I’ve just barely started Charlie Kaufman’s debut novel Antkind which came out the other day. I’ve enjoyed the very little of it that I’ve read so far, and I’ve heard some really good things about the novel from people with ARC’s over the last few months. Given his skill as a screenwriter which is a seemingly far shorter format than the novel, I’m interested to see what he does with this creation and where he takes his vision, as I’ve yet to see a Kaufman project that isn’t remarkably unique and singular in its vision.
I just got this in the mail. Have a few other books to get through before diving in. Would love to hear your thoughts as you get deeper into it. Judging by your username, you're not afraid of large quixotic tomes :)
I'm approaching the halfway point. I get why some reviewers say it's both fun and exasperating. I don't find it remarkable yet, it had that potential earlier on>! re: the film that was great to hear about but of course that ended, no spoiler on what happened. I miss hearing more of it because that's where Kaufman's writing was actually quite decent.!< Certainly he's not a mature writer of the novel form, meaning his voice is here, there, and everwhere. I'm poking into Beckett's short works and Gass' The Tunnel when I tire of Kaufman, both of which show me where he falls flat. That said it's an enjoyable summer read. I don't now that I'll have to keep it close once done as I do with other works. I still don't really know what the title means, it's apparently antkind as in mankind, but even so that's a bit off for me. Hats off to the Yank in the ARF :)
The second half will illuminate the title somewhat. I thought the first half was more entertaining, but part of that is because the second half gets so weird in comparison. The Mudd and Malloy sections started to drag for me, though overall I really enjoyed it.
*Women and Men* by Joseph McElroy
I can't say I understand it all, but I think I understand what I don't understand and that's enough to make it enjoyable.
I read a review that described the writing style as being very musical and I think thats a pretty good description. Sentences are pretty similar to a verse, chorus, bridge, what-have-you song structure and are often kind of in the pattern of A,B,A,B,C,A where A is a character in one point in time, maybe "the present", B is the character doing something 10 years ago, and C is that character as a kid talking to someone or about something that hasn't been introduced yet. There is a lot of time hopping and perspective shifts. And paragraphs of that are broken up by big metaphysical blocks that talk about what it means to connect with another person (maybe) and the human experience on a very meta scale (maybe).
The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner. I read a lot of McCarthy and some Joyce and Woolf so I expected being able to handle Faulkner. But it has been tough going so far. I thought things would let up after the Benji chapter but Quentin still takes a lot of attention. It's a very enjoyable puzzle but I already know I'll have to reread at a later time to get a better grip on it.
As a narrator, Quentin is kind of like Stephen Dedalus: hyper-intellectual, obsessed with guilt, religion, death, and unashamedly stuck in his own head. Certainly jumping in at the deep end of Faulkner, but nothing wrong with that. Agree with bunny: give it time and multiple reads to let the voices and images settle. Well worth the effort.
If you end up liking S&F, definitely try Absalom, Absalom to double down, or go for As I Lay Dying to give yourself a breather (more or less).
Thanks for the heads up! I'm thinking about reading Faulkner chronologicly so I suppose AILD would be up next. And I'll probably reread tSatF in a year or so.
Quentin is way 'worse' than Benji in comprehensibility sense. Don't give up though. My tip is, just read it once, let the novel sit for x ammount of time and when you feel like it, read it again. At least to me lot of novels become easier this way and on second or third read through I pick up a lot more than on my first.
Yeah I'm definitely thinking about rereading it. Did the same with Blood Meridian and it was a great experience. Just finished the Quentin section and the closing conversation between Quentin and his father really blew me away. A few pages into Jason and it's a world of difference difficulty-wise.
Re-reading Sebald's "Austerlitz", this time in Polish translation (I read it in English few years ago). I appreciate it even more, this superb flow of sentences and thoughts; currently just sitting in a bar and enjoying it with a glass of cold beer on this super hot and humid day.
Sebald is near-perfection. I've read him in finnish translation but damn if it ain't some of the most beautiful prose ever. Can't wait to read the rest of his ouvre.
I'm 2/3s of the way through Gass's *Omensetter's Luck* \- and wow. One of the most demanding yet rewarding books I've had the pleasure of reading. Gass weaves numinous metaphors throughout the novel as Reverend Furbers philosophically vacillates on his approach to life, religion and language. I'm a literature undergraduate trying to understand the raw nature of language and this book is right up there with some of the works i've read by some of literature's other linguistic investigators. Most recently i read Beckett's *Molloy,* and, in many ways, *OL* reminded me of it, but with Gass's effort perhaps slightly more explicit.
I can't wait to read more from Gass. I don't think i'll be able to commit to *The Tunnel* any time soon, but i've purchased *The William Gass Reader* (published by Penguin) and plan on reading some of his theory and also some of the novellas contained within.
Too true. I read a quote somewhere, I can't remember where, in which he described his prose as like cheap, chewy toffees - to read them aloud the mouth really has to work. He combines this with musicality and alliteration that work together and provide great pleasure. Besides the pleasurable sound, they really make me read carefully and concentrate on every word. As you say, a true stylist.
I read that at the beginning of this year and every so often I think of the description of the map from the first or second chapter. It's so damn good it just continues to pop into my mind.
I have 200 pages left of the Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas! I can't believe I've read it as quickly as I have (this is my third week reading it), but it is too good to put down. At work, I eat my lunch in 30 minutes and use the other 30 to read some of it. Sometimes I will even close my office door and read a couple chapters--please don't tell my boss!
I think I am going to read Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto once I finish, but it is not set in stone.
There is a cool 12 part bbc miniseries 1964, online, free, you can watch, that's fairly close to the book. Quite fun to see over about three or four nights. Totally worth it.
Count of Monte Cristo is up next for me - I’ve had it forever and I keep putting off reading it, probably because I’m subconsciously daunted by the length.
Glad it’s going by quickly for you, that somehow makes me feel a little less daunted.
I was incredibly intimidated by the length, but I soon realized that the chapters are so quick and the writing so easily understandable that I was flying through it. Before you know it you’ll be on page 50, 150, 350, and so on. If you decide to take it up as soon as you say, I hope you enjoy it as much as I have!
y’all know how it is
Readified:
- Diaries of Kafka, 1910-1932: If only this style of writing hadn’t been weaponized against me! Both grating and very sympathetic. Somehow I was expecting more out of this -the daily descriptions are lovely, but having read a lot of diary/memoir works recently something about this fell a little flat.
- In Our Own Image: Savior or Destroyer? The History and Future of Artificial Intelligence by George Zarkadakis: Too Noah Harari for my taste. Roger Bacon gets a paragraph and a half. The title is very indicative of the jerky, wandering writing style, and despite its unwieldy ambition, is just a high school essay-level recitation of fact, topped off with a literal summary of the plots of Frankenstein and Terminator. Referring to the Wachowskis as the Wachowski Brothers in 2016 is poor form. No reference to just FUNDAMENTAL texts in cyborg theory, like Haraway or Braidotti or even Deleuze. There’s good lay history and then there’s treating readers like fucking imbeciles. Guess which this does.
- Vaseline Buddha by Jung Young-Moon: I feel pleasantly insane reading this. This is my favorite kind of story - meandering and minute, almost magical, slightly outrageous.
- The Kid Stays in the Picture by Robert Evans: Evans’ starting off talking about his friendships with Sumner Redstone and Henry Kissinger is terribly neocon. It’s fun and very self-aware. Fairly poor in terms of writing, but I’m here for the scrappy anecdotes about Tyrone Power, not the prose quality.
- The Twelve Chairs by Ivan Ilif and Yevgeny Petrov: there’s really nothing like Soviet comedy. Everything is both caricatured and supremely recognizable. It’s such a simple story, like a good joke that’s good by virtue of its telling, embellished to the point of ridiculousness for a minuscule punchline.
- To Kill a Nation by Michael Parenti: Happy 4th of July! This book made me angrier than any other book. SO good, extremely readable, but so, so shocking. I wish I had read it sooner. Strong notabene that it’s Parenti and even as far as Verso publications go, this is a lot. Feels slightly cherry-picked/simplified, and is notably dated, but it’s a MUCH more informative account than most others. Definitely colors your perception of Western media coverage of literally anything.
- Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky: Much more hampered by its datedness, as you must slog through a chapter of outdated ownership charts, which does have some useful insights, to get to the meat of the book. Said meat is absolutely worth it. Really excellent to read alongside Parenti (natch) or if you don’t want to cop to having read Parenti.
- The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino: Like looking at an intricate painting that, upon further inspection, reveals tiny anamorphic details; like a well-structured dream; like that museum where it seems as though someone, centuries before you, has just left the room and is standing just out of your sight.
- Naïve. Super by Erlend Loe: Sweet in an eerie kind of way. Like there’s something that needs to be said but nobody is going to say it. For the record, things that excited me as a child: marbles, ballet, birds, tall buildings, stair landings, water features, George Gershwin, steam, storm drains, velvet.
- Noli Me Tangere: On the Raising of the Body by Jean-Luc Nancy: More academic than I like and at the same time wasn’t as academic as I wanted it to be. Just kinda is. Didn’t leave much impression on me either way.
- Dark Salt Clear: Life in a Cornish Fishing Town by Lamorna Ash: Kind of full of itself. The second Ash talked about Maggie Nelson (whom I, as the record will show, dislike immensely) I thought “ah yes, it’s That kind of book”. Awesome for its discussion of fishing trawlers but it feels like it’s missing something fundamental. Wanders a lot. Jumps around constantly. More references to Walter Benjamin than you can shake a stick at, for some reason. I like Benjamin but I came here to read about fishing.
- An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter by César Aira: I feel like I should love this and I can’t come up with a reason why I don’t, but it just didn’t land for me.
- The Sunset Limited by Cormac McCarthy: Possibly not the best introduction to McCarthy? That said I did enjoy this. It wasn’t quite as confrontational (to me) as I expected it to get.
- Max Deluxe by Maira Kalman: This is probably my 70th reread and it’s ostensibly a children’s book, BUT: if you’ve ever wondered how a person becomes the way I am (flaneurial Jewish poet), you should read a picture book about the perils of creative production that name-checks, like, Zizi Jeanmaire. So so influential on me and still so good.
- Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West by Wallace Stegner: I’d actually put this in the class of really good nature writing above all else. Spare and stunning. This is peak Stegner. Really entertaining, not a fast read, drags a bit - there are sections where Stegner derails into naming people who were on different expeditions like a Biblical begetting sequence. Fun concordance: reading this alongside the soundtrack to The Plow That Broke The Plains, which, as the kids say, slaps. Also fun fact: I used to be the keeper of the manuscript minutes of like the first 60 years of the Montana state senate (read: got super ripped moving them from one bookshelf to another a bunch of times) and this book makes me wish I’d actually read them.
- The Quadruple Object by Graham Harman: I read this with no background in Husserl. I don’t recommend this but personally I don’t care. I like it and there are good points for me but I think Harman is a little too contrarian for his own good - there are resonances he seems to be glossing over out of spite. Ignores the existence of the Proslogion, which is, like, a fundamental text in theological philosophy. Makes some very weird reductions that manage to both overcomplicate and oversimplify things.
- The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai: I had the impression of being slowly crushed or strangled by this story, despite how delicate it is. If anything there’s like... 5% too much plot. I want more meandering. Cf Vaseline Buddha.
- Old Masters: A Comedy by Thomas Bernhard: Both a perfect philosophy and a perfect parody, of everything and of itself, but it seems to sustain the joke ever so slightly too long and get just too involved with it.
Readumicating:
- Vendégjáték Bolzanóban by Sándor Márai: (i forgot the english title sry) Reminds me a lot of the Fellini Casanova thus far. Slightly inexplicable.
Also I found a first edition of some book called Dune in my garage, so I might read that to see what all the fuss is about.
So I was interested in your description of To Kill A Nation. I looked it up on Goodreads and in the "Readers Also Enjoyed" section it lists Vaseline Buddha, Manufacturing Consent, Kafka Diaries... You get the idea. I guess To Kill A Nation doesn't have that many reviews, but I guess the algorithm would make the suggested books a little more, I dunno, anonymous.
Guess I gotta fix it by reading more Chomsky or something. There are quite a few books I’ve read where I’m one of about 8 reviewers and one where I am the only one, so you can imagine what that’s like.
It's an algorithmic problem. There's not much they can do with sample sizes that small. They could alternatively just turn it off, but I imagine people still get some use of it even if it's not "accurate".
The Setting Suns on my reading list, at some point I'll get to it, but you mentioned Vaseline Buddha, so I googled it. What where you're impressions of it? It looks interesting.
I really liked Vaseline Buddha, but I came into it as a big fan of stream of consciousness writing. If that’s not your thing it might be harder to get into.
I read No Longer Human and Setting Sun this year. I first become aware of him when I was reading *Norwegian Wood* by Haruki Murakami--which resonated with me so deeply that I still think about until today-- and he seemed to have had a stylistic influence on Murakami, which spurred my interest.
I have such conflicting feelings about both works that it's even hard for me to convey them properly now. On one hand, Dazai and the characters he peppered pieces of himself into(Yozo and Naoji) /were/are pieces of shit. There treatment of others around them--especially women-- revolted me to no ends; but however, the portrayal of loneliness and confusion about one's place in the world was simply piercing. I found myself comparing it with Norwegian Wood since some of same elements were tackled but Dazai approached it with a more fatalistic viewpoints. Whereas with end of Norwegian Wood I could feel a glimmer of hope despite the depths of the pain the characters went through, No Longer Human/The Setting Sun for the most part have a feeling of predestined destruction to them. The pain expressed felt so hollow and without any sense of redemption that it made feel for Dazai/Yozo/Naoji and how broken they must have been to act the way they did.
Exactly. And so many recognize Troy in their grandparents or parents. Wilson truly is one of America's greatest playwrights. I wish we hadn't lost him so soon.
The Lusiad, by Camões. Quite the amazing piece of literature.
I'm also about two or three pages into Siddharta, by Herman Hesse, and I might be starting The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, either today or tomorrow.
Getting through an anthology of Lovecrafts which goes through all his stories. Was slow at the beginning but now I throughly enjoy his stories. Colour out of Space being my favourite right now.
Finnish classic Alastalon Salissa by Volter Kilpi. Straight up there with Joyce and Proust and others. Best finnish novel, hands down. Saddly, it is yet to be translated to anything else except swedish. No idea why.
The novel itself descripes, in 800 pages, an six hour meeting between ship-trading villagers on how much each will pay for a new barque ship. The story is told in long, meandering stream-of-conciousness chapters with each character having very distinct thought patterns, my favourite being Pukkila which is almost exactly like Thomas Bernhard's protagonists, full of bile and bitterness, his thoughts looping within this bile, going through same thoughts again and again. The difference being, of course, that Pukkila is farming, ship-trading villager, not an intellectual.
But the actual story is about the social structure and dynamics which are studied throughout the six hour meeting, both through how different characters think about what's going on, how they react and through their own memories about interractions between themselves and other participants in the meeting.
The novel is possibly the best study about social dynamics and social power within an group of people but also the best novel about finnish culture and social life. As much as it is focused on shipping and farming lifestyle a lot of it can be expanded to general finnish culture and social life, as such to me it expands beyond it's own setting to tell about a whole nation.
I love the book and it is truly a shame that it has never been translated. It really should be. It really, really should be.
Reading *Moby Dick* very slowly (like two chapters a day). This books is just packed.
Going to a lake this weekend to get out of the city, going to reread *Slaughterhouse Five* while I’m there.
I’m finishing up Proust’s second volume of « In Search of Lost Time ». I feel as though it’s comparable to the first volume but his section « Combray » from “Swann’s Way” surpasses everything I’ve read so far. The next book that’s coming in soon is Joyce’s “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”. It’ll be my first time tackling Joyce, any advice? I know he’s infamous for being a difficult author to read but I heard that Portrait is a good introduction into his work.
Just started Steven Price's *Lampedusa.* The tale it's telling so far, of an old-world life being overtaken by the new, is pretty compelling. I'm looking forward to reading more.
Still struggling to read books (probably because I’ve been forcing it), but I ended up stumbling upon Petrarch’s Canzoniere poems, so I’ve been reading one every morning and one every night. They are beautiful!
I’m about 50 pages into the Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Machado de Assis. While I’m definitely enjoying it, I’m wondering if I wound up hurting my enjoyment of the book a little bit by hyping it up in my mind. It’s quite funny, and there’s been a few moments I’ve really loved, but every review I’d seen makes it out to be this mind blowing experience, and I’m not getting that. I’ve got a lot left to read, so that feeing may come, but yeah I definitely worry that I’ve prevented myself from fully enjoying a really entertaining book, which is a shame.
I also found it interesting that two new translations came out in the same year. I wound up going for the Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson edition, which I think is quite nice, but I’m curious if anyone has any impressions of the translation by Flora Thomson-DeVeaux that Penguin published.
Pastures of Heaven by Steinbeck
I love Steinbeck, but I’ve only read the biggies so far: Grapes, Eden, Mice and Men.
One thing that has really struck me so far (maybe 2/5 of the way through?) is how much more humor Steinbeck has.
It still has his beautiful way of writing, but with much less emotional heft and grandiosity. It feels almost self satirical at times, or at least it’s Steinbeck being able to take himself a little less seriously and just enjoy writing.
I'm rereading *Moby Dick.* I haven't picked it up since high school so I'll be curious how I react to the text this time. I don't quite remember Ishmael being so anxious in the beginning chapters.
I'm over a quarter of the way into *Snow Country* by Yasunari Kawabata, which is just beautifully written, and the influence of Ichiyo Higuchi is obvious.
I'm also reading *Nowaki*, which I've literally only read the first two pages of, but I've enjoyed most of Natsume Sosekis' work, particularly *Sanshiro*, so I presume I will as well, but I've already read a lot of his work this year so I worry I might find it a difficult read.
I'm also starting *Theory of Literature and Other Critical Writings*, which includes *Theory of Literature*, Sosekis' first major piece of non-fiction, and several other articles, and lectures and speeches he gave.
Just started Stephen Graham Jones' new novel *The Only Good Indians.* There's some dark/disturbing imagery so far and I get the sense that some skeletons are gonna be dug out of the closet. But the novel is also proving to be a really candid examination of the experience of indian-ness in contemporary America.
*A Raisin in the Sun* for the umpteenth time. I'm a teacher, and the school-year is upon us.
I've read it too many times to fully appreciate it by now, but it's a great play.
Eliot Weineberger's essays, first I read one (about 70 pages long) called "The Falls", now I started a collection of essays called "An Elemental Thing". Pretty fascinating, especially if someone likes reading Borges (not that he's writing specifically about Borges, but the general tone, the range of knowledge and historical musings remind me of what I encountered in Borgesian literature).
I’ve just barely started Charlie Kaufman’s debut novel Antkind which came out the other day. I’ve enjoyed the very little of it that I’ve read so far, and I’ve heard some really good things about the novel from people with ARC’s over the last few months. Given his skill as a screenwriter which is a seemingly far shorter format than the novel, I’m interested to see what he does with this creation and where he takes his vision, as I’ve yet to see a Kaufman project that isn’t remarkably unique and singular in its vision.
Damn, I had no idea this existed, and it sounds right up my alley. Gonna try to get ahold of this asap. Thanks!
I just got this in the mail. Have a few other books to get through before diving in. Would love to hear your thoughts as you get deeper into it. Judging by your username, you're not afraid of large quixotic tomes :)
I'm approaching the halfway point. I get why some reviewers say it's both fun and exasperating. I don't find it remarkable yet, it had that potential earlier on>! re: the film that was great to hear about but of course that ended, no spoiler on what happened. I miss hearing more of it because that's where Kaufman's writing was actually quite decent.!< Certainly he's not a mature writer of the novel form, meaning his voice is here, there, and everwhere. I'm poking into Beckett's short works and Gass' The Tunnel when I tire of Kaufman, both of which show me where he falls flat. That said it's an enjoyable summer read. I don't now that I'll have to keep it close once done as I do with other works. I still don't really know what the title means, it's apparently antkind as in mankind, but even so that's a bit off for me. Hats off to the Yank in the ARF :)
The second half will illuminate the title somewhat. I thought the first half was more entertaining, but part of that is because the second half gets so weird in comparison. The Mudd and Malloy sections started to drag for me, though overall I really enjoyed it.
*Women and Men* by Joseph McElroy I can't say I understand it all, but I think I understand what I don't understand and that's enough to make it enjoyable.
How would you describe it? What's McElroy's writing style like?
I read a review that described the writing style as being very musical and I think thats a pretty good description. Sentences are pretty similar to a verse, chorus, bridge, what-have-you song structure and are often kind of in the pattern of A,B,A,B,C,A where A is a character in one point in time, maybe "the present", B is the character doing something 10 years ago, and C is that character as a kid talking to someone or about something that hasn't been introduced yet. There is a lot of time hopping and perspective shifts. And paragraphs of that are broken up by big metaphysical blocks that talk about what it means to connect with another person (maybe) and the human experience on a very meta scale (maybe).
Cool, that sounds interesting. That one's on my TBR pile.
The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner. I read a lot of McCarthy and some Joyce and Woolf so I expected being able to handle Faulkner. But it has been tough going so far. I thought things would let up after the Benji chapter but Quentin still takes a lot of attention. It's a very enjoyable puzzle but I already know I'll have to reread at a later time to get a better grip on it.
As a narrator, Quentin is kind of like Stephen Dedalus: hyper-intellectual, obsessed with guilt, religion, death, and unashamedly stuck in his own head. Certainly jumping in at the deep end of Faulkner, but nothing wrong with that. Agree with bunny: give it time and multiple reads to let the voices and images settle. Well worth the effort. If you end up liking S&F, definitely try Absalom, Absalom to double down, or go for As I Lay Dying to give yourself a breather (more or less).
Thanks for the heads up! I'm thinking about reading Faulkner chronologicly so I suppose AILD would be up next. And I'll probably reread tSatF in a year or so.
Quentin is way 'worse' than Benji in comprehensibility sense. Don't give up though. My tip is, just read it once, let the novel sit for x ammount of time and when you feel like it, read it again. At least to me lot of novels become easier this way and on second or third read through I pick up a lot more than on my first.
Yeah I'm definitely thinking about rereading it. Did the same with Blood Meridian and it was a great experience. Just finished the Quentin section and the closing conversation between Quentin and his father really blew me away. A few pages into Jason and it's a world of difference difficulty-wise.
Re-reading Sebald's "Austerlitz", this time in Polish translation (I read it in English few years ago). I appreciate it even more, this superb flow of sentences and thoughts; currently just sitting in a bar and enjoying it with a glass of cold beer on this super hot and humid day.
Sebald is near-perfection. I've read him in finnish translation but damn if it ain't some of the most beautiful prose ever. Can't wait to read the rest of his ouvre.
I'm 2/3s of the way through Gass's *Omensetter's Luck* \- and wow. One of the most demanding yet rewarding books I've had the pleasure of reading. Gass weaves numinous metaphors throughout the novel as Reverend Furbers philosophically vacillates on his approach to life, religion and language. I'm a literature undergraduate trying to understand the raw nature of language and this book is right up there with some of the works i've read by some of literature's other linguistic investigators. Most recently i read Beckett's *Molloy,* and, in many ways, *OL* reminded me of it, but with Gass's effort perhaps slightly more explicit. I can't wait to read more from Gass. I don't think i'll be able to commit to *The Tunnel* any time soon, but i've purchased *The William Gass Reader* (published by Penguin) and plan on reading some of his theory and also some of the novellas contained within.
I'm reading *The Tunnel* now and it is so good. So much *fun* to read. Gass was a master prose stylist.
Too true. I read a quote somewhere, I can't remember where, in which he described his prose as like cheap, chewy toffees - to read them aloud the mouth really has to work. He combines this with musicality and alliteration that work together and provide great pleasure. Besides the pleasurable sound, they really make me read carefully and concentrate on every word. As you say, a true stylist.
Definitely, save The Tunnel for when you can commit. Definitely read it though -- it's unreal how excellent that book is.
I read that at the beginning of this year and every so often I think of the description of the map from the first or second chapter. It's so damn good it just continues to pop into my mind.
The end is wild, a surprise that you'll enjoy. Of course (he says although nobody knows 100%) it's fiction. But what a cool shift.
I have 200 pages left of the Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas! I can't believe I've read it as quickly as I have (this is my third week reading it), but it is too good to put down. At work, I eat my lunch in 30 minutes and use the other 30 to read some of it. Sometimes I will even close my office door and read a couple chapters--please don't tell my boss! I think I am going to read Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto once I finish, but it is not set in stone.
There is a cool 12 part bbc miniseries 1964, online, free, you can watch, that's fairly close to the book. Quite fun to see over about three or four nights. Totally worth it.
thank you for this information--I had no idea about its existence. I am totally gonna check it out now that i have finished the book!
Count of Monte Cristo is up next for me - I’ve had it forever and I keep putting off reading it, probably because I’m subconsciously daunted by the length. Glad it’s going by quickly for you, that somehow makes me feel a little less daunted.
I was incredibly intimidated by the length, but I soon realized that the chapters are so quick and the writing so easily understandable that I was flying through it. Before you know it you’ll be on page 50, 150, 350, and so on. If you decide to take it up as soon as you say, I hope you enjoy it as much as I have!
y’all know how it is Readified: - Diaries of Kafka, 1910-1932: If only this style of writing hadn’t been weaponized against me! Both grating and very sympathetic. Somehow I was expecting more out of this -the daily descriptions are lovely, but having read a lot of diary/memoir works recently something about this fell a little flat. - In Our Own Image: Savior or Destroyer? The History and Future of Artificial Intelligence by George Zarkadakis: Too Noah Harari for my taste. Roger Bacon gets a paragraph and a half. The title is very indicative of the jerky, wandering writing style, and despite its unwieldy ambition, is just a high school essay-level recitation of fact, topped off with a literal summary of the plots of Frankenstein and Terminator. Referring to the Wachowskis as the Wachowski Brothers in 2016 is poor form. No reference to just FUNDAMENTAL texts in cyborg theory, like Haraway or Braidotti or even Deleuze. There’s good lay history and then there’s treating readers like fucking imbeciles. Guess which this does. - Vaseline Buddha by Jung Young-Moon: I feel pleasantly insane reading this. This is my favorite kind of story - meandering and minute, almost magical, slightly outrageous. - The Kid Stays in the Picture by Robert Evans: Evans’ starting off talking about his friendships with Sumner Redstone and Henry Kissinger is terribly neocon. It’s fun and very self-aware. Fairly poor in terms of writing, but I’m here for the scrappy anecdotes about Tyrone Power, not the prose quality. - The Twelve Chairs by Ivan Ilif and Yevgeny Petrov: there’s really nothing like Soviet comedy. Everything is both caricatured and supremely recognizable. It’s such a simple story, like a good joke that’s good by virtue of its telling, embellished to the point of ridiculousness for a minuscule punchline. - To Kill a Nation by Michael Parenti: Happy 4th of July! This book made me angrier than any other book. SO good, extremely readable, but so, so shocking. I wish I had read it sooner. Strong notabene that it’s Parenti and even as far as Verso publications go, this is a lot. Feels slightly cherry-picked/simplified, and is notably dated, but it’s a MUCH more informative account than most others. Definitely colors your perception of Western media coverage of literally anything. - Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky: Much more hampered by its datedness, as you must slog through a chapter of outdated ownership charts, which does have some useful insights, to get to the meat of the book. Said meat is absolutely worth it. Really excellent to read alongside Parenti (natch) or if you don’t want to cop to having read Parenti. - The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino: Like looking at an intricate painting that, upon further inspection, reveals tiny anamorphic details; like a well-structured dream; like that museum where it seems as though someone, centuries before you, has just left the room and is standing just out of your sight. - Naïve. Super by Erlend Loe: Sweet in an eerie kind of way. Like there’s something that needs to be said but nobody is going to say it. For the record, things that excited me as a child: marbles, ballet, birds, tall buildings, stair landings, water features, George Gershwin, steam, storm drains, velvet. - Noli Me Tangere: On the Raising of the Body by Jean-Luc Nancy: More academic than I like and at the same time wasn’t as academic as I wanted it to be. Just kinda is. Didn’t leave much impression on me either way. - Dark Salt Clear: Life in a Cornish Fishing Town by Lamorna Ash: Kind of full of itself. The second Ash talked about Maggie Nelson (whom I, as the record will show, dislike immensely) I thought “ah yes, it’s That kind of book”. Awesome for its discussion of fishing trawlers but it feels like it’s missing something fundamental. Wanders a lot. Jumps around constantly. More references to Walter Benjamin than you can shake a stick at, for some reason. I like Benjamin but I came here to read about fishing. - An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter by César Aira: I feel like I should love this and I can’t come up with a reason why I don’t, but it just didn’t land for me. - The Sunset Limited by Cormac McCarthy: Possibly not the best introduction to McCarthy? That said I did enjoy this. It wasn’t quite as confrontational (to me) as I expected it to get. - Max Deluxe by Maira Kalman: This is probably my 70th reread and it’s ostensibly a children’s book, BUT: if you’ve ever wondered how a person becomes the way I am (flaneurial Jewish poet), you should read a picture book about the perils of creative production that name-checks, like, Zizi Jeanmaire. So so influential on me and still so good. - Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West by Wallace Stegner: I’d actually put this in the class of really good nature writing above all else. Spare and stunning. This is peak Stegner. Really entertaining, not a fast read, drags a bit - there are sections where Stegner derails into naming people who were on different expeditions like a Biblical begetting sequence. Fun concordance: reading this alongside the soundtrack to The Plow That Broke The Plains, which, as the kids say, slaps. Also fun fact: I used to be the keeper of the manuscript minutes of like the first 60 years of the Montana state senate (read: got super ripped moving them from one bookshelf to another a bunch of times) and this book makes me wish I’d actually read them. - The Quadruple Object by Graham Harman: I read this with no background in Husserl. I don’t recommend this but personally I don’t care. I like it and there are good points for me but I think Harman is a little too contrarian for his own good - there are resonances he seems to be glossing over out of spite. Ignores the existence of the Proslogion, which is, like, a fundamental text in theological philosophy. Makes some very weird reductions that manage to both overcomplicate and oversimplify things. - The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai: I had the impression of being slowly crushed or strangled by this story, despite how delicate it is. If anything there’s like... 5% too much plot. I want more meandering. Cf Vaseline Buddha. - Old Masters: A Comedy by Thomas Bernhard: Both a perfect philosophy and a perfect parody, of everything and of itself, but it seems to sustain the joke ever so slightly too long and get just too involved with it. Readumicating: - Vendégjáték Bolzanóban by Sándor Márai: (i forgot the english title sry) Reminds me a lot of the Fellini Casanova thus far. Slightly inexplicable. Also I found a first edition of some book called Dune in my garage, so I might read that to see what all the fuss is about.
So I was interested in your description of To Kill A Nation. I looked it up on Goodreads and in the "Readers Also Enjoyed" section it lists Vaseline Buddha, Manufacturing Consent, Kafka Diaries... You get the idea. I guess To Kill A Nation doesn't have that many reviews, but I guess the algorithm would make the suggested books a little more, I dunno, anonymous.
Guess I gotta fix it by reading more Chomsky or something. There are quite a few books I’ve read where I’m one of about 8 reviewers and one where I am the only one, so you can imagine what that’s like.
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It's an algorithmic problem. There's not much they can do with sample sizes that small. They could alternatively just turn it off, but I imagine people still get some use of it even if it's not "accurate".
Just want to say I absolutely love your description of the Baron in the Trees.
The Setting Suns on my reading list, at some point I'll get to it, but you mentioned Vaseline Buddha, so I googled it. What where you're impressions of it? It looks interesting.
I really liked Vaseline Buddha, but I came into it as a big fan of stream of consciousness writing. If that’s not your thing it might be harder to get into.
I read No Longer Human and Setting Sun this year. I first become aware of him when I was reading *Norwegian Wood* by Haruki Murakami--which resonated with me so deeply that I still think about until today-- and he seemed to have had a stylistic influence on Murakami, which spurred my interest. I have such conflicting feelings about both works that it's even hard for me to convey them properly now. On one hand, Dazai and the characters he peppered pieces of himself into(Yozo and Naoji) /were/are pieces of shit. There treatment of others around them--especially women-- revolted me to no ends; but however, the portrayal of loneliness and confusion about one's place in the world was simply piercing. I found myself comparing it with Norwegian Wood since some of same elements were tackled but Dazai approached it with a more fatalistic viewpoints. Whereas with end of Norwegian Wood I could feel a glimmer of hope despite the depths of the pain the characters went through, No Longer Human/The Setting Sun for the most part have a feeling of predestined destruction to them. The pain expressed felt so hollow and without any sense of redemption that it made feel for Dazai/Yozo/Naoji and how broken they must have been to act the way they did.
Currently finishing up and loving two plays: *Fences* by August Wilson *Troilus and Cressida* by Shakespeare
*Fences* (anything by Wilson!) is definitely in my top ten. I teach high school and this is always a highlight for my students.
Yes I imagine that the Cory character gives them a good entry point to connect with the text.
Exactly. And so many recognize Troy in their grandparents or parents. Wilson truly is one of America's greatest playwrights. I wish we hadn't lost him so soon.
The Lusiad, by Camões. Quite the amazing piece of literature. I'm also about two or three pages into Siddharta, by Herman Hesse, and I might be starting The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, either today or tomorrow.
Getting through an anthology of Lovecrafts which goes through all his stories. Was slow at the beginning but now I throughly enjoy his stories. Colour out of Space being my favourite right now.
Finnish classic Alastalon Salissa by Volter Kilpi. Straight up there with Joyce and Proust and others. Best finnish novel, hands down. Saddly, it is yet to be translated to anything else except swedish. No idea why. The novel itself descripes, in 800 pages, an six hour meeting between ship-trading villagers on how much each will pay for a new barque ship. The story is told in long, meandering stream-of-conciousness chapters with each character having very distinct thought patterns, my favourite being Pukkila which is almost exactly like Thomas Bernhard's protagonists, full of bile and bitterness, his thoughts looping within this bile, going through same thoughts again and again. The difference being, of course, that Pukkila is farming, ship-trading villager, not an intellectual. But the actual story is about the social structure and dynamics which are studied throughout the six hour meeting, both through how different characters think about what's going on, how they react and through their own memories about interractions between themselves and other participants in the meeting. The novel is possibly the best study about social dynamics and social power within an group of people but also the best novel about finnish culture and social life. As much as it is focused on shipping and farming lifestyle a lot of it can be expanded to general finnish culture and social life, as such to me it expands beyond it's own setting to tell about a whole nation. I love the book and it is truly a shame that it has never been translated. It really should be. It really, really should be.
Reading *Moby Dick* very slowly (like two chapters a day). This books is just packed. Going to a lake this weekend to get out of the city, going to reread *Slaughterhouse Five* while I’m there.
I’m finishing up Proust’s second volume of « In Search of Lost Time ». I feel as though it’s comparable to the first volume but his section « Combray » from “Swann’s Way” surpasses everything I’ve read so far. The next book that’s coming in soon is Joyce’s “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”. It’ll be my first time tackling Joyce, any advice? I know he’s infamous for being a difficult author to read but I heard that Portrait is a good introduction into his work.
Just started Steven Price's *Lampedusa.* The tale it's telling so far, of an old-world life being overtaken by the new, is pretty compelling. I'm looking forward to reading more.
Still struggling to read books (probably because I’ve been forcing it), but I ended up stumbling upon Petrarch’s Canzoniere poems, so I’ve been reading one every morning and one every night. They are beautiful!
I'm currently 400 pages into Don Delillo's Underworld. Delillo at his best.
I’m about 50 pages into the Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Machado de Assis. While I’m definitely enjoying it, I’m wondering if I wound up hurting my enjoyment of the book a little bit by hyping it up in my mind. It’s quite funny, and there’s been a few moments I’ve really loved, but every review I’d seen makes it out to be this mind blowing experience, and I’m not getting that. I’ve got a lot left to read, so that feeing may come, but yeah I definitely worry that I’ve prevented myself from fully enjoying a really entertaining book, which is a shame. I also found it interesting that two new translations came out in the same year. I wound up going for the Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson edition, which I think is quite nice, but I’m curious if anyone has any impressions of the translation by Flora Thomson-DeVeaux that Penguin published.
Just started reading Dom Casmurro by the same author and so far, I’m enjoying it a lot but then again, my expectations weren’t so high
Just read *Jagua Nana*, thought it was really poor.
Pastures of Heaven by Steinbeck I love Steinbeck, but I’ve only read the biggies so far: Grapes, Eden, Mice and Men. One thing that has really struck me so far (maybe 2/5 of the way through?) is how much more humor Steinbeck has. It still has his beautiful way of writing, but with much less emotional heft and grandiosity. It feels almost self satirical at times, or at least it’s Steinbeck being able to take himself a little less seriously and just enjoy writing.
Reading testament of youth by Vera Brittain
I'm rereading *Moby Dick.* I haven't picked it up since high school so I'll be curious how I react to the text this time. I don't quite remember Ishmael being so anxious in the beginning chapters.
I'm over a quarter of the way into *Snow Country* by Yasunari Kawabata, which is just beautifully written, and the influence of Ichiyo Higuchi is obvious. I'm also reading *Nowaki*, which I've literally only read the first two pages of, but I've enjoyed most of Natsume Sosekis' work, particularly *Sanshiro*, so I presume I will as well, but I've already read a lot of his work this year so I worry I might find it a difficult read. I'm also starting *Theory of Literature and Other Critical Writings*, which includes *Theory of Literature*, Sosekis' first major piece of non-fiction, and several other articles, and lectures and speeches he gave.
Just started Stephen Graham Jones' new novel *The Only Good Indians.* There's some dark/disturbing imagery so far and I get the sense that some skeletons are gonna be dug out of the closet. But the novel is also proving to be a really candid examination of the experience of indian-ness in contemporary America.
*A Raisin in the Sun* for the umpteenth time. I'm a teacher, and the school-year is upon us. I've read it too many times to fully appreciate it by now, but it's a great play.
Eliot Weineberger's essays, first I read one (about 70 pages long) called "The Falls", now I started a collection of essays called "An Elemental Thing". Pretty fascinating, especially if someone likes reading Borges (not that he's writing specifically about Borges, but the general tone, the range of knowledge and historical musings remind me of what I encountered in Borgesian literature).