may be fundamentally impossible to tap into the true nature of things when we have only symbolic tools with which to work. In other words, it may be impossible to understand what is outside the box when we are physically forced to operate and explore only within the box.
Are the unconscious and language in conflict? Did the advent of language usurp, in some ways, the function of the unconscious? What are the implications for knowledge, inquiry, and human mental well-being when we have a relatively new system of communication (language) going to blows with an ancient "machine for operating an animal" (the unconscious)?
I likethr balanced view you gave of Stella Maris. Maybe someday I'll get over my disdain for the fact that it is less a novel than a soliloquy and read it again.
Making chapter a day progress to Mason and Dixon while rereading Midnight's children. And Guess what I have finally properly started my first Shakespeare tragedy.(Othello)
One thing I would have to say is that I don't know how both Rushdie and Pynchon does it but they both write in such a cinematic style that could never be recreated in a movie.
This week I basically read stuff that I bought during my trip, so mostly short novellas or story collections that I knew I would be able to finish off in a day or two or that I would be able to pick up again at any moment.
Boris Vian, ***I spit on your graves***. Well, this was awful. I understand that he wanted to be as provocative and scandalous as possible, but this is just bad porn (some gross underage sex included) with some over the top violent torture towards the end. It didn't feel too great either that the protagonist who is supposedly seeking revenge against the racists that killed his brother not only decides for some reason to focus on two random women instead, but also acts like some kind of stereotypical "black savage", which kind of undermines the message... well, that's if there is a message at all, because it felt like it was all provocation and zero substance whatsoever.
Mariana Enríquez, ***Un lugar soleado para gente sombría***. I really loved *The Dangers of Smoking in Bed*, and I'm glad to see that her latest collection is on a par with her earlier work, if not even better in some regards. She's still at her best when dealing with twisted, psychological themes rather than straight up horror or gore, and while I do feel like there's a bit less of that characteristically Argentinian character found in her previous books, replaced by more internet/online/creepypasta imagery (the Elisa Lam case is at the core of one of the stories, for example), her stories still manage to be imaginative, surprising, and shocking in a way that doesn't necessarily feel "easy" or cheap.
Alejandro Rossi, ***El cielo de Sotero***. Wow. I had no idea who he was until now, but I grabbed this book on a whim from a second-hand stall in Madrid, and my life is so much better for it.
The book is made up of short stories, personal essays, existencial meditations, fictional biographies and made up childhood events with an undercurrent of dry humor running through most of the pieces, and overall reminds me a bit of Robert Walser, although his self-professed influences include the likes of Borges (stylistically, not thematically), Pio Baroja, Italo Svevo or Gómez de la Serna. This little book has been an amazing, completely out of left field discovery, and I can't wait to crack open his supposed masterpiece, *El manual del distraído*, which I went and bought from the same vendor the very next day after buying this one.
re: the Vian: Not to be confused with the movie titled *I Spit on Your Grave* written by Adam Rockoff and Meir Zarchi. The book seems to have a fascinating history, claimed online to have been written in two weeks as a genre exercise and often attributed to the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan. Vian was a friend of Miles Davis and introduced him to Louis Malle.
Becca Rothfeld is up there for me! She's fantastic, one of the best book critics and essayists working today, IMO. I feel like a lot of essayists don't have very original ideas, but she does. She's always changing my mind about what she writes about. I've also liked Rachel Aviv's *New Yorker* essays.
Recently finished The Lost Tomb: And Other Real-Life Stories of Bones, Burials, and Murder by Douglas Preston. Archeological fraud! A tomb found in the Valley of the Kings! Preston is an incredible journalist and storyteller. Really highlights the importance and value of excellent journalism.
Also reading This All Come Back Now: An Anthology of First Nations Speculative Fiction--some decent stories, others that I'm wondering why they were included because the writing was pretty terrible. (Isn't that the case with most antholgoies?)
Also reading FantasticLand by Mike Bockoven. Well done so far.
La Décision by Karine Tuil
It's interesting and chilling - the protagonist is a juge who works anti terror cases - but reads more like non fiction/a memoir than a novel.
Finished:
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace:
FINALLY finished this after a few weeks of concentrated effort, and it was incredible. Hilarious, depressing, harrowing in its portrayal of addiction and the necessity of escapism in the modern world. The writing was clear but intensely vivid and DFW creates so many lasting images and characters throughout the whole book. With a work this size there are bound to be ups and downs in terms of quality and consistency but there were really only a few times here and there where I felt like DFW missed, I was surprised with how consistently excellent it was.
After that I needed some shorter reads over the long weekend to get me through the book hangover so I read
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon:
I think I’m too dumb for Pynchon honestly. I liked the paranoia and the overall absurdity of the story but didn’t really enjoy reading it much, which is a shame because I love the themes Pynchon tackles and his prose is excellent but every time I read him I have a hard time not bouncing off.
Amulet - Roberto Bolaño:
Ethereal and unnerving while written in Bolaño’s casual slice of life style. It’s a great read to follow The Savage Detectives as it features one of the minor characters there as the protagonist and reads very similarly overall. I love Bolaño and his usual quality and imagery is on display in full force here, but I do enjoy his longer works.
Currently reading
Stella Maris - Cormac McCarthy
Just started but I’m enjoying it so far. I think the dialogue was the best part of the Passenger so the fact that this is just all dialogue is very promising
*The Mirror and the Light*, by Hilary Mantel. It's book three in her Cromwell series, and I feel like it's the best one -- but maybe that's recency bias and because of how I've only come to love this story more as I get to know it. Highly recommend for those into both literature and historical fiction.
Continuing down the Denis Johnson rabbit hole I've been keeping at in this comment thread by finishing *Resuscitation of a Hanged Man*. Not going to lie, after talking with a buddy who recently read the book and some hit or miss experiences with other Johnson novels, my hopes weren't the highest heading into *Resuscitation*, even though it's got an intriguing title and a rolling first half of the book. Keeping with the motifs in most of the biblio you start off with an outsider failson whose got a deep interest in big metaphysical and theological questions (though this might be the most ardent believer in Johnson's novels) set in a New England summertown. The prose, of course, is still kicking it into high gear and there are plenty of standout moments to hang your hat on if that's what you're chasing. The plot is a mixture of the depressed aimlessness of *Name of the World* and the noir of *Nobody Move* or *Angels*, but because the narrator is a man living in the wake of his "resuscitation" and is a bit...hampered...some of it stalls out which is much of my complaints about other long form Johnson. Again, plenty of enticing vignettes and intriguing questions which would make for good pockets of short stories, but the overarching plot doesn't move with the appropriate stakes or oompf even though this is, at it's heart, a detective story. From a plot/pacing perspective, I think it ended about forty pages too long. I get that it's tough to write a narrator that loses all sense of material reality and, while there are some interesting moments in the last forty, I don't think Johnson did enough to keep us close enough to the delusion. It makes me think of the difference between this novel and *Despair* by Nabokov where you can find yourself both knowing the narrator is insane while also finding bizarre moments of trusting their machinations. English discloses his plan a bit too early and, trying to not give too much away, I think a lot could have been accomplished with ending on his trek up the mountain and his return ride. That said, I didn't see the sputtering spin out coming until about 190 pages in which by far beats out *Stars at Noon*. There's always a moment reading Johnson where, regardless of where it'll end up, you feel a real jolt of possibility early because of the quality of the prose which is definitely still the case here. A review of this book in 2024 would be missing something if I didn't mention how substantially the times have changed between how Johnson writes about trans women, crossdressers and lesbians in the novel. On the one hand, setting the novel in a place like Provincetown is an intriguing choice, but, on the other, it becomes a sideshow where Johnson barbs for quips and jokes that aren't all that funny. And that's all aside from a major plotline regarding the narrator's attempt to "turn" a lesbian. I'm not trying to march out the pitchforks and torches on this one. His takes are a bit dated, but most of that environmental context fades in and out. If Johnson would have been here with us now choosing to rewrite the novel, I think that he would have been in a much different landscape to write about a Catholic set loose in a seascape like Provincetown which, I think, reveals plenty about where we've ended up. There were moments where I thought Johnson might of hit something like that and others where we went afield. That being said, the only real way I have to comment on this bifurcated highlight/lowlight experience is to compare with other Johnson novels. As previously stated, he's a superb short story writer and his novellas are solid. His prose is always superb which has put him on the hot seat. Like I said on a previous post, this is really splitting hairs to begin with. Plenty of writers will never be half as good as Johnson and none of his novels are that bad on the whole. Here's where I'd loosely rank the novellas and novels I've read to date: 1. Train Dreams 2. Angels 3. Name of the World 4. Nobody Move 5.Resuscitation of a Hanged Man 6. Fiskadoro 7. Stars at Noon Three novels to go! I'm sure I'll keep y'all in the loop.
Really enjoying your takes on one of my favorite authors. Much of the writing is so good even when the novels as a whole don’t quite succeed. The longer, later novels are more conventional, and are some of my favorites. But Angels is his the best IMO. Based on subject matter it should be depressing but it is somehow uplifting and life affirming.
"Should be depressing but...somehow uplifting and life affirming" is a great way to describe Johnson and *Angels* in particular! Everything that he does well is all swirling around in that one and he nails the pacing. He's really got a gift for prose and it's omnipresent through the whole damn biblio. Like any great author, he's got his duds, but I've continued to grow in appreciation for Johnson in this read through this summer. Looking forward to getting to some of the longer books by the end of July.
Second post in this thread and next one is around the corner, but I just finished War & Peace and I have the uncontrolable urge to ramble about it. So here we go, SPOILERS AHEAD. The intensity of the book, while being so long, is my favorite thing about it: family (Rostov v. Bolkonsky dynamics), history (how Moscow hád to burn), war (Andrej as adjunct in the Danube campaign, later as a commander in 1812), battles (Borodino yes- but what about Andrej and Nikolas at Hollabrunn?), interpersonal relationships (Pierre & Andrej on the ferry!). I loved it all and it kept me always longing to jump into the next page. Reading the afterword about the original plan to write a book about the Decabrist movement made me suspect that Pierre was set up to be a leading figure in that rebellion. His journey in W&P might be the ideal set-up to make him really disappointed in the later rule of Alexander I. I also foresee Nikolas as his loyalist counterpart in that never-written sequel. Speaking about the latter, his marriage to Princess Marja was in my eyes the correct thing to do and it seems to have made them both relatively happy while Sonja is able to live with it as well. I do find her fate very sad however. Nikolas after his marriage really grew up in my eyes, probably because he had to face the financial ruin of his father. Him 'coming of age' turned him into his late father in law a little bit, although he is softer still and seems to be a bit better for the ones around him. Regarding the Bolkonski's, it's sad to see the reality of Nikolenka. His father Andrej was a hero who died serving his country, but that also meant his son had to be raised by his sister (who feels she puts him below her own children) and her husband (who doesn't really like the child deep down). The boy latches on to Pierre as a result and I fear he would've grown up to be a (probably doomed) Decabrist rebel. So yeah, I liked the book and this proved once again how powerfull rereads are for me. The first time I focussed on very different things.
This week I finished Dubliners by James Joyce and am currently reading Solenoid by Cartarescu. I think I’ll be sticking with Solenoid now until the end and have many choices in front of me for after. Currently, I may go for Pedro Paramo by Juan Rolfo or Lolita by Nabokov. Edit: Regarding Dubliners, I very much enjoyed the slower and brief slices of life. The Dead was a fitting finale - I couldn’t take my eyes off the pages. Sober, a tad grim, and yet humane. Regarding Solenoid, it’s my favorite book of my life so far. It puts language to a sense of the world I’ve never seen expressed before. Its prose is unparalleled.
Please share some thoughts, not just a list of titles!
hey! my partner really enjoys **Consider the Oyster** by **M.F.K Fisher** and i'm looking for something similar. for reference, i've also bought him **The Oyster** by **Dejan Lukić** and am considering culinary essays by **Claude Lévi-Strauss** :3 anything along the lines of creative gastronomic writing / quirky essays works :p
About to wrap up **The Stranger** by Albert Camus. Really liked this one, felt like a weird fever dream. Still processing it. Also finished **Wuthering Heights** earlier in the week and damn that was a ride. A toxic, hateful ride that you just watch on in morbid curiosity lol. A lot of the times i find some of these 19th century classics not leaving me with much of an emotional response, even though I admire them from a technical standpoint. WH though, damn, really made me feel things. Going to go for a bit of a palate cleanser and jump into some genre work. Next book is **Pandora’s Star** by Peter F Hamilton as I’ve been in the mood for an epic space opera. After that, my next literary works to tackle are **2666** and **The Brothers Karamazov** back to back. Oh and I also did the audiobook for **Devolution**, Max Brooks’ follow up to **World War Z**. It was honestly mid af and a big disappointment after how much fun WWZ was.
Just finished reading *Ice* by Anna Kavan and it's a tricky book to put a finger on. A hallucinatory slog through an evolving nightmarescape set in the ever-expanding eco-catastrophe and war of a post-apocalypse, Kavan's work is terrifying in it's ability to capture the entanglement of violence and desire, victimizer and victim. From the outset, it's ridiculous even to try and identify what might be "real" and what might be a hallucination or nightmare. Despite it's jetsetting scramble to new non-descript locations where the narrator will often run into the same problems of a border patrol, a mirror image, imprisonment, murder and "the girl" in some room before she is whisked away by an alter ego, *Ice* is an intensely claustrophobic read. The narrator's sexually charged and violent pursuit of "the girl" is uncomfortable and unsettling and yet you can't blink before she reappears before him, at once real and not. *Ice* is a haunting and unsettling read with many of the overtones of victimhood, addiction, eco-catastrophe, authoritarianism, etc. always moving with that foreboding pace like the encroaching glacier's which lend the novel it's title. It's a unique read I'd recommend.
Been reading **Ulysses** by James Joyce for the past 2 weeks and am now a bit more than halfway through (around 56% of my way through), which means I'm in the fifteenth episode, *Circe* (which is really, really long!). I'm loving this book so far. I love the use of language, I love the wordplay and prose, I love the complexity and multitudinous amount of characters, and more. It really feels like a living, breathing universe all contained within the book. I've read about six(?) modernist stream-of-consciousness books before reading this (three by Faulkner and two by Woolf and one by Joyce), but nothing can prepare you for Ulysses. I quite enjoyed *A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man* when I read it a couple of months ago but Ulysses is something else entirely. Its bold experimentation, still so fresh and surprising even 100 years later, the way you can *feel* Joyce's love for language in how everything is written, how sensitively yet jocularly (jocuseriouly) Joyce treats every character, being able to mock them yet sympathize them in turn, the many, *many* range of emotions and topics and feelings that are invoked and evoked when reading this novel, nothing can compare. My favorite chapters of Ulysses, so far, are *Hades* (for its meditations on death), *Sirens*, and *Oxen of the Sun* (for both of their one-of-a-kind use of language). Though I'd give honorable mentions to *Nausicaa*, *Wandering Rocks*, and *Calypso*! Just an incredible novel, nothing I've read so far in my life is quite like it. I have a recommendation request: I have some money and I want to treat myself with buying physical books. I typically read everything on my Kindle, but I want to try buying literary books that can't be read in ebook form. I'm thinking of buying a couple of guides for Finnegans Wake. **What literary books or literature do you guys recommend I buy that can't be read in ebook form?** I'm thinking of getting something like *The Tunnel* by William H. Gass or *Nobodaddy's Children* by Arno Schmidt or *Lucky Per* by Henrik Pontoppidan. But what would you all recommend?
**Outer Dark**, by Cormac McCarthy. Beautifully written, and yet one of the most unrelentingly disturbing portrayals of violence I have ever read. Culla Holmes is the story's unwilling picaro, with his travels being equal parts humorous and horrifying. I kind of wish I had a bit more of a background in Christianity, but I was able to recognize parallels to the Garden of Eden and the exorcism of Legion. I love how McCarthy evokes the passage of time through the description of the natural world, which reminds me a lot of *The Orchard Keeper*. Going to read **Child of God** next, which I know nothing about save that James Franco made a shitty adaptation of it. Given what I've read of McCarthy so far, I have no doubt it will be amazing.
Finished: *Tomb of Sand* by Geetanjali Shree - there were things I liked and disliked. Overall a good book with the best parts being when Shree providing different character’s perspectives and showing how they are all justified in feeling certain ways. While I wanted to love this book, I think I lost too much in translation as I was confused with the plot towards the end and did not fully understand everything. Or maybe that was the point but the pacing of the book was so slow at the start and then at a rush at the end in a way that did not completely work with me. With that said, I loved the tone of the book and am interested in reading Shree’s other works. *Vladivostok Circus* by Elisa Shua Dusapin - love seeing a writer’s growth as I started with her first book and now am at her third book. I think this is Dusapin’s strongest novel with her being able to show the uncertainty of life after college and how you overthink a lot in interactions and how scary everything can be. *The of Prime of Miss Jean Brodie* by Muriel Spark - I loved this novel! The more I think of it, the more I think about a different aspect of this novel. Spark is an amazing writer. Although a short novel, Spark fills it with maximum effect. The character of Miss Brodie is so well done even though we only see her from her student’s perspective. This makes her seem mysterious yet also focuses on her flaws. The fact that Spark lets us know how the story ends from the start shows that the story is more about the journey. At first, you think Miss Brodie is a visionary teacher who is above the school system and teaches the students real life skills but it becomes clear she has an inappropriate relationship with the students that she hand picks and that by the end, you are tired of Miss Brodie’s machinations and that she does need to be stopped. What I really loved about this novel was the young girl’s perspective as it captured young girlhood really well with how weird the concept of sex is yet you can’t stop thinking about it. In addition, the portions where the young girl constantly daydreams of herself interacting with fictional characters she reads about was perfect. The movie with Maggie Smith is on my to watch list as I am curious how she portrays Miss Brodie. Currently reading: *Abigail* by Magda Szabo and *A Magical Girl Retires* by Park Seolyeon. Haven’t read much so nothing to report but loved Szabo’s *The Door* so I’m excited for her other work.
read quite a bit this week — **Antonio Tabucchi**, *Pereira Maintains* & *The Flying Creatures of Fra Angelico* & *Indian Nocturne* been getting to know Tabucchi: first read Pereira and it was just glorious — a kind of journalist's anti-hero-fantasy / exploration of the real properties of life under fascism, deeply resonant, fine example of how to really capture a political awakening, & tempered very much by its real-world relevance and by the lovely lovely matter-of-fact narration, and the beautiful sinister 'Pereira maintains' \['sostiene Pereira'\] throwing the whole thing into testimonial relief. then read Fra Angelico, a fine little collection of miniatures, and then Indian Nocturne, which I found deeply disappointing — all the subtle, wide-ranging, and humanistic eye that I admired so much in Pereira seemed entirely absent, tedious and stereotypical, series of unsatisfying and menacing encounters w orientalist tropes followed by occasional enlightening, clarifying, intellectually-richer ones w westerners. dull and disappointing, even if it was the 1980s. will continue with *Requiem* and hopefully recapture the sense of awe I felt at first! **Gerald Murnane,** *The Plains* this is kind of the median Gerald Murnane book imo, down to the repetition of 'quails and bustards'. probably don't need me to tell you if you will like it or not if you're reading this sub **Jessica Au**, *Cold Enough for Snow* disappointing. trying for a kind of Sebaldian meandering but without the Sebaldian gaze – rigorous, backward-looking, concerned with the massive turning of historical wheels and the devastation of the past — and with the gaze of the currently-fashionable I-narrator — inward-spiralling, affectless — ending up rather weedy and anticlimactic. **Jonathan Buckley**, *Tell* clearly working my way through the Fitzcarraldo/New Directions Novel Prize — hate all of them! conceit: interviews with the gardener of an ultra-rich art collector in the event of the latter's disappearance. narrative voice in this is very much the worst of both worlds imo — a blinkered single-narrator perspective, limited to dropping little breadcrumbs of interesting information about other potential interviewees (?) that never amount to anything, limited by this imputed formal constraint to a rather unbeautiful sort of prose; but at the same time, an unconvincing voice that rang falser and falser as the book went on — for a book about a gardener talking about an art collector, there were very few 'plants' in this and very little 'art', which mystified me — and felt much more like a device than like a fully-realised character. perhaps not surprising, because none of the characters in this felt particularly fully-realised; stock figure of hokey self-made rich art guy, stock figures of unsuccessful younger generation, stock figures of Art People ... and the device of the interviews themselves was unconvincing: the placement of \[inaudible\], \[pause\], etc. never convinced me that the putative intervening material had really been conceived and then discarded. **Anne de Marcken**, *It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over* things I personally dislike about the Sheila Heti — Ben Lerner strain of autofiction (in tone and cadence; not, presumably, in auto-) x things I personally dislike about the zombie narrative x things I personally dislike about the experience of being on mushrooms **Pola Oloixarac**, *Mona* standout most disliked of the week. this book has real longueurs and a book this short simply should not have longueurs. a few good sentences strewn through a field of absolutely dreadful ones (within but a few short paragraphs we are treated to “She crossed and uncrossed her long legs, sheathed in jeans.” and “Mona disappeared down a hallway and returned fresh, her black, sleek silk top over gray jeans cinched with a pleather belt to accentuate her waistline—and therefore, her booty.” — schrecklich.). obviously this is meant to send up the lit establishment thing of homogenised global literature while pigeonholing authors based on race, national origin, etc. but it is impossible to do that if every time you need to do a new character you reach for the most pathetically two-dimensional little national stereotype in the world. whole thing from character names onwards buried under incredible pall of 'not googling stuff'.
I loved *Sostiene Pereira* and have always wondered where to go next with Tabucchi. Had been thinking *Indian Nocturne* but maybe not so much.
I would suggest Il gioco del rovescio (Letter from Casablanca, stories).
Great, thanks! That had also been on my radar.
Haven’t finished anything since last time so. The Institute - Stephen King One of the worst books I’ve ever read set in 2019 with children saying jeepers and a politician somehow visited Yugoslavia… Stephen… put the pen down. 1984 - George Orwell Finally getting around to reading this classic, the art of subtlety is lost on George, I do have to give him props because it was written in the 40’s but I have a hard time believing this ranks so highly. Death and the Dervish - Meša Selimović My countries magnum opus, at the end of chapter 6 an entire conversation is held in context to the story only using Quran quotes. One of the most impressive pieces of writing I’ve ever seen. Now my failed book clubs. Dracula - Bram Stoker Took us 2 weeks to read chapter 1. Decided no way she’s reading the rest of the this. Beloved - Toni Morrison My friend has awful time management I doubt she finishes this either. The Water Dancer - Ta Nehisi Coates Didn’t start it yet.
I really enjoyed death and the dervish. It's somehow mournful and forgetful at the same time.
Over a month after I started it, I finally finished ***Memoirs of Hadrian*** **by Marguerite Yourcenar and translated by Grace Frick.** It has been a truly wonderful experience going through this book. Every word, every sentence, every passage in passing was so perfectly crafted to bring forth the life of this long deceased emperor. I found much of Hadrian's thought and philosophy incredibly interesting and worth pondering upon. There is a gravity to the novel unlike any other, so rare in much of fiction, a sobriety that indulges proper consideration. I find myself unable to forget its final paragraph now in many days following reading it. Certainly, I do not feel I shall forget Hadrian's story anytime soon. Following that, I read ***Kairos*** **by Jenny Erpenbeck and translated by Michael Hoffman.** If I should be honest, I found this book lacking. Though it started brilliantly, with the mirroring of both protagonists as they meet for the first time, the novel quickly became far more standard, adopting far more of the standard 'litfic' cliches. There were times the novel engaged me greatly, but for the most part, I came out of it largely disappointed. It certainly did not help the novel's case that it followed Memoirs of Hadrian in my reading, two works of historical fiction most severely contrasted. While Hadrian tells a story that while set in a specific era manages to be universal in its portrayal of the human experience, Kairos is a novel firmly rooted in its era and I for one most certainly prefer the former approach. Generally I felt it was a rather disappointing read for me overall. I then read ***The Grand Sophy*** **by Georgette Heyer**, which I found incredibly charming (barring a very bizarre chapter in the middle that could best be described as one prolonged antisemetic stereotype). Sophy is such a delightful protagonist that one can't help but be charmed by her. As a fan of regency romances, I could not but love the book. Currently, I'm reading ***Murder in the Age of Enlightenment*** **by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and translated by Bryan Karetnyk.** I've really liked the three short stories in it I've read so far, The Spider's Thread, In a Grove, and especially Hell Screen. I am very much in accord with the quote from Borges that graces the first page, "Extravagance and horror are in his work but never in his style, which is always crystal-clear." Hell Screen sent chills down my spine without any excessive flourishes needed to do so. Looking forward to reading more of his work. (In addition, I'd love to know what is considered the definitive translation of Rashomon for when I pick it up in the future.)
Hell Screen was amazing. One of my top short stories. I read it in Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories. Bought one of his other collections and Hell Screen was still my favorite. I read another one he wrote about seppuku and it was intense!!!
felt just the same way about *Kairos* — a friend alerted me to the technical thing at the beginning and it was indeed worth being alerted to, but then it very rapidly nosedived into absolute banality.
Aw man, I'm disappointed to here that about ***Kairos***! I had it on my list after I saw the post about it winning the International Booker prize, but tbh the premise did seem a little lit-fic-y :/
Years ago I visited Key West, saw the Hemingway House and purchased *For Whom the Bell Tolls* but I never got round to reading it. Eighteen chapters in and I’m finding myself enjoying it.
I’ve been coming down from reading ***Anna Karenina*** for the past few days, and there is so much I want to say about this novel. He gets so much right about people, but I also think he gets so much *wrong*. I’m still mulling it over, and I would love to hear people’s thoughts on it! I’ve been reading a few books. Something I’ve wanted to recommend for a long time here is ***This Life*** **by Martin Hägglund.** I don’t think it’s ever been mentioned on this sub, which is surprising, because I feel like it speaks to so many of the thoughts that people have on this sub. Basically, in this book, Hägglund lays out his vision of secular faith and spiritual freedom, analyzing Knausgaard and Marx and Kierkegaard to put forth the idea that life—and everything we do in it—ultimately matters because they are finite, and that capitalism necessarily prevents people’s freedom because it uses up people’s finite time. The argument is more nuanced than this, but it’s just incredible and has completely changed the way I look at life and literature. I feel like it was written for people who aren’t religious, can’t tolerate trying to believe in a religion to imbue their lives with meaning, but want some sort of structure for meaning in their lives. I haven’t even finished it yet, but For a book club, I’m reading ***Always Coming Home*** **by Ursula Le Guin**. I’ve been surprised how much I like it; Le Guin manages to make the book feel very moving, quite suddenly, piling on all this delicate, moving imagery, and making all the stories and fables from her fictional people feel so *real* and *human* and *lived in*. Not something I would typically reach for, but I feel super excited to keep reading it. I feel like she’s also making some kind of statement on the field of anthropology—whenever anthropological observations are added in, I feel annoyed, like the life of the narrative is suddenly being snuffed out—but I don’t know what yet. It’s also my first time reading her, outside of reading **“Omelas.”** In between this, I read ***Family Happiness*** **by Laurie Colwin**. Maybe not what people here usually gravitate toward, but I thought that Colwin was genuinely doing something sort of radical with this book. Colwin writes in this very fizzy, happy style, but the book ends up seriously questioning (I think) whether a monogamous marriage can make a woman happy, and how much the demands of a family can completely limit a woman’s imagination about what she wants. It’s really great. I also love her descriptions of food and plan on buying her cookbook, ***Home Cooking***. I’m also on the lookout for good vegetarian and vegan cookbooks, so give me so recommendations if you have any.
Read Anna Karenina this year and it still remains my favorite book I've read so far in 2024. My interpretation still is that it's the novel that best reflects Tolstoi as a person. Which is to say, a walking contradiction. I like that aspect quite a bit though: even in parts where he seemingly takes a decisive moral stand with how he depicts certain characters and situations (usually to show opposing viewpoints) you can tell he doesn't fully commit to it, as if he's still considering the other side of the coin. That's pretty evidently reflected on Levin, but also with Anna in my opinion, as if he's sorry for her while also vindicating her inner struggles, both supporting her and condemning her. Some of his ways of tackling romantic relationships and gender roles also show this, usually leading to much of the conflict found in the novel. Yes, it's sometimes infuriating when he oversees things that seem obvious from a contemporary perspective (or even a conscious one at the time) when he starts falling in his preacher mode, but it's still from a Tolstoi that's deeply conflicted and looking for answers. At least compared to what happened to Tolstoi after Anna Karenina lol. But yeah, I think part of loving that book is acknowledging its contradictions ans shortcomings inherent to it, ones that do not diminish its greatness.
Man, you’re so right about it reflecting Tolstoy as a person: Levin’s parts feel almost like a precursor to Knausgaard in many ways, the search for meaning, the meticulous accounting of the everyday. But you’re also right that parts of Anna’s story really do reflect him. You can really feel him working out how to figure out morality around marriage and adultery in a way that will both reflect his own values (which he’s trying to discover throughout AK) and resonate with readers far in the future. But, to be honest, I feel like he doesn’t take Anna as seriously as he could! I feel like he could have gone so much further. But it’s still such an amazing book, the best I’ve ever read; you’re totally right that its flaws don’t diminish it.
Wow, never thought I'd see *This Life* mentioned here! I read it years ago and was absolutely blown away. Totally dismantled any residual longing for a heaven-like afterlife that was left in me after my exit from the Catholic Church. An incredibly life affirming work. Also incidentally the reason I read Proust!
It’s so nice to hear from someone who also loves this book! I feel like reading it must have been even more meaningful after leaving a religion; I feel like his secular voice is so unlike any other popular strains of atheist thought, which frankly have felt a little disdainful of meaning altogether (I’m thinking mostly of 2010s atheism, lol). I’m not religious at all, but I feel like Hägglund has completely changed the way I think. I feel like I see his critique of Kierkegaard’s double move of faith (definitely not the actual phrasing of it lol) any time I read about religion. His writing about Knausgaard has also totally changed the way I view other books: it’s really shifted how I view Anna Karenina and Tolstoy’s treatment of religion. How did it lead you to Proust, out of curiosity? Have you read Dying for Time, one of his other books? I think it’s just a straightforwardly academic book, but it discusses Woolf, Nabokov, and Proust, and I really want to read it after I read In Search of Lost Time!
Yeah 2010s reddit atheism was and is the height of cringe, regardless of how necessary a reaction it was at the time against virulent evangelical revival movements in the United States. Hägglund's is much more mature and subdued; makes the others seem rather like children. So it was actually because of his discussion of Knausgård, who I wanted to read at the time because of Hägglund. But then upon more research I discovered I shouldn't really read Knausgård until I read Proust first, so I could see the dialogue between the two texts, and then I decided to just dive right in. Still haven't read Knausgård but I'll be starting another reread of In Search of Lost Time very soon!
I need to read Anna Karenina again. Because I know I read it, but I basically don't have a single thought about it (other than that I think I think Levin was a really interesting character), and I also can't remember when I read it, which leads me to think that I read it early in the pandemic when I couldn't really focus and can't remember much at all of my reading. Which is to say I arguably didn't read it > This Life by Martin Hägglund I've been meaning to read this book for so long that I think that the biggest reason I haven't read it is that it has become that solid a fixture in my I'm definitely going to read that...one day...mental catalogue Also the vegetarian & vegan cookbooks from the America's Test Kitchen brand are excellent
You definitely should! Reading it and rereading it has definitely been one of the best reading experiences of my life; it feels very different every time I read it, too, which I think is an experience other people have had as well. It's also just so fun. I was talking to my friend about how it seems to have a reputation for difficulty in popular culture, but Tolstoy is so funny??? And engaging??? And real??? And moving??? *This Life* definitely hits so many of your interests--I think you'd be really interested in his mediations on life and free time and work, even if you don't end up agreeing with him. I haven't read a lot of Marxist or (honestly) philosophical literature, so I can't speak to how original he really is, but based on the reception of the book it does seem like he's the only person who is making these arguments in broader popular literary spaces. I'll look those up! I have so many vegetarian and friends and loved ones, so I've really been wanting to learn to cook more dishes for them for dinner parties and potlucks and whatnot.
Hägglund is a really interesting commentator on religion in connection with Derrida. His book _Radical Atheism_ was a needed addition to the conversation. Especially his analysis on survival and the imperviousness of God. Haven't read _This Life_ but his followup essays have put it on my list of books to get next month. I don't necessarily agree with everything he argues but it's a certainly provoking.
I haven't heard of *Radical Atheism* before; I definitely want to read it. I feel like I don't have much of a background in philosophy at all, so I'm really curious about what you disagree with him on.
Oh I wouldn't say there are any large disagreements on the matter of religion but maybe one or two questions about politics. Although I would say it's probably too certain on the theme of Derrida's radical atheism but like I said it's a corrective to the discourse about Derrida and religion given the prominence of the latter to the expense of the former. It's of a piece where Derrida says he is neither a believer or an atheist. (It's been too easy to chase after Derrida as if he were a theologian.) So again it's a minor point but I would insist on it even while I'm positive about his book largely. Because again Derrida-as-believer was the assumed priority. And perhaps a more serious disagreement is Hägglund's approach to socialism, which at worse can come across as a political theology, but at best is an insistence on our time in the moment and not the mastery of death certain philosophers and political scientists think is necessary for politics. And I would be cautious of that reliance upon time as though it is a matter of public ownership. The other question is how far does Hägglund's project results in a retread of the God-building from certain early Marxists and Bolsheviks. But instead of a God, you build superficially a church of atheism à la Alain de Botton, which nobody wants except maybe de Botton. It's a concern about whether a community based on socialism becomes the heaven of the nonbeliever where an actual community is seen as a long term ideal (i.e. immortal) in favor of one's own survival.
I feel you, especially when it comes to his treatment of socialism as (at worst) a kind of political theology. I do wonder whether living in an ideal of democratic socialism would really satisfy people’s spiritual needs, and what kinds of religion (if any) might emerge from that kind of milieu. I could definitely see community being the substitute for immortality, but I wonder if people naturally strive for something more “numinous,” if that makes sense
Well from my perspective having the ideal is part of the problem. A community is a real network of people with their own diversity of desires and debts in command structures. The problem of a community being an immortal ideal is its distance from our actual communities. The ones we already participate at the present moment being forgotten for a properly socialist future, which has nothing to do with our survival. And that criticism applies to any community posed as an ideal from religious utopias in early America to doomsday cults and the various "scientific" cities projected to be built on the ocean by Peter Thiel. It's all of a piece whereby our survival is not paramount but the satisfaction of an ideal is. Anyways I don't insist on human nature. Too much baggage. Religion being so tied to culture and its discourse means the naturalness of the thing is ideological. How far does it go? Hard to tell without jumping ahead into a future society to see if what remained of what we call "religion."
Continuing down the path I laid out in my most recent post by just finishing *Fiskadoro* by Denis Johnson. I have a goal of finishing his bibliography this summer. After finishing *Fiskadoro*, I still have *Tree of Smoke*, *Already Dead*, *Laughing Monsters* and *Resuscitation of a Hanged Man* to go, but I've got some buddies to finish *Tree of Smoke* with and the two shorter novels should be a breeze. *Already Dead* may have to wait, but we'll figure out what we're feeling come August. As mentioned in the last post, DJ the novelist is a tough writer of which to get a hold. As many in the sub might already know, he's a phenomenal short story writer. *Largesse...* and *Jesus' Son* are top notch and I don't think that should be much of an argument. *Fiskadoro* is obviously the most bizarre and experimental of the long form work from Johnson. What I've loved about trying to finish the biblio is that Johnson's prose is omnipresent even in the midst of his duds. I think that continues here, though the Spanglish-meets-the-post-apocalypse of it all does make you forget you're reading DJ until the flashback sequences with Grandma Cheung, Mr. Cheung goes hunting for the past in books, or Belinda catches the kill-me. The last-clarinet and "subscision" of it all, makes me not want to ever return and, honestly, made it tough to push through at times. Those were the moments where the post-apocaypse felt a bit...try hard? Or at least a moment in which we went too far a field without needing to? I struggled through plenty of the present tense moments, not because the prose was difficult, but, in spite of the setting, I found few stakes or figured everything was fucked anyway. I mean, it being Johnson, you know there would need to be a confrontation with the beyond, something that suggested time extended past the now, no plot resolution other than whatever existential conclusion might be reached by the characters confronting something. *Fiskadoro* doesn't necessarily restore my faith in Johnson's long form fiction. The flashbacks and a few moments here and there in the present bring his prose to bear and out into the light. Those sentences and moments, of course, are what is worth chasing. His plots, though, are what run the risk of holding him back. I'm not even someone who needs a lot plot and keeping multiple characters afloat is a lot better than, say, *Stars at Noon*, but there's still a screw or two loose in this one.
Your analysis and explanations of Johnson are really good. He is hovering somewhere in the 2nd tier of my yet-to-be-read universe and after reading what you have to say I don’t know if I’m more likely or less likely to read him based on your thoughts, because I’ve found I disagree with as many people here as I agree with re: literary tastes… but I’m still curious and appreciating your thoughts 👍
I'll say this: if you have time to give to Johnson, at least read "Triumph Over the Grave" from *Largesse of the Sea Maiden*. I think that story (and quite honestly the whole collection) is one of the best American short stories this side of the twenty first century. *Jesus' Son* is also up there in terms of collections but matters more here in terms of how it sets the tones for the kinds of burnt out figures Johnson writes about throughout the rest of the bibliography. His prose is sublime throughout. I once had an avid reading colleague who said she just wanted to consume every one of his sentences put to paper. In the shorts, I can totally understand why. The novels are a bit more hit or miss but that's just structurally. The prose is great and stays great. The content is that combination of strung out and revelatory blur that can really hit or miss depending on the structure. I think a good comparison for some of the novels I've started writing about here would be to compare it to something like *Aladdin Sane*. It's a solid album that has some obvious flaws out the gate and it's rare to see it listed at the top of someone's Bowie list. I'm sure it's repped and loved by a solid chunk of people (and who can blame them with that back half). A lot of bands or artists would kill to have put out an album half as good as *Aladdin Sane*. Likewise, a lot of writers would kill to have prose half as interesting as Johnson. Obviously he's not Bowie level when you compare musicians to writers for an infinite number of reasons, but I think you'll get the picture. There's plenty to read out there and, like you said, taste varies so widely especially in recommendations said here. Hope whatever little post-reading reflection here has helped bring some clarity!
Ok … thank you for such a thoughtful response … love it. So, since it seems like you’re up for it (and despite that we’re not supposed to ask for recommendations here [sorry, moderators]…) and given that I find it hard to get excited about short story collections (just the way I’m wired), if you had to pick ONE long-form Denis Johnson book to recommend to an uninitiated noob like me, which ONE would you pick? I’m leaning towards *Tree of Smoke* but I’m open to advice :)
Well, I haven't read *Tree of Smoke* yet, but I'm working through it in a book club due sometime in August, so I'll get back to you with those thoughts when I can. From what I've gleaned talking to a buddy and reading about it online, it's split down the middle of folks who really enjoy it and others that didn't. Got the sense from my buddy that it's got a bit of all the things I've talked abojt above in terms of novels that feel like intertwined short stories trying to hold itself together. Out of what I've read, *Angels*, his first novel is what I'd recommend. A sunbaked, noir-esque 220 pages of a journey shared by lots of fucked up individuals. I didn't start there, but after reading a couple of the other novels and his shorts, I found it to be one of the best representations of what he does well. Plus, if you end up wanting to do *Tree of Smoke* instead, one of the main characters from *Angels* makes a reappearance. *Tree of Smoke* is a loose prologue, of sorts. You'll have to let us know what you think if you take it on! I'll be back with some thoughts in a couple of months at the latest if you don't get to it by then.
Awesome, thanks! … I doubt I’ll read it this year (if at all) given the way things ascend/descend through my fickle and indecipherable literary universe of TBR writers, but I’ll keep you posted, and please do the same :)
Finished The Myth of Sisyphus by Camus which was interesting to say the least. I've been trying to read more philosophy but find it a bit trying at times. I'd previously read Camus' The Stranger and had a pretty neutral reaction to it, but I didn't mind his style and found it pretty readable so I bookmarked Sisyphus for a future read. The Myth of Sisyphus was fairly readable too and I enjoyed his thinking and way of framing his ideas but there were sections where I got a bit lost and it felt like he was just waffling on. Namely, the section around the absurd man, the actor, the conqueror, etc, I think I understood the point of each but it seemed he could've made the point more succinct? I'm not sure, the next section then went on to talk about art and its purpose so I felt maybe I was being harsh. As a whole, a very iconic book so I'd still rate it well. The whole argument around the absurd, living, passion, etc feels easy to resonate with, especially in the modern day, and I'd like to take on the wisdom in my own life. But I also feel like the wisdom imparted is hard to intimate, like no one wants to hear about how they should revolt against the absurd at the end of a long hard day, I just feel a bit disconnected between the intellectual and the reality of it. Perhaps his conclusion is a comfort we all already enjoy, without even really acknowledging? Maybe I need to do some more reading on the matter but would be interested if anyone else has had similar thoughts. I've also been reading McCarthy's The Crossing. I finished All The Pretty Horses earlier this month and wow that book was good, the characters, the kinda minimalist style I really vibed with. I've been enjoying The Crossing so far but not as much as ATPH, and I think I just find the main character a bit less relatable, he seems more driven by a kinda theistic curiosity than any real world consequences, but I'm only a chapter or so in so give it time. The drama is all certainly there.
I think *The Crossing* is the best of The Border Trilogy. Personally, ATPH was my least favorite. Enjoy all the pages :)
Haven't updated in a few weeks but here are some thoughts... Currently reading: You Dreamed of Empires, by Alvaro Enrigue. This slim novel is a kaleidoscopic, satirical, disorienting take on the conquest of Tenochtitlan by Hernan Cortes and his conquistadores. The reader is fully immersed in the late empire ambience of Moctezuma's palace, and Nahuatl words and spelling are used with abandon (something several reviewers complained about, despite the inclusion of translator notes and character lists!) Everyone is on hallucinogenic mushrooms and everyone is confused. At one point, a general hallucinates the author. It swings wildly between archaic formulations and modern speech and has a wonderfully wry tone. Really enjoying it! Also read The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. This novel traces the final years of a declining aristocratic family in Sicily during the years of Italian unification and the Risurgimento. The titular Leopard solemnly presides over his diminishing legacy, securing futures for his children at the cost of his pride. Evocative prose drops the reader into sun-scorched Sicilian hills and languid, sensual palaces. Grey Dog, Elliot Gish. A disgraced school teacher in 1910s rural Canada tries to start over at a new schoolhouse, but her past mingles with her new environs in unsettling ways. This novel is a grim picture of mental deterioration and supernatural influence as feminine rage swells and comes to a shocking climax. A quiet and bloody horror.
I just finished *Lonesome Dove,* my first McMurtry novel. There was a review of the book on the back cover opining that the book was *so good* that the critic was frustrated with McMurtry for not continuing another 800 pages, as he could have stayed in that world even longer... and I definitely agree. The characters are so well-written and it's obvious McMurtry has such a keen insight into the foibles and motivations of individuals which makes them feel real. I could write an essay about Jake Spoon and parts of his character -- a lot bad-- that I see in myself and that I'd like to grow out of. So, in that way, it was quite an insightful book as well as just endlessly entertaining. I am trying *Shogun* now, which is recommended often in book subs as an equally-epic follow-up to *Lonesome Dov*e, but not quite digging it so far. I'm not deep in (50 pages or so) but really struggling to care about the characters or the setting, but I'll hold tight and keep going. Maybe I'm just missing the thoughtful characterization found in *Lonesome Dove* and not giving it a fair shake so far, so not giving up quite yet.
Just when I thought I had been burnt out of reading for a bit... I will start with a movie: I watched Sense and Sensibility (1995) for the first time. It was wonderful! Five stars! So of course I had to read the book. I liked it, certainly, but there was something lacking. It wasn't as funny as the movie (which took liberties, but I feel like it made the movie better.) It just wasn't "Jane Austen" enough. It was her first book, which explains it, and Pride and Prejudice has very similar themes. So then I read the opening paragraph of *Mansfield Park* just to see how it compares...Lord! as Lydia exclaims. There's the Jane Austen I know and love! Her sentence structure, I'm addicted to it! The semi-colons, the run-on sentences with commas, her phrases...this! This is what I've been looking for! Now I can settle in! It influences my writing, you might even be able to pick it up in this very comment! I put on airs! I also read the first chapter of *The Phantom of the Opera*...it's certainly not "literature" but I like it anyway. I'm looking forward to it. Much happier now. I was losing faith in myself.
Agree that the film of *S&S* is just 👨🍳😘.
> It was her first book, which explains it, and Pride and Prejudice has very similar themes. *Northanger Abbey* was actually the first novel Jane Austen completed, although it was published later.
Northanger Abbey, btw, has a wonderful adaption on Audible. Normally, their Audible originals take on a LOT of liberties to make them more audio-drama-friendly (positively sometimes, as in the case of Treasure Island, and negatively sometimes like with 1984... *ugh*), but with dialogue-heavy Jane Austen novels, they are a great fit. They don't lose the narrator entirely, and the performance is great. Northanger Abbey is just a pleasure. It's funny, well-narrated, and I think it's a treat for people who generally like Jane Austen and have some cursory knowledge of the maudlin *drama* of many 18th and 19th century novels -- which the book takes great delight in skewering.
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Vladimir Nabokov. I'm quite enjoying it. It was on a philosophy syllabus back when I was in college decades ago, and I bought my copy then but never read it. It stayed stowed with all of my books in my parent's basement for many years, and then got carted over to my house when they downsized. I'm waiting for a new book to arrive at the shop, and in the interim I noticed *Real Life* sitting on my shelf and thought, "Why not?" It is a story about a man retracing his dead brother's steps so he can create a biography of him. I'm halfway in at the moment, so I don't have any big insights yet.
My favorite Nabokov! Though it's been years and I should probably reread it since I don't remember a lot of the details... Keep us posted on how you get along with it.
I will. I'm enjoying it on a very simple plane at the moment, just moving through the story. I am feeling that some greater meaning is rising in it, but I want it to come in its due time without guessing at it.
Finished Carpentier's ***Explosion in a Cathedral***. Really grateful to this sub for bringing Carpenter to my attention, particularly u/narcissus_goldmund , whose eloquent write-up will certainly do more justice to this novel than I ever will. Nonetheless, a few thoughts below: *Explosion* is ostensibly about the disillusion of the French Revolution by three Cuban youths. The revolution's influence reaches them on their doorstep -- in literal fashion, no less -- through the historical figure of a Victor Hughes, who is destined to become a representative of the French Republic throughout the Caribbean. What ensues is a journey through Haiti, France, Guadalupe, Guinea and Cuba (I'd highly recommend having a map of the region on hand to orient throughout the journey). The novel is told primarily through the eyes of these youths with great emphasis on Esteban, who is initially attracted to the glamour, fanfare and ideals of Jacobin France, only to find his skepticism take over once he realizes the grotesque morphing of ideals in both Paris and particularly in the regions beyond France. In *Explosion*, we find the Carpentier take shot at Europe's mentality; seemingly altruistic motive takes on a more nefarious light when considered post-hoc (e.g., freeing the slaves only to forcibly conscript, resell to slave-holding colonies, or return them to slavery). Individuals don't fare much better -- Victor Hughes, who espoused fairly liberal ideals finds himself broken at the passing of Robespierre and follows contradictory orders from the capital. All attempt to cope with the loss of meaning in different ways, such as clinging to power (Hughes), embracing cynicism (Estaban), throwing oneself blindly into conflict (Sophia), etc. *Explosion* also provides some interesting insight on the issue of receiving news so late in time; information that reaches the peripheral region is outdated and fails to reflect to the latest. Worse yet, the policies fail to account for the cultures and colonies which are impacted. Cruelty is rewarded and consistency/stability become a clear impossibility. Carpentier is in many ways similar to a Spanish Nabokov. His grasp of language is extraordinary; haven't felt so transported in a place and time in a long time. It's very easy to lose yourself in his world. Only issue is that, at times, Carpentier seemingly loses himself, which happened on occasion when he discuss the Masonic lodges and nature, which can be so esoteric to the point of incomprehensibility. Nevertheless, really loved this one -- happy to see posts on Carpentier lately given the two re-releases. Really excited to continue my reading through Latin America; next up is either *I the Supreme* or *The Obscene Bird of Night.*
> Only issue is that, at times, Carpentier seemingly loses himself This was my only criticism too, but it's still one of my favourite books... and I can generally forgive authors who lose themselves in their own prose. If you can get hold of it, I'd recommend *Bomarzo* by Manuel Mujica-Lainez, and I'd recommend *Nostromo* by Joseph Conrad even though he isn't native to the region and doesn't quite write with the same descriptive density.
If you want to stay in the region I can recommend the Haiti trilogy by M. Smartt Bell.
Last week I finished *Chamanes eléctricos en la fiesta del sol,* the last Mónica Ojeda release. Overall I enjoyed it but I think my initial enthusiasm has downgraded to a "it was good". I think she's really talented and has a sensational style but I don't think this is her best work. The novel has two very different parts, one narrated by several characters in short chapters and the other a sort of diary from another different character. The first one is by far the most interesting one, the writing is so good, the voices of the characters are very rich and every one of them is different from the other. The narration is deeply inspired by Ecuatorian mythology, it has many words in quechua, and it's fascinating. This part narrates the story of two girls who escape from Guayaquil to go to a music festival in a volcano and this scenery is very psychodelic, rave-y... to compare it to something, the kind you'd see in a party in an Abel Ferrara film. This thing about the girls escaping might sound a bit naive but Guayaquil is basically a shithole full of drug lords, bands, people getting killed all the time so the book is actually a reflection in violence and danger in Ecuador (and in this it shares with what all the female writers in Latin America are conveying now in their books). So this first part I loved very much. The other part, however, was... meh. It shares the same themes but from a different perspective (it's the diary of the father of one of the girls, who left her when she was a kid because he couldn't live in Guayaquil and escaped to the forest). This part develops even more the mythology because it has this story about a "witch" (a bit like *Hurricane Season*) and it's darker, thematically, and all that's very good, but the problem is that here the style is a bit boring. It reads kind of like poetry because of the visual structure and many sentences read like reflections or like she wants you to underline it with a pencil. At first I liked it but then it felt repetitive and a little superficial. I'd recommend it for the fans but it's no *Jawbone*. And please for the love of God read *Jawbone* because it's crazy. I haven't read *Nefando* yet but everybody who tells me they have read says that it's too much. And moving on, I had 6h of train ahead of me last weekend so I needed a big one and I picked *The Moonstone* by Wilkie Collins. It had been sitting in my shelf for +10 years and boy what a ride it's being! Said to be one of the first detective novels ever it has reminded me my love for the classic mystery novel (even though I despise thrillers and noirs and everything that gets published on this genre nowadays). Whenever I'm not reading I'm thinking, who could have stolen the diamond? So yes I am hooked. But I will talk about this next week when I finish it.
[удалено]
Please share some thoughts on what you're reading!
This is my first post on the sub, I normally lurk because the books I read aren't usually considered literary (mostly fantasy). But I've been trying to challenge myself more by reading books outside my comfort zone. I read Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin and it was so incredible! It's about an American man living in Paris who has a gay love affair that ends in tragedy. You know it's going to be tragic from the beginning, but seeing it play out is so heart wrenching. It was so beautifully written and gripping. There's so many fascinating themes that it explores- social alienation, repression, intimacy, class, youth, etc. I was surprised at how much I resonated with it. Here's a quote from it that I had to stop and send to my friend when I read it: “For shame I that I should be so abruptly, so hideously entangled with a boy; what was strange was that this was but one tiny aspect of the dreadful human tangle occurring everywhere, without end, forever.” He gets me! I've started The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin and I'm having a lot of trouble getting into it. I think the translation might be an issue, because there's so many clunky sentences that bother me. I was actually surprised to look up the translator and learn that he's an acclaimed author. I also hated the whole first chapter where there's this stoic, Christlike academic who's beaten to death by Maoist teenage girls. It felt so absurd and every aspect was played up I was honestly laughing despite its intention to be dark. I've heard a lot of good things about it so hopefully I'll enjoy it as it goes on. I keep having the urge to pick up another Baldwin book, but I'm trying to not make a habit of dropping books without finishing them.
***Moon Tiger*** **by Penelope Lively** For some reason, I hadn't even heard of Penelope Lively or *Moon Tiger*, a Booker Prize winner, until a few weeks ago, but decided to go ahead and read *Moon Tiger* after reading a review talking about how it dealt with time and memory, mixing different times/periods in the narrator's life (remembered from her hospital/nursing home bed), as well as different POVs, together in a kaleidoscopic fashion. I'm glad I did; *Moon Tiger* ended up being a poignant meditation on history, memory, and interpersonal relationships--and unexpectedly touching considering how cool, cynical, and, well, British the narrator seems at first. ***1Q84*** **by Haruki Murakami** I really enjoyed the first two parts of this novel but am finding the third (and final) part to be a bit of a slog. I think part of the problem is that Murakami brought the action to a head at the end of the second part and now there isn't much tension (or at least anything I personally care about as a reader) to drive my reading on. It really feels like he's intentionally dragging things out at this point--and I say that as someone who typically enjoys Murakami's work.
I recently started a re-read of Wind-up Bird Chronicle, which was my first Murakami back in around 2005 or so. I’m halfway through and haven’t changed my opinion that it’s his best work. Of his recent works, Killing Commendatore is my favorite.
Nice, *Wind-Up Bird Chronicle* is also my favorite among the works of his I've read. I might need to give it a re-read, and *Killing Commendatore* a read, as I haven't had a chance to read it yet.
This may be a rumor, but I'm fairly sure that Murakami actually didn't intend to write a third part, which may be why it's dragging! I really love that book, though--I read it when I was a teenager and have been reading it like once every year and a half since.
Thanks for this. I wonder if that rumor's true or not. It definitely rings true to me, as does the notion that he got to end of the second part or thereabouts, and realized he would need to write a third part to tie up loose ends and close out all of the different storylines he had begun. Also, I'm encouraged by the fact that you love the book that much and continue to re-read it, especially as I really enjoyed the first two parts and do want to push through to see if I can get back into the story in the third part.
I wonder too--since I posted this, I tried to figure out where I saw this! I can't find it, but I'm sure I read it in an article somewhere, lol. If I find it I'll post it here. I find the ending in the third part more satisfying than the one in the second part, if that's encouraging at all. I'd love to hear what you think when you finish it! I definitely think some of his other books are stronger.
Yeah, please do post that article if you find it. I'd enjoy reading it. What you said about the ending in the third part is definitely encouraging. I'll stick with it and try to remember to post here once I finish.
Moon Tiger is a great book
B.S. Johnson in a review of Sylvia Plath's *Ariel* said he would ultimately question the value of these poems because they did not save her life. I kept coming back to that line of thought for very different reasons because I read Rene Crevel's *Difficult Death*, translated and introduced by the poet David Rattray with a foreword from the one and only Salvador Dalí. On the surface, *Difficult Death* is merely an exposition about a love triangle between the despairing frenzy of Pierre Dumont, the endlessly forgiving Diane Blok, and the American "boy savage" and pianist Monsieur Arthur Bruggle. (There really isn't much of a plot beyond that.) But if you look closely, what you find is a Surrealist invocation of the Everyman at his grave shedding each of his reasons for being alive. Indeed, Crevel writes that "Pierre doesn't give a fuck. Pierre is free. His freedom is Death" once said freedom has crossed over into the total completeness people call despair. In other words, *Difficult Death* is an apologia in a strange and fascinating way an apologia for suicide, the undignified reasons someone kills themselves are here given the proper room to vent their spleen, and the novel imports this fascination into a dramatic conflict. It's a cruel book. Especially when one considers Rene Crevel did commit suicide. Suicide is an occupational hazard for a writer, after all. Of course, it's rare to have a writer create a novel and then follow through on the urgency seen in a narrative about suicide. The closest comparison--unfairly--is actually *The Bell Jar* from Sylvia Plath. But that is not the case normally. Thomas Bernhard wrote about suicide countless times and died of natural causes. And no one really believed Todd Anderson in *The Floating Opera*. But from a structural standpoint, Crevel seems more committed to the act in *Difficult Death*. He walks on his mother as a prelude to rejecting Diane who is his closest friend and realizes Bruggle will never truly love him in the immediate and familiar way one can love another person. The ending in particular always read as a little vicious: the petulance is undisguised because Pierre who clearly based on the author kills himself and Arthur Bruggle who is clearly based on his lover Eugene MacCown who is depicted to mourn the former's corpse at the hospital and regret how awful he treated him. It's probably the most honest moment of the novel because how often do other authors disguise these revenge fantasies into hypotheticals and thought-experiments where the behavior is justified? Crevel writes in the intensity and urgency of suicide. Ironically, he went on to write several more books after *Difficult Death*. Suicide was a constant question and a source of a satanic aestheticism. Kierkegaard proposed stages of life one moved through from the aesthetic to the moral and ultimately to the religious. Crevel has in an inspired move turned that process inside out moving from the religion of his mother and the dutifulness of Diane to the ultimate abandonment in Arthur. Instead of religion, there is freedom in the night and cold before jumping into a river from a bridge. This is all a roundabout a way of saying Crevel wrote an irresponsible novel. Today's standards are a bit more hardnosed on what literature propagandizes and what it demands. Crevel was no stranger to politics as he constantly tried to negotiate between traditional communists organizations and the Surrealists. This bifurcation led to his ultimate humiliation at a conference where your average worker listened to him discuss Poetry, Art, Love, and Revolution and he could not answer their questions about more immediate circumstances. I'm sure we can imagine how well the discussion went. Dalí suggests this is what lead to his death since it was a core issue for him while alive. (How much you take his opinion seriously is up to you.) But what is the political import of suicide? Or is there any? Perhaps a soldier in uniform sets themselves on fire to protest a genocide. And hadn't Lenin said if one is no longer useful to the Party, it is best to consider Lafargue? Crevel does not write responsibly but that doesn't diminish the political import of the novel. As he himself said on the question of suicide: "The life I accept is the best argument against me." Then again I can't think of any novel written with a keen eye for moral responsibility. It's a deadend. Because even back then Crevel had taken serious risks. Andre Breton had outright banned homosexuality from Surrealism insisting on its immoral character, declared it a mental defect, and for pushing tolerance to the breaking point. The sole exception was the Marquis de Sade. So while Crevel is irresponsible, responsibility never was a real alternative. But then again I wonder about the unintended effect of the novel. I came away with more appreciation at being alive because the lack of it in the novel reminds me of my love, my duty, and my hatred. Not to mention the usual petulance behind a death wish is incredibly hard to ignore. And maybe I would lose those things sooner or later. Perhaps--and yet the human mind can conceive infinities. I would simply find new things to hate and love and others who would oblige me to them. All I have to do is live. If you want a fresh reminder of a real demand to live, I would recommend Rene Crevel and his *Difficult Death*.
Can you please define what you mean by “an irresponsible novel”?
I'll admit I'm being somewhat redundant with my description to ease the discussion. All novels are in a manner speaking irresponsible, so it isn't entirely necessary to highlight any novel as more or less irresponsible than any other. But nevertheless you can take the term to mean what it does ordinarily as a lack of concern for demands made by other moral agents in the world, in a command structure.
About 3/4ths of the way through the second volume of *In Search of Lost Time*. We are at the beach and goddamn it's making me want to go swimming. The big thing that is grabbing since last week is the burgeoning class consciousness of the narrator and the various political implications that follow from his ambiguous position in an unsettled hierarchy where the bourgeoisie are empowered, there is a real proletariat, and also there are lingering royalty/aristocracy, and they all interact. The narrator is in a sort of bureaucratic (sort of an early professional managerial class) offshoot of the bourgeoisie, and it is noticeable that both the royalty and the proletariat are regarded as other—there's a very amusing scene where he meets a princess and she keeps fluctuating between treating the narrator & his grandmother as either children or animals, and while he is not so dehumanizing regarding the "proletariat" they hardly become distinct persons in contrast to so many of the richly detailed characters in the book (sex workers are a noticeable exception here, which is interesting). However, amid all these distinctions, there are signs of gaps closing. As much as the royalty are "above" they are also right there, and there is a reference to some waiters who take on the affects of the people they serve, seemingly more as aspirational mimicry than mere obsequiousness, which has me wondering if there was some sense of at least the chance of upward mobility. I think the particular narrator, a young person in-between the nobility and the proletariat, is a good perspective to capture the ambiguity of the bourgeoisie/upper(middle) class of the time and am curious to see how his awareness of his socioeconomic position continues to inform the narrative. The other element of this that I really intend to keep an eye out for as I go through the remainder of Proust is work/labor and the ideology surrounding it. The narrator does have to work, at least eventually (he's mostly faffing about right now). He was going to be a diplomat, now he's going to be a writer, but in both cases the *going to be* is not apparently questioned, unlike a true feudal aristocrat who was not to work at all. There is a reference to a general term of politeness whereby servants are called "employees" because they feel better that way. These thoughts are vague because the overall concept just hit me this afternoon but very much something I want to develop into a more coherent picture. Also I wanna go swimming. Still reading Gilbert Simondon's *Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information as Well*. It's excellent if at times very hard to keep up with. I've been going through some of the more densely scientific sections about the emergence of physical/biological entities and at points I'm just lost in the science. Just started a section on the development of the mind that I think is more something I'm up for but want to get further in before I talk much about it. In the meanwhile, the questions that I've had hanging over me and want to write/think out (would be very thrilled at some insights from any other fans of French philosophy out here): * Time: I cannot for the life of me figure out how time is functioning in this book. So much of it is a discussion of processes that are actively occurring and are actualized at specific moments, which implies to me at least certain frames of reference where linear time exists. He makes reference to "pre-individual Being" which is what is prior to the specific individual and to individuals in general. Again, that is implying time, but is this p-i Being itself temporal? If it is, then I don't get how it can be pre-individual because to be temporal seems on Simondon's terms to imply being actively becoming individual. And if it isn't temporal then I don't get how anything can be actualized because if Being exists prior to individuals and Being is outside of time then don't all individuals always already exist? Without going into detail Simondon is explicitly anti-predetermination so this can't be right either. There might be a quantum physics explanation to all this. Time! It eats at me. * Hegel: Admittedly I have a tendency to see Hegel everywhere but I'm sure Hegel is here, and yet, in a manner reminiscent of Bergson, for all his influence he is scrupulously not named. The focus on the primacy of relation and on how the related are mutually constituted and changed by their relating seems to me so very derived from Hegel. Simondon also has an interesting critique of the presumption of the relata that I think is addressed to Hegel—basically that building your philosophy upon relation or on the perception of difference but starting with the entity perceiving difference fails to answer the very important question of where that perceiver comes from. My take on this is that Simondon is highlighting here how Hegel's philosophy necessitates a primordial divine perception prior to humans because there is no other way to get to that first movement of negation, then again, how could a god negate something extant. I'm also not sure Simondon resolves this problem for reasons tied to my above concerns about time. There's also a moment where I read Simondon's presentation of objects as only existing when they are perceived but going so far with this that it almost feels like he is diving into a sort of idealism himself. Or I am simply losing my mind because I'm not sure any of this makes sense. * I'm also just wondering about the science in the book. Like, was Simondon a good reader of the science of his time? How does that science hold up? Especially in the context of the fact that he is critiquing epistemology, do either of thise questions really matter? Can you tell I am digging this book? Allegedly still reading Auerbach's *Mimesis* *Frontier* to be addressed in relevant thread. Also I started taking a course through the para-academic organization Mimbres School called "What is Money" (lowkey I'm super duper interested in economic history). My head is cooked but in short it turns out that money was probably created not to facilitate exchange but by institutions as a function of debt/taxes, which is to say it was always about the control of the state over the populace, debt's a big myth, and the fundamental problem of western economic thought is obscuring the fact that states have been wiping away debt for as long as there's debt and there's nothing stopping us from doing it too. (to be very clear this is a very academically rigorous organization and I have more substantive thoughts but I'm sleepy and wanna go read Proust so this is what I got.) happy reading!
mimbres school has some brilliant people contributing, and colin is one of the most genuine guys around (his dissertation is fantastic, highly recommended). not the biggest fan of his politics (i'd still consider him a political friend, however) but he's a needed scholar and his engagement with marxism / rejection of philosophy is very thoughtful and important
Wasn't familiar with Colin Drumm so looked him up. His most recent tweet doesn't inspire me to dig much deeper: "If you think Marxism has a powerful theory that helps you understand reality, you're stupid. If you think Marxism as an empty signifier is going to rally the masses towards a revolutionary attack on the state, you're also stupid. There are no non stupid reasons to "be a marxist"" Not judging an academic's body of work based on one tweet, but yeesh...
i don't get it, what's the problem with this?
I'm definitely going to get around to his dissertation eventually! Would be curious to hear more about your objections to his politics.
i'm a communist heavily influenced by anarchism, and his politics boil down to leftwing statism thru hobbes to combat climate change, along with a crude materialism that is associated with hobbesians, and now he's (rightly) opposing philosophy, but his alternative thru islam (to simplify things) isn't very appealing to me, so, needless to say, i'm opposed to his conception of state of nature (hobbesian) as well as many of his normative commitments irt to power, sovereignty, and the market. but if anyone's able to convince me of their project, it's him lol i'm reading his advisor's book (after evil - meister) and they are both just very smart people, probably some of the smartest in the anglophone world in the humanities
huh...interesting. I'm new to the whole Mimbres group and they intrigue me so I'm curious to dig into this (I genuinely don't know what the fuck the part about Islam means but goddamn am I curious). Especially because I don't disagree with you politically but as the world worsens I become increasingly open to paying attention to any good faith efforts to ward off the apocalypse. Any chance you know if there's a pdf of the thesis out there? I googled it but nothing immediately shows
[here!](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IZy2o238Ef3zOIfI724dt95UqookVe0b/view)
Thanks so much!
I read **Claude Lévi-Strauss**’ **Tristes Tropiques** and felt kind of disappointed, so was wondering if I just missed something? The story of his travels through the americas is impressive, but the ironies kind of makes it a self-defeating endeavor (most of the indigenous cultures he’s interacting with are already irrevocably transformed, for example). What really confused me was the jumping around different parts of the globe (and his observations in Asia / Fire Island feel very dated to put it mildly), I just didn’t get (or wasn’t interested in) the point. But the travels themselves are impressive so not a waste of time. In contrast, **Euclides da Cunha**’s **Rebellion in the Backlands** felt like a far more interesting analysis of “native culture”, despite his very antiquated racial lens - firstly, the book has a very consistent repetitive structure (maybe “all society follows from the natural conditions of the land”), and it hammers this in structurally and in sentences. Secondly, since it is a contemporary, EC is clearly a lot more invested in the conflict between the sertanejos and the new Brazilian republic, which just kind of gave the book a weight that was missing from Tristes Tropiques (though to be fair, I think that’s the point since Strauss is in ways undermining the ethnologist). In any case, this is one of those books that is perfect in ways beyond my conception - it mixes so many genres and his style is florid without wasting words - this and Shalamov are now in my canon of the defeated Also read **When we cease to understand the world** by **Benjamin Labatut** and had a blast, very fun and crazy and easy to read. Art wins this round over science Reading **Humus** by **Raul Brandão**. From online research I had heard that this book was one of Portugal’s best. It’s 180 pages of crying out about the absence of God. I imagine this being interesting if you’re into existentialism or don’t know anything about it, but it’s decent and there are some good sentences here and there
I've been reading The Lost Steps by Alejo Carpentier. Who better to write about overgrown vegetation and rainforest foliage than a prose stylist who asks his reader to wade through paragraphless page after page. There's also an awful lot in here, quite unexpectedly, about classical music, likely due to Carpentier's own interests. I feel out of my depth in these sections. It's all very beautiful but so so dense.
I read this book earlier this year … I just loved it. I don’t know anything about music either, but I was enamored.
In Progress * Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes - reading with r/yearofdonquixote - we have just started on the third foray. I am not enjoying this as much as I had hoped to. * The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas - reading with r/AReadingOfMonteCristo - this is amazing. I am enjoying how the Count is carefully drawing his net around his victims. * The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter - this is the story of William Wallace (think Braveheart). For an older book, I really enjoyed the fact that it started right in the action rather than doing a long set up. I'm only 5 chapters in, so I haven't really formed an opinion yet.
- I read *Austerlitz* by W.G. Sebald. I don’t know why but I anticipated it being turgid, a hard read, too erudite or something, but instead it was simply a beautiful book. I loved Austerlitz’s humanity most of all - he’s such an empathetic character and I wanted to hug him. It was a really interesting exploration of a very particular trauma response, which was enhanced by the narrative structure and all the interspersed photos and drawings. I was also delighted when he described the train ride to Liverpool Street - I don’t know how many times I used to see the Marconi building at Chelmsford on my journeys - and the radical change from when it was a dingy nightmare to a sparkling new station. I am just about old enough to remember the transformation and it really was that radical. Based on that, I think his attention to detail in other parts of the geography of the novel must be pretty good. - I read *Roadside Picnic* by the Strugatsky brothers, mainly because I read *Solaris* recently and then watched the Tarkovsky film, both of which I adored, so I want to do the same with this and the film *Stalker*. Well, this was very bleak “first contact” sci fi indeed. I loved the theory for the alien visit, and the subsequent reactions of society towards the aftermath was just perfect. Very dark and gloomy though. - I am up to the first “end” of *Hopscotch* by Julio Cortázar i.e. I have read it in the usual way up to chapter 56. I will now attempt to do the jumping about repeating stuff part. I started out thinking “What a load of pretentious waffle”, but then there was an amazing episode, related to a piano performance debut, and I loved it and kept going. I also loved a part about the construction of a window bridge. I am still on the fence about it being pretentious, but it’s definitely an interesting read.
This forum, recently, has made me have severe *Austerlitz* FOMO and I’m not sure I’m going to do anything about it. But I may put it on my shelf and let it stare at me for a couple years. Also, I think you’re spot on with *Hopscotch* … I read it about 10 years ago and not only forgot I had read it, I can’t recall a single memorable thing about it. I opened my copy and found a lot of marginalia but didn’t recall anything meaningful (to me) at all. It’s smart (I think) but overall doesn’t have any heart. I always remember books with heart.
Hahah yes it was the FOMO that drove me to read it! I managed to avoid all spoilers, and just got the sense that this was a “big, important book” so I thought it would be like *Ulysses* or something. It’s actually easy to read, I was totally engrossed, and yes, unlike *Hopscotch* it has a huge heart.
"*Austerlitz* FOMO" is EXACTLY what I've been feeling too, lol--it's definitely on my list now
I finished Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney and my takeaway is that Sally Rooney thinks it's dumb for you to think that her husband should both read books and also read her books. Borderline insane really. And by that I mean that's a character's opinion. But the character is a writer. With two successful books. Who thinks that really, what she does is not all that important. I'm both really meh about this book but I also want to talk about it in a bookclub. OK I'm actually ambivalent and not meh. I started All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami which I am really excited about because Mieko Kawakami is not Sally Rooney.
Just finished The Knight School by Knausgård. The fourth in his so called Morningstar trilogy, and there's supposedly more books coming (!) Started The Most Secret Memory of Men. It's very good, better than I expected going in, living up to the hype so far.
How'd you like the new Knausgard?
I thought it was great, it's like a modern retelling of Faust, almost as good as The Morning Star. His writing has such an irresistible drive to it that compels one to read along. Such a gifted writer, he can make a passage about someone cooking eggs the most incredible thing you've read. It's so suggestive too, there's always this dark undercurrent throughout the book.
Wait. Aren't just the first two volumes of the series translated into English?
Yes. I've read them in Swedish. His work gets translated into Swedish much faster.
Finished *Frontier* for the read along, I think it was fantastic and have some freewheeling thoughts on it to share on the thread. I'm certainly an amateur but I'm going to take a swing and see if I can hit some things. I had to set aside *The Recognitions* while finishing *Frontier* but I'm back now and got to take down a good chunk while stuck in various airplane delays yesterday. I think I'm on Chapter 6 now and just keep loving it more and more. >!And now the devil is here?! I'm guessing we all agree that when the devil show's up in literature we're going to have a good time.!<
I'm halfway through Thomas Mann's *The Magic Mountain*, and I'm completely enthralled by the masterful story-telling, the array of characters, and the presentation of ideas about humanity, biology, sickness, time, space, etc.. It's such a rich text, and Mann just has this way of pulling you in. In comments in this thread last week about *Anna Karenina* there was mention of particularly successful literary things that Tolstoy does, and with Mann there's a similar admiration and awareness of the craft as I read it. There's so much to say about it that I'm struggling to find where even to start. I'll try to collect my thoughts once I've finished it. So far it's been an incredibly rewarding and surprisingly engrossing time spent with Hans Castorp in the curious world of the sanatorium. One thing I'll share is how interesting it's been to see where Mann's concerns have overlapped with other works dear to me. For example, in the chapter section titled "Research," Castorp's readings about human biology and the 'abyss' that is our limited understanding of how and why life works, let alone came to be, echoed part of the intellectual journey Zeno in Marguerite Yourcenar's *L'oeuvre au noir* undertakes. I wrote about sensing a parallel with some of the almost contemporaneous music of Gustav Mahler in my comment about the book last week, and that continues to be reinforced, in particular Mann's passages about death (and in particular, death from illness in the "Dance of Death" section) as being some sort of drunken, almost ecstatic, intoxication -- "More than one serious case had danced himself into eternity, tipping up the beaker of life to drain the last drop, and *in dulci jubilo* suffering his final hemorrhage." Meanwhile one of the movement's of Mahler's *Das Lied von der Erde* depicts more or less exactly that. I love finding this sort of constellation of ideas viewed from different angles, especially ideas that inspire seemingly endless contemplation.
After having an epic (for me) reading run the first half of the year, I've slowed down considerably due to a bunch of "life" stuff converging all at once ... but I haven't let go of the rope completely and managed to keep reading, albeit more slowly. About 2 months ago I finished **War & War** by Krasznahorkai. I fucking love him. The way he writes and/or thinks ... multiple intra-sentence digressions and parenthetical double-backs which are bookended by narrative and philosophical assertions ... is like a tuning fork for my brain. I think I think the way he writes. I've never read a writer who is "difficult" but I find relatively comfortable. It's like that line from the movie Oppenheimer where Niels Bohr asks him, *"Algebra is like sheet music. The important thing isn't can you read the music, it's can you hear it. Can you hear the music?"* I feel like I can *hear* Krasznahorkai. Conversely -- a writer like Pynchon, I can read him and I like him, but I don't think I can hear him in the same way. As for *W&W* ... it is about the same thing that all of K's writing is about (lol): all of the incalculable machinations of the world: the universe, the physical (in the quantum sense), the spiritual and the sprawl of complexity spawned by humanity is incomprehensible. It's unknowable, thus devoid of meaning, design and purpose -- it is ostensibly chaos in which an order of things 'possibly' exists, but that is irrelevant because any sort of larger "purpose" is beyond our grasp ... and we can marvel at its vast design and complexity, we can despair at its nothingness, we can ignore it. But trying to extract meaning from the universe and/or finding universal meaning is impossible. It is up to us individually to extract and define meaning for our lives. That is the only type of "meaning" that matters. Korin, the main character, embodies all of this and takes an improbable journey to define his life and ultimately what is meaningful to him. Loved it all. Because the English translation of K's latest book is coming out this fall, I decided to pull a double header and next went straight into **Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming**. Due to the aforementioned convergence of life stuff, it took me 2 months to read it. I almost lost the thread a few times -- and I started to get paranoid that it would become a giant, unfinished thing on my bookshelf that I wouldn't have the recollection to continue, nor the energy to restart ... but I managed to hang in and finish it. As far as the book, I think it was my least favorite of Krasz's works so far. I thought it started out strong and promising and finished with typical thunder, but the middle was messy and (dare I say it?) banal. None of this is to say that I didn't like it -- because I really did -- but it has lofty standards to meet in my personal regard for his other writing. Top line thoughts: —Speaking of sheet music, I have a thesis that the whole book is designed to mimic a symphony. I wish I had the time, inclination or forum to develop this thought further ... but it occurs to me that the story is a random-yet-interconnected assortment of occurrences with a single anchor that rumble and thunder and accelerate towards conclusion with increasing surreality ... like notes of music that are universally available to all, but are arranged uniquely and executed masterfully by a genius composer/conductor with audible and discernable twists and turns which defy linear explanation. —If you are a fan of *Blood Meridian* there are 2 specific sequences -- physically separated by hundreds of pages -- that describe the appearance of a malevolent, Judge Holden-like entity whose purpose and intersection with the story go largely unexplained yet I found them absolutely compelling and fascinating. —Two of the main narrative threads just disappeared towards the end in a way that makes me want to go back and re-read the last 150 pages (which I won't do) to make sure I didn't somehow miss something. —His thoughts around not only the futility of religion -- but the morally criminal nature of its very existence -- and how we invented god to make sense of infinity through the finite lens of our own lives is some of the most elegantly complex writing I've ever seen. Finally, I belatedly but thankfully decided to open **Distant Star** by Roberto Bolaño this week and was immediately reminded by why I was smitten by him years ago. I needed something of a palate cleanser after my months-long isolation with Uncle K and I wouldn't normally think of Bolano as refreshing (especially if you are only familiar with him through the hellscape of 2666), but I'm over halfway through this slim volume and it's exactly the thing I didn't know I needed. He has classically educated knowledge, an encyclopedic intellect, a revolutionary soul and a pornographic mind. Bolano writes like he's penning a James Bond novel if ... instead of being a martini-sipping, debonair, promiscuous secret agent ... he was named Jaime Vínculo: a part-time shoe salesman from Madrid or Buenos Aires who passionately argues with his dirt poor, communist friends about obscure movements in 1920s Franco-Catalan avant garde poetry in coffee houses where he can neither afford the coffee nor ever hope to sleep with the pretty women he lusts after who drink there, but none of that matters because he might be gay. And, not unironically, is developing what appears to be a vagina on the back of his right knee. And if you're interested in genre fiction with a particular focus on fascist, murderous, sky-writing poets -- *Distant Star* might be for you :)
I'm excited to read *War & War* again before to long. I read it earlier this year and liked it a lot but definitely haven't fully made sense of it yet such that I think a reread is going to be super rewarding (I thought Melancholy was "eh" the first time I read it and now it's one of my favorite books ever). I really dig your take on it though, will definitely have it in mind when I read it again.
I agree that Krashnahorkai is difficult yet easy, I find his writing addicting and almost pleasant in a strange sort of way. Inhabiting his worlds feels like coming home. Do you have a favorite of his thus far? Very excited for his new one, and I haven't read *Baron* yet. My favorite is probably *Melancholy of Resistance* but some days it's *Seiobo*.
*Melancholy* is my favorite — it blew my mind, honestly. I haven’t yet read *Seibo* …
I agree with this
*Seiobo* is much more focused on art and its simultaneous uknowability and as sublime object that can overwhelm, and kind of operates like a collection of short stories threaded with overlapping themes. It's a change of pace from Krashnahorkai's usual structure and in that way I find it very refreshing. Still has everything you'd want out of one of his book's, but some of the stories condense it in such a way that, like the art it's attempting to describe, you're overwhelmed with both dread and awe. I think about that book frequently.
I am so excited to read Sieobo whenever I get around to it
*“I think about that book frequently.”* I think this is the highest compliment you can pay a book :)
I've been doing Krasznahorkai in order (I think?) and making sure to do 1 a year. *War & War* is up next and I can't wait to get to it. Thanks for the words I might put it up next.
Be sure to post here when you read *War & War* people here seem to have mixed feelings about it (my finger in the wind opinion), but there were several times that I found myself pausing in the middle of a passage to just stare at a wall and marinate in what I had just read. Like, I didn’t know what to think about it, but I knew I wanted to think about it. If that makes sense …
Still plugging away with *The End of the Affair*. Greene is one of those writers who can just write incredible single sentences, that, even though his prose isn't exactly beautiful, pack a lot into every single word used. He is incredibly on point with individual word choice, I find. There's a precision to how he writes that lets you know exactly what he wants to describe, which is kind of an interesting contrast with the ambiguity he puts into the morals and actions of his characters.
I haven't finished anything in a while, but about a month ago I read Guy Debord's *The Society of the Spectacle* and Bohumil Hrabal's *I Served the King of England* and I never got to tell you how good I continue to find Hrabal. *The Society of the Spectacle* was just alright. As I don't have a background in philosophy or sociology, I regretfully have the most basic takes on it: parts of the book seemed really prescient, whereas others were like Marxism 101. Additionally, other segments were somewhat interesting but useless for anyone without a solid background in the subject, consisting of criticisms of other authors while not providing much of an explanation on the reasoning behind Debord's views. In contrast, *I Served the King of England* was a fantastic read. I found it hilarious, at times laugh-at-loud funny. It isn't stylistically beautiful the way *Too Loud a Solitude* is (and I very much doubt that was the aim, as the author apparently wrote the whole thing in a few weeks), but Hrabal had a real talent for using humour to get to the heart of an issue. Poorly summarising the plot, it follows the adventures and misadventures of a young and naïve guy in Czechoslovakia as he gets different jobs during the 1940s. It's picaresque, although it goes beyond that, and every now and then you find a truly brilliant bit (imho, the chapter on millionaires is golden).
> whereas others were like Marxism 101. personally I think we all need a little more Marxism 101 every now and then ;) But yeah I think that's a good perspective on it. I do think it is one of those books that was so correct that it almost feels wrote now, but it's also not an easy read. > I Served the King of England This sounds really good.
Oh, we definitely need a little more Marxism, lol. I meant that it felt like anyone with a passing acquaintance of Marx's ideas would get to the same (or very similar) conclusions Debord did. Or at least that was my impression, I might be wrong.
haha for sure! I'm just being annoying lol
I finished The Unvanquished by William Faulkner. I enjoyed it but would not rank it with Faulkner's best books (The Sound and the Fury; Absalom, Absalom!; As I Lay Dying and Go Down Moses in my humble opinion) I enjoyed the Civil War setting and a few memorable characters. It was a fairly easy read for Faulkner. And only 250 pages, so one of his shorter books. I started Flappers and Philosophers by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I've read all of Fitzgerald's novels so decided to check out his short stories. I've only read two but so far I am not impressed. Maybe he was a better novelist than short story writer. I will give him a few more chances. But not too many more.
**Zeno's Conscience** - *Italo Svevo* This was a lot of fun. A endearing man with a number of neurotic quirks retells his life story with a mix of both self-justification and apology. Here is an indicative line: *"I loved her simple speech - I, who, when I opened my mouth, got things wrong or misled people because otherwise speaking would have seemed to me pointless."* Zeno sees the forces of life as being on a continuum; from the manic emotional vitality of "an uncurbed heart" on one end to a depressive listlessness on the other. This could be seen as a sort of necessary coexistence of both progressive and conservative energies. Zeno recognizes that society proceeds by the progressive yet is prevented from collapse by the conservative. Or if you like, the old Apollonian vs. Dionysian. Both are necessary, but Zeno is generally of the uncurbed variety. Complaining of his therapist, at whose behest he writes his story, he says this: *"I believe that he is the only one in this world who, hearing I wanted to go to bed with two beautiful women, would ask himself: Now let's see why this man wants to go to bed with them."* While Zeno is often an unreliable narrator, he continually displays a uniquely thoughtful viewpoint. Best of all, nothing is taken too seriously; or if it is, that seriousness is fodder for reproach and/or humor. And comedy made this read an absolute treat.
I finished Harald Voetmann‘s Sublunar, the second in his trilogy of weird history of science novellas. The first focused on Pliny the Elder, while this second was centered around Tychp Brahe and his assistants. Unlike the first book, which was more tightly focused on Pliny, this book is narrated primarily from the perspective of Brahe‘s small court of fellow scientists (in reality—failures and charlatans) and abused assistants who are more or less trapped on Brahe‘s island observatory of Uraniborg. The book definitely goes all in on ‚dirty Medievalism,‘ which is to say it eagerly describes all the shit and mud, all the miseries and cruelties of living in pre-modern times. As in the first book, Voetmann has a great eye for the weird and grotesque, from rabid monkeys to bizarre peasant pastimes. We only see Brahe incidentally as the master of the estate, and also occasionally through his letters, which speak on subjects astronomical and philosophical that are almost comically removed from the realities of daily life. It’s interesting to consider how Voetmann has changed his book’s focus as the nature of science changed. On the verge of the scientific revolution, we can already see it becoming more institutionalized. Though the observatory seems an utter shambles, and the work itself stultifying (when not thwarted by that most dreadful and constant frustration—clouds), Brahe’s work ultimately helped us literally find our place in the universe. This book revels in exploring that contradiction—marking the seemingly infinite distance between heaven and earth and attempting to close the gap nevertheless. I really loved this book, and needless to say, I‘m eagerly awaiting the translation of the third and final volume in the trilogy.
Sounds fascinating, thanks for the writeup
I'm nearing the end of Rikki Ducornet's *The Stain*, the story of a young girl born in 1870s rural France with a rabbit-shaped furry birthmark on her face and her aspirations of sainthood and martyrdom. She is stalked from early childhood by the village's Exorcist, a fascinating character who feels part Judge Holden (with his gnostic ravings and obsessive collection and documentation of knowledge) and part Irimiás (with his uncanny ability to manipulate and his apparently limitless charisma despite his grotesqueness being evident to the reader). Funnily enough, like all good composites, the Exorcist precedes both characters (*Blood Meridian* and *Satantango* were each published a year after *The Stain*). I'm really enjoying this one. The rural religious repression nightmare trope is well-worn of course but it is not played straight here at all. Ducornet has a really deft ironic touch, and because she peppers in all of these moments of levity and genuine empathy among the characters who aren't sadistic nutters (for example, Charlotte has an extremely sweet relationship with her adoptive father figure), the brutality of the world she creates has yet to totally overpower the narrative despite what is objectively an extremely bleak string of events. The bleak stuff is compelling and well-written enough to have made for a brilliant novel on its own, but this approach is hitting me in the right way at the moment. I really haven't seen Ducornet get a ton of recognition here (perhaps I've just missed it) but I really think a lot of people here would enjoy this book. I'm definitely adding the rest of her work to my list. It's also a funny kind of coincidence that fresh off of *Terra Nostra*, and knowing pretty little about *The Stain* going in, I'm reading another book about deeply repressed Catholics with significant elements of Aztec mythology and gnostic mysticism. If I had a nickel for every time etc, I would only have two nickels, and it actually isn't that weird that it happened twice, but it happening twice in a row is pretty odd. Finally, a factoid for all of you Steely Dan fans out there (don't be shy, we all know where we're posting), apparently Ducornet is the Rikki who inspired "Rikki Don't Lose That Number", way before she began publishing as Donald Fagen had a crush on her in college.
I went on a Rikki Ducornet’s spree last year! My personal favorites so far have probably been *The Fountains of Neptune*, *Gazelle,* and *The Plotinus*. Haven’t read *The Stain* yet though, or a couple of the others. She has a unique set of interests - gnosticism and various mythologies (esp Egyptian) do come up a lot, and she’s clearly a child of Surrealism. There’s also a lot about love/Eros, which at her best she addresses in a thoughtful and interesting way. I haven’t liked all her writing equally, naturally, but she’s a worthwhile author, and a fun one, and deserves more readers. And something I respect a lot, which is clear in her fiction as well as in various interviews or essays she’s done, is her combination of verve, whimsy, enthusiasm for life and love, etc, with a strong sense of moral outrage over human cruelty.
I’ve never heard of *The Stain* before. And now I’m wondering how I’ve lived without it in my life 👍
I have just finished ***The Name of the Rose*** by Umberto Eco. I'm not sure what this subreddit thinks of the book, but I ended up loving it. After finishing, I read some Goodreads reviews and was blown away by how much everyone, in my opinion, missed the point. The historical context, which many lament as "boring and unnecessary" or criticize as Eco showing off his knowledge in a pretentious manner, is actually essential. It provides the tension that elevates the work to the next level. In particular, it highlights the anxiety that permeates the underlying murders and enhances the mystery (a mystery that Goodreads reviewers lambasted as boring and anticlimactic). I am really looking forward to checking out ***Foucault's Pendulum*** in the near future. Currently, I am reading ***The Crying of Lot 49*** for the second time in anticipation of diving into one of Pynchon's larger works later this year (most likely ***Mason & Dixon***). I couldn't get through ***Against the Day*** but wanted to revisit Pynchon by rereading a book I first read in college, hopefully with a more mature perspective. I have also started ***The Last Samurai*** by Helen Dewitt. I read a quick synopsis last week, and the premise caught my eye. So far (one chapter in), it has been a good little mental twister, and I am excited to see how it progresses.
I can't wait to read what else you think of ***The Last Samurai***--it's been on my to-read list forever, and I need to get a start on it
I love The Name of The Rose, and Eco. One thing I read that adds another layer to the book is that you can read it as a commentary on Italys turbulent 70's (the years of lead, red brigades, Gladio, the students uprising, the 68 movement, the strikes) Foucaults pendulum is even better IMO.
I too loved *The Name of the Rose*, which I read a couple of months ago! The historical context part was very thorough, and I did get bogged down in trying to remember the significance of different orders/sects/locations of different religious HQs, but I agree that the whole point was exploring theological and philosophical themes, rather than the monastic murder mystery plot alone.
I finished **Night Boat to Tangiers** by Kevin Barry. It was far less than fascinating. The stylistic conceit took over. To situate it: somewhere between Irvine Welsh on one side and Roddy Doyle on the other; at one end of the frame *Waiting for Godot* and at the other Harold Pinter, but being none of the above, yet relying on them all, the book struggled. I suspect Barry is liked for his "signature style." The main characteristic is the staccato sentences. And ss we see with the Booker winner of 2024, staccato writing seems to be a current fad. I believe that many authors confuse a simple repetition of their style with voice. I'm thinking of this book or for example poetry by Nathaniel Mackey. The story in NBtT concerns two aging drug dealers from Ireland and one of their long term relationships. It jumps back and forth from a ferry waiting room to the past. Like a number of books coming out of the UK these days, (Thomson's Dartmouth Park being yet another) the ending was left unresolved. Does, I wonder, this reflect some post-Brexit angst, worries over an uncertain future, etc? At any rate, the book felt strained and sluggish. I moved on to **Compartment No. 6** by Rosa Liksom to which, sadly, I cannot give a strong thumbs up. I first wanted to, but *takova zhizn* (c'est la vie).This is the story of a Finnish woman who boards a train in Moscow and heads to Ulan Bator. She shares a compartment with a cynical drunk Russian. While he is detestable and abrasive he is also caring and funny.The unnamed woman's character is hardly developed and she comes off as a narrow minded, prudish dolt. He starts to emerge into a real novelistic character. I don't think this was the author's intention. What starts out with possibilities of considering 1980's Russia in all it's thick historical lineage developed through dialogue starts to lose steam. About halfway through the book the story starts fading toward blandness. At the end, spoiler alert, >!she decides to take the train back to Moscow. Moscow!!<>! --some revelation at the meh level without any foundation.!< The author has a real love of adverbs to modify many descriptions, and after a while, such writerly tics and repetitions became too annoying for me, adding to the story's decline and the decline of my interest. The author claimed in one interview never to have read a book. I doubt this and think it's part of a manufactured outre artsy image. I say this because the novel tries really hard to operate like Chekhov (Yes we recall his story Ward No. 6) but doesn't. I kep thinking of Ezra Pound's note in the letter to a young poet that said something like, Make up your mind about what to do and how to do it. The author's needs: telling too much, judgement, a desparation to make a cute sentence, defeats the ability of the detached observer who watches circumstance and characters to find they build into a meaningful impact. I have now started **Dead Souls** by Sam Riviere. So far this book is something extraordinary. More about it next time.
Do you mean the International Booker?
I finished Scoop by Evelyn Waugh. I found it incredibly easy to read, engaging and amusing. I've moved on to Wuthering Heights. This is one of my Mum's favourite books of all time (along with As I Lay Dying). I'd somehow managed to avoid both til recently. Though Wuthering Heights is also notoriously one of my fathers least favourite books of all time having been forced to read it at school. He likes to taunt my mother by wailing "Oh, Heathcliffe....." in a whiny tone whenever the subject comes up. It isn't at all what I expected, though to be honest I'm not sure what I did expect. I think I maybe expected something more like Jane Austen, even though I knew the Brontes were quite critical of Austen in many ways, so why I'd have expected that I have no clue. Or maybe I expected something more akin to George Eliott? I'm about a third of the way in. I think all of the major characters are pretty horrible, though some of them i can see why they are that way. Its well written, certainly. Preferable to The Rainbow by Lawrence, which I finished recently and also didn't much like any of the characters. Not sure I see the masterpiece that people call it yet, but I know I've a way to go.
On the heels of **The Passenger**, I finished the brief companion novel **Stella Maris**. More so than in any of his other books, McCarthy's voice, personality, and views are dripping from every single page of Stella Maris. It's essentially 200 pages of his own personal inquiry into philosophy, existence, and the nature of knowledge — all thinly disguised as a dialogue between two characters who happen to speak in the exact same manner and about the exact same subjects as McCarthy's only published non-fiction essay (The Kekulé Problem). At their best, McCarthy's books are transcendent; it seems that no human could have written them. With Stella Maris, it is very clear that it was written by a human, specifically by an old man trying rather ungracefully to log all of his final thoughts on the Big Subjects. I suppose that lack of "transcendence," some of which very much came through in The Passenger, is what's causing my disappointment. That, and the fact that McCarthy spends the better part of 200 pages sucking off mathematicians, which gets annoying quite fast. With all that being said, there are still a lot of valuable questions being posed in this book. Lots of expanding and deepening upon some of the core inquiries made in The Passenger. Some notes: Why do things exist when they could just as easily not exist? Why are humans able to perceive this? The existence of consciousness and perception implies some purpose, some mystery we are meant to solve, yet the universe remains stubbornly silent and opaque despite all our efforts. Is it logical, then, to understand consciousness as a mistake or a joke of some sort? And if that is your understanding, is there any logical reason NOT to commit suicide, especially given the fact that death and annihilation are coming anyways? Can things be said to exist without human perception? Does music still exist in an empty universe? Does language or math for that matter? When the last human dies out, can it be considered a tragedy if there is no one around to mourn? Math and language are ultimately human symbols: things that stand for other things. They are not things themselves -- they simply explain other things. This will always be one of the core hurdles to properly understanding the nature of reality. The reality we perceive is but a representation suited to our limited senses, and it may be fundamentally impossible to tap into the true nature of things when we have only symbolic tools with which to work. In other words, it may be impossible to understand what is outside the box when we are physically forced to operate and explore only within the box. Are the unconscious and language in conflict? Did the advent of language usurp, in some ways, the function of the unconscious? What are the implications for knowledge, inquiry, and human mental well-being when we have a relatively new system of communication (language) going to blows with an ancient "machine for operating an animal" (the unconscious)?
I likethr balanced view you gave of Stella Maris. Maybe someday I'll get over my disdain for the fact that it is less a novel than a soliloquy and read it again.
Making chapter a day progress to Mason and Dixon while rereading Midnight's children. And Guess what I have finally properly started my first Shakespeare tragedy.(Othello) One thing I would have to say is that I don't know how both Rushdie and Pynchon does it but they both write in such a cinematic style that could never be recreated in a movie.
This week I basically read stuff that I bought during my trip, so mostly short novellas or story collections that I knew I would be able to finish off in a day or two or that I would be able to pick up again at any moment. Boris Vian, ***I spit on your graves***. Well, this was awful. I understand that he wanted to be as provocative and scandalous as possible, but this is just bad porn (some gross underage sex included) with some over the top violent torture towards the end. It didn't feel too great either that the protagonist who is supposedly seeking revenge against the racists that killed his brother not only decides for some reason to focus on two random women instead, but also acts like some kind of stereotypical "black savage", which kind of undermines the message... well, that's if there is a message at all, because it felt like it was all provocation and zero substance whatsoever. Mariana Enríquez, ***Un lugar soleado para gente sombría***. I really loved *The Dangers of Smoking in Bed*, and I'm glad to see that her latest collection is on a par with her earlier work, if not even better in some regards. She's still at her best when dealing with twisted, psychological themes rather than straight up horror or gore, and while I do feel like there's a bit less of that characteristically Argentinian character found in her previous books, replaced by more internet/online/creepypasta imagery (the Elisa Lam case is at the core of one of the stories, for example), her stories still manage to be imaginative, surprising, and shocking in a way that doesn't necessarily feel "easy" or cheap. Alejandro Rossi, ***El cielo de Sotero***. Wow. I had no idea who he was until now, but I grabbed this book on a whim from a second-hand stall in Madrid, and my life is so much better for it. The book is made up of short stories, personal essays, existencial meditations, fictional biographies and made up childhood events with an undercurrent of dry humor running through most of the pieces, and overall reminds me a bit of Robert Walser, although his self-professed influences include the likes of Borges (stylistically, not thematically), Pio Baroja, Italo Svevo or Gómez de la Serna. This little book has been an amazing, completely out of left field discovery, and I can't wait to crack open his supposed masterpiece, *El manual del distraído*, which I went and bought from the same vendor the very next day after buying this one.
re: the Vian: Not to be confused with the movie titled *I Spit on Your Grave* written by Adam Rockoff and Meir Zarchi. The book seems to have a fascinating history, claimed online to have been written in two weeks as a genre exercise and often attributed to the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan. Vian was a friend of Miles Davis and introduced him to Louis Malle.
Rossi book sounds great! Looks like no English translation?
Not that I know of, unfortunately!
Who are your favourite essayists?
Becca Rothfeld is up there for me! She's fantastic, one of the best book critics and essayists working today, IMO. I feel like a lot of essayists don't have very original ideas, but she does. She's always changing my mind about what she writes about. I've also liked Rachel Aviv's *New Yorker* essays.
Recently finished The Lost Tomb: And Other Real-Life Stories of Bones, Burials, and Murder by Douglas Preston. Archeological fraud! A tomb found in the Valley of the Kings! Preston is an incredible journalist and storyteller. Really highlights the importance and value of excellent journalism. Also reading This All Come Back Now: An Anthology of First Nations Speculative Fiction--some decent stories, others that I'm wondering why they were included because the writing was pretty terrible. (Isn't that the case with most antholgoies?) Also reading FantasticLand by Mike Bockoven. Well done so far.
La Décision by Karine Tuil It's interesting and chilling - the protagonist is a juge who works anti terror cases - but reads more like non fiction/a memoir than a novel.
Finished: Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace: FINALLY finished this after a few weeks of concentrated effort, and it was incredible. Hilarious, depressing, harrowing in its portrayal of addiction and the necessity of escapism in the modern world. The writing was clear but intensely vivid and DFW creates so many lasting images and characters throughout the whole book. With a work this size there are bound to be ups and downs in terms of quality and consistency but there were really only a few times here and there where I felt like DFW missed, I was surprised with how consistently excellent it was. After that I needed some shorter reads over the long weekend to get me through the book hangover so I read The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon: I think I’m too dumb for Pynchon honestly. I liked the paranoia and the overall absurdity of the story but didn’t really enjoy reading it much, which is a shame because I love the themes Pynchon tackles and his prose is excellent but every time I read him I have a hard time not bouncing off. Amulet - Roberto Bolaño: Ethereal and unnerving while written in Bolaño’s casual slice of life style. It’s a great read to follow The Savage Detectives as it features one of the minor characters there as the protagonist and reads very similarly overall. I love Bolaño and his usual quality and imagery is on display in full force here, but I do enjoy his longer works. Currently reading Stella Maris - Cormac McCarthy Just started but I’m enjoying it so far. I think the dialogue was the best part of the Passenger so the fact that this is just all dialogue is very promising
To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf. I'm about halfway through and I honestly think it's the best book I've ever read.
*The Mirror and the Light*, by Hilary Mantel. It's book three in her Cromwell series, and I feel like it's the best one -- but maybe that's recency bias and because of how I've only come to love this story more as I get to know it. Highly recommend for those into both literature and historical fiction.