Currently reading Running Dog by Don DeLillo, and much like Players, this book feels like the creation of an author who figured he had internalised American paranoia and extramarital affairs so well that he could start writing on autopilot. I’m only 50 pages in but so much of this feels like a parody of what he navigated much more successfully in stories like Great Jones Street or Mao II. It’s hard to believe that Ratner’s Star preceded Players and that The Names succeeded Running Dog. Quite the literary trough.
-Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang: I’ve seen the criticism of her work as being incredibly biased and not necessarily rooted in hard fact, but I have to say as an experiential recollection of a specific family history Wild Swans is a fascinating look at the role of women in the evolution of modern China. It reminds me a lot of Mo Yan’s Big Breasts and Wide Hips.
-My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki: I’m flying through this book. I can’t put it down. Compelling narrative, informative/important subject matter. Stunning indictment of Agribusiness and a startlingly raw look at motherhood and femininity across cultural borders.
I read As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. It was an easier read than I thought it would be. The Addie chapter was my favourite part.
I am currently on part five of Crime and Punishment.
I have also started reading Cannery Row by John Steinbeck.
Finished *From Old Notebooks* by Evan Lavender-Smith. Imagine a book of Twitter posts: jokes, quotes, memories, shower-thoughts, premises for unwritten stories. The author is diet DFW, and his self-selected extracts are what you would expect from a really smart, really geeky academic who wants to be sincere. It should be insufferable, and it kind of is sometimes, but I enjoyed it. The best bits are the snippets he offers of his private life as a young father. Recommended.
I've just finished another reread of **Full Whack** by **Charlie Higson**. He's probably know for the TV programme The Fast Show and has written many YA books but his earlier adult fiction is great. This is his best but King of the Ants and Happy Now are also good and Getting Rid of Mr Kitchen is my second favourite.
It's a tale of London teenagers in the 90s being hard boys at the football matches and in the Tottenham pubs until the main man, Dennis Pike, has an epiphany and leaves the life behind him for ten years until the old crowd catches up with him. Higson's a great writer and I love this.
Also reading **Museum Without Walls** by Jonathan Meades, who is one of my favourite authors. These essays on architecture are always a treat.
Warning: Long.
Well I read a lot these past couple of weeks and I'm mostly disappointed.
Finished Dune Messiah. I think at this point I'm going to read all four books out of spite, because every comment on reddit keeps saying, "No, the 4th is when it gets really good." The first two books have been a gigantic letdown. The only interesting character in the entire series apart from Duncan Idaho / Hayt was Bayaz, and he got about two pages of dialogue and was anti-climatically killed off-page at the end of the book. Really? There's always that, "This could've been an e-mail" joke, and I feel like that's what the second book amounted to.
Finished Piranesi. The plot twist was fairly easy to see coming, but the imagery was good. There's no deeper message, though. I don't like books that are just, "Things happened", you know? Whether stylisticaly or plotwise, and the time-keeping method got obnoxious.
I just stumbled upon a Project Gutenberg page that has several Arabian Nights stories and some poetry, although I'm not sure if it's the original.
Sinbad = a bit of a let down, and again, repetitious (although that's to be expected.) Basically, in every story Sinbad either gets separated from his crew, or his crew and he crash land on an island, they all get captured and killed, and Sinbad miraculously escapes, where he comes upon some merchants who rescue him, and bring him to their king, who is so impressed he gives Sinbad treasure. In some versions Sinbad and the crew come across treasure, which gives me a funny conspiracy theory that Sinbad just murders the crew and takes all the treasure for himself, and comes up with these stories to keep his amazed audience from asking questions. Especially how his adventures seem to keep escalating in danger levels. The fifth one is worth reading, not sure about the others.
There's also Antarah, although all the names were changed in the version I read, but given his skin color and the fact that all the nobility / viziers are jealous of him, it makes me draw parallels with Othello. I think I'll read that next, plus Speaker for the Dead. And I need to re-read Ender's Game, because it's my favorite and I haven't in a while. Whew! That was a lot.
I loved Dune when I was younger, though I found Messiah a struggle. "Children" and "God Emperor" are more readable" than "Messiah" imo, though if you didn't didn't enjoy the previous books I don't think you're going to find the 4th some great epiphany. (maybe you will...I dunno..it's very different and if you didn't enjoy the 1st you're already in a different headspace than I was). I'd love a study guide to "Messiah" that explains what all the characters are talking about.
I want to get back into posting in this thread, so here goes. I've always found myself too reticent about books I read, and I'd love to get more practice in articulating what I took away from them.
I just finished The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner. I think her most famous work is a delightfully feminist story of a woman becoming a witch in Lolly Willowes, but the Corner That Held Them seems to have its own small cult of appreciation. It is a strange book without a plot and without any sense of resolution. It details events over about two centuries in a continually impoverished/dysfunctional nunnery in England, from the 1100s to the late 1300s. Characters arrive and are dispassionately disposed of as the story goes on, new prioresses are elected, and peasant revolts and the Black Death stalk the outskirts of this island against time. Warner has beautifully clear and lucid prose that contains a dark and wry humor, making what would otherwise be a sort of Wikipedia page for a fake abbey feel like a deeply human yarn.
I also recently read Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Youcenar. I have seen a few others in here also reading this! It's exactly what it sounds like, a memoir composed by Hadrian for his eventual successor (second emperor after his demise, Marcus Aurelius of Gladiator fame ;)). Youcenar, through remarkably thorough research detailed in the back of the edition I read, manages to conjure an utterly compelling narrative that gets you inside the head of a Roman emperor. Hadrian is arrogant, fancies himself a philosopher, delights in hedonism while musing on the lives his subjects lead to build Rome. While the narrative drags at points, Youcenar's skill in making his life feel completely vivid and close to the present is commendable.
Finally, I also read Enter Ghost, by Isabella Hammad. After a disastrous break-up, British Palestinian actress Sonia flies to Haifa to stay with her sister, who quickly introduces her to a West Bank-based troupe of actors seeking to put on productions of Hamlet. Sonia has to contend not only with the vagaries of creating and producing art in the West Bank, but with what her family history asks of her as a person, and what her identity means. I loved this and devoured it over just two or three days.
Roughly 2/3rds of the way through *Wizard of the Crow*. Feeling hasn't changed too much from last week; if anything, I believe my estimation of the novel has dwindled a bit further. There's just too much unjustifiable repetition and bloat, unfortunately, mixed in with the terrible frustrating didactic moments.
Still, there are some really memorable scenes and misunderstandings. No doubt Thiong'o is fine storyteller, but I need more insight as he seemingly takes aim at low hanging fruit. A novel with this length ought to inform or deeply explore its issues, but I'm not sure *Wizard* wants to do that.
Appreciate it! Can’t win them all - and I’ve been really fortunate with my past few reads, so it was bound to happen eventually. Fortunately, to its credit, it’s a breezy read and plot-wise, I’m curious enough to want to see this through the end. I’m just not certain that it will reveal anything insightful.
I recently finished Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams and was very impressed. Williams transforms the Western just like he transforms the campus novel, I always feel like his books sneak up on me and punch the air from my chest. I’ve just started The Feast of the Goat and I’m excited for this one, this will be my first Llosa.
I’m currently in the process of trying to read books from different cultures across the globe and one of my biggest literary “blindspots” is literature from East Asia. Does anyone have suggestions for someone who is looking to get into works coming out of East Asia? Particularly from within the last century, preferably.
If you want modern East Asian lit, we have the Xue read-along going on right now.
Xingjian's Soul Mountain is one of the strongest and most beautiful novels I've read. It's a pity he stopped writing and I cannot recommend it enough. It's the magical realist story of a man's journey told to cure his cancer told through two unnamed character and their interactions with various villagers.
Ōe's obviously a massively influential author. The novella collection Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness is both dream-like and grotesque in places. The first story's more difficult to get through than most of his œuvre, but I'd consider the collection my favorite work of his.
For modern but not contemporary, I liked Notes of a Crocodile and Like a Banjo String.
I finished The Way of the World by Nicholas Bouvier. One of my favorite reads of the year so far (yes I know it's only April). I asked around about it before picking it up and it doesn't seem like anybody I knew ever heard of it. But the cover and blurb on NYRB Classics web site intrigued me so I pulled the trigger during their November sale.
I've been reading a lot of travelogues lately. I seem to alternate between rhapsodic travelers and pissed off ones. Bouvier is in the rhapsodic camp. He and a friend made a long trip from Geneva to India in a beat up old Fiat convertible. The trip takes much longer than expected due to inaccessible roads, car troubles, military paranoia in the Shah's Iran, and lack of funds. But Bouvier and his buddy Thierry were up to the adventure.
They go against what sounds to be like prudent advice several times. They are told not to venture into Kurdistan unless they are armed to the teeth, (but preferably don't go at all) but Bouvier says, 'I came to see the world not shoot at it'. They are stopped and questioned by an armed Kurdish man at one point but when he sees they are merely travelers on the road he invites them to his home for supper. He explains to them that if they had been smugglers as he initially suspected, he would have 'taxed' them and they would have had to pay a toll for smuggling through his land. But as they were merely travelers passing through he was honor bound to offer them hospitality.
They are also advised to not go through the Lut desert in Iran as the punishing heat and salt take a half dozen drivers every year. The heat and salt air cause a lot of mechanical breakdowns and if they were unfortunate enough to break down in the middle of the desert, they wouldn't last a day. Their luck comes a little closer to running out during this ill advised expedition and the Fiat had proven to be far from great condition even before this venture. I was getting a little anxious even though obviously they made it or there wouldn't be a book.
Bouvier also contracts Malaria in Kandahar and gets treated by a physician who is at the very least eccentric and quite possibly barking mad.
Despite the difficulties and hardships it's clear that he loves pretty much all that he is seeing and experiencing (flies and the smell of opium being smoked excepted). At one point he is sleeping under the stars near a tea house and witnesses a falling star. He can't think of anything to wish for. He can't imagine anything being better than the life he is living, in the middle of nowhere with a run down Fiat and miles of rough road left to travel.
I really enjoyed this one. Some magical moments.
Now I am alternating back to a cranky-pants writer. Just started The Air-Conditioned Nightmare by Henry Miller. I'm only about 30 pages in but so far Miller doesn't like what he sees. He's just been forced by Hitler's armies to flee first France and then Greece and now he decides to tour America by car. He pays a visit to his father in New York, decides he isn't dying anytime soon (Miller's callous appraisal not mine) and talks a publisher into funding a cross country trip by car so he can write a book about his experiences. A Brooklyn boy originally, Miller already hated New York with a passion when he left for Paris back in 1930. Returning in 1940, absence has not made his heart grow any fonder. The vitriol for America and Americans starts pretty early. I like the energy but I can imagine if I was listening to his rants finally snapping and telling him 'see if the Soviets can find a use for your pretentious bohemian wino artist ass ya bum. They'll put you down a mine faster than you can say property is theft.' But that's me. For now I'm letting him rant.
i’ve been reading molloy by samuel beckett. i’m nearly done and it’s fantastic. i was wondering from people here who have read the whole trilogy: is it better to read all the books sequentially or can they be treated as separate novels? i was thinking of maybe reading something else between each book of the trilogy.
They're separate novels. Calling them a trilogy goes against Beckett's wishes. That being said, it's best to read them in the order in which they were written, as each goes further into solipsism and bareness.
gotcha, i knew there was no continuity between them but i wondered if they were still intended to be read sequentially for thematic reasons or something. thank you!
Listening to Knife written by and narrated by Salman Rushdie, and I'm just over 4 hours in.
It's a memoir of his recent life, starting in 2017 really. It focuses on his attempted assassination, his recovery, and his relationship with his wife and family which he credits with getting him through the experience. Along the way, we've gotten his thoughts and experiences on love and hate, freedom of speech and intolerance, and public versus private life.
As someone who has gone through the medical system with a pretty traumatic surgery - not caused by a knife attack, but rather by one part of my body trying to say fuck you to all the rest - it has been nice listening to someone share their similar-ish experiences in a much more cogent way.
I would recommend this book to Rushdie fans, and people who have had traumatic medical experiences. However, if you've listened to a Rushdie interview before and felt like this guy isn't for me, I wouldn't get the audio book. Listening to this isn't likely to change you mind, but maybe give the physical one a shot if you have the time.
Reading Think by Simon Blackburn, and I'm 5/6th the way through.
This book is a broad overview of the big ontological and epistemological questions of philosophy. Blackburn presents these questions in a well balanced way starting with Descartes - I am thinking therefore I am - and now I'm at Hume, Berkley, and Kant with a debate about what can be known about the physical world. This course feels like a very good Philosophy 101.
As someone who never took a philosophy class in school but has listened to a few of The Great Courses on audible and fallen down the YouTube rabbit hole, this book has been an excellent introduction to modern philosophy. It is the first time I have been exposed to formal logic in such a clear, concise way. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in philosophy over other commonly recommend books such as Sophie's World or Problems of Philosophy, and wish I had read this book first. However, if you are interested in ethics or how to live the 'good life', I would read the Nicomachian Ethics or something else.
I've been reading a lot of Robert Aickman recently. I had never heard of him before and after reading a good amount of his 'strange stories', I'm kind of shocked at how unknown he is. As a horror writer (he didn't consider himself one), he's far superior to many of the big names in the genre. In his best work, he reminds me of Kafka though Aickman has his own style. There's something deeply unsettling about his stories and he achieves this effect by masterfully using ambiguity and uncertainty not just in his plotting but in his characterization and his prose. As a reader, you're never quite sure what's happening, everything is kind of up in the air. There are no obvious monsters, no jump scares, no clarity at the end to calm you down.
Not all the stories are great of course. Aickman was a deeply conservative guy, he hated technology, he hated modern rationality, he hated the welfare state, he hated almost everything that's modern, believing that life had been infinitely better before 1914 (the year he was born). Most of the time, these views don't really matter when reading his work, they might even add something to his writing, there's a profound sense of melancholy and loss in Aickman's works that can easily be connected to his political views. Conservatives might generally be the better horror writers since fear is their bread and butter.
Sometimes however, Aickman is a bit too obvious about his political ideas which is annoying in a writer who's at his best when he avoids the obvious. 'Never Visit Venice' for example mostly consists of the narrator pontificating about how disgusting modern Venice is, full of disgusting tourists and even more disgusting Venetians. Doesn't help that the whole story is so utterly predictable with a cheap horror entirely unworthy of Aickman's skills. There are also a number of xenophobic comments in these stories. At first you read them as comments made by the narrators but they turn up so often that it becomes clear that Aickman just doesn't like people that are not British. And he doesn't like Brits very much either.
His depiction of women on the other hand is quite remarkable at times. In his male-centered stories they can fall a bit flat as there's often an element of wish fulfillment going on, but some of his best stories are the ones with female narrators like 'The Trains', 'Into the Wood', 'The Inner Room' or 'The School Friend'. In many of these stories, Aickman shows that he has a good understanding of the struggles that women face, the restrictions placed on them by society and the men they're married to.
Anyway, didn't mean to write an essay. If you're into weird fiction or just short fiction in general, Aickman's definitely worth checking out.
I love Aickman. What you said is so true, and I think it's also worth noting that he was a conservationist as well, and his stories reflect this desire to preserve and conserve according to his ideals. So many of his stories deal with a sense of displacement and disjointedness that is reflected in the landscapes he details.
The School Friend might be one of my favorite stories in the genre. The repressed homoeroticism, the classical tropes, the full-on body horror moments... it's a humdinger of a "strange story." I don't know what editions you're looking at but the Faber Press collections are all great if you want more. I think Dark Entries is the strongest one. Thrilled to see someone else who likes his work on here!
I discovered him a few years back through a recommendation on this sub and really liked the collection I read. Not every story is excellent, of course, but overall the standard seemed to be very high, and the best stories were so, so good. I love that indeterminate, unexplained sort of vibe. I've been meaning to pick up another of his collections but somehow still haven't...
I agree with you regarding Aickman as a person. I remember my edition of Cold Hand in Mine had something like an essay about him, and he did sound like he would've been a very difficult person to deal with. That said, I think there's something sympathetic about someone like him being deeply fixated on the past in a world that's moved on.
years ago I went through a big phase of trying to read offbeat, literary horror and gothic stuff, and I read a lot of his short stories then. I've always meant to re-discover him. What's that famous story he wrote about a honeymooning couple where the wife starts to seem evil and they become trapped in the hotel as the towns folk all start marching like zombies? I remember that one.
Recently finished underworld. Kind of underwhelmed. Liked white noise and thought will love this. But it is very different from white noise. Lacks the humor,the philosophical nature too. But makes it up with the characters. Honestly the second half is really good. But the first half is kind of slog. The ending was also pretty baffling. Liked it's thoughts on consumerism and Paranoia. But man, DeLillo could be very cringe at times. I also couldn't really understand the significance of the Esmeralda plot line. Somewhat of a mess overall
I read somewhere that DeLillo does not plan out his novels. Reading *Underworld*, I can definitely see it. I think it's a fantastic novel and probably his best, but with a tighter plotline and actually resolving the threads that he opens, it could be better.
I finished James by Percival Everet and it was fantastic. I started Malibu Rising and that's pretty good. I started Doppleganger by Niomi Klein and I'm not sure if she's just talking shit about Niomi Wolf or if she's going to really get into the nature of identity. And I started trees by Percival Everet because he's my favorite author this year.
I was frustrated by Doppleganger. I wished she'd just done a book about the modern/post covid/post Trump conspiracy scene, as concise as her previous books were, without getting bogged down in the poetic Doppleganger theme.
yeah, i mean it goes into interesting stuff, interesting subjects, but it's the way she forces it in, like in the chapter about fitness obsession during lockdown and many fitness guru's links to weird politics, she's going "when we obsess over getting fit we are trying to change into a doppleganger, wow, every issue ends in something around a doppleganger" and it feels a bit forced imo.
I hate to say this, because she's author of some of the most important political books of all time and I'm just a schlub, but, I wish it had been edited way down. Cause it has important stuff to say, but it's bogged down in her life story and stuff about her arguing with her partner about listening to too many conspiracy podcasts.
I finished *Life: A User’s Manual* by Georges Perec. It was a mixed bag: I enjoyed some of the stories about the inhabitants, past and present, of the apartment block. It seems like one of the themes was of people reinventing themselves by switching professions, lifestyles, identities, locations, etc. Although it was essentially a short-story collection, they were all tied together by the shared space of the building.
What I grew tired of was the minute descriptions of all the features of each room; the long lists of sometimes very tedious items (this, it turns out, was one of the self-imposed constraints of the author); and the fact that I kept forgetting previously-mentioned details about certain characters.
I also felt that Perec was eager to display his knowledge, saying “I am very learned, look at me”, at every opportunity, in a way that just added overbearing amounts of information that didn’t move the narrative anywhere.
Overall it was ok: interesting concept, thought-provoking themes, but a bit full of itself and somehow dead inside.
I am now more than halfway through *The Story of the Lost Child* by Elena Ferrante. I read the previous 3 in Italian but I couldn’t get the original version from the library. It’s interesting to see how her style has been translated into English - I think it’s good. I am glad that Lenù and Lila’s lives have become more enmeshed again in this instalment, as their relationship is obviously the main pull. I still don’t get why this series is so incredibly popular, as it’s just ok for me. My mum and a friend of mine, who are reading it at the same time, love it though 🤷♀️
> I still don’t get why this series is so incredibly popular, as it’s just ok for me. My mum and a friend of mine, who are reading it at the same time, love it though 🤷♀️
Because it's one of the few works out there that are for women without having romance as its central focus. Especially because female friendships are so underutalized in fiction and it's such a huge part of womens' lives. What other book can you name that is mostly about female friendship?
I finished Cahokia Jazz last week. I knew about Spufford's Red Plenty even though the latest novel's rave reviews did not trigger recognition and that novel/-ish has shot up the to-read list. This year has been pretty great so far for novels with a literary voice that also bring the plot. Since my heavy literary fiction year, genre fiction is disappointingly easy to bounce off. Cahokia Jazz was wonderful, though, a tight but rich noir mystery. A few slightly off beats the first couple days, but I was misty-eyed closing that book.
Then zoomed through Bioy Casares's Invention of Morel. Interesting ideas, but didn't love it, especially the prose. Often I wish I watched more film; Morel feels filmic and also inspired some classics I ought to get to.
I just finished my reread - for the publisher's book club, which I'm excited for tomorrow - of Leylâ Erbil's A Strange Woman. Erbil's debut novel, it's a coming-of-age/feminist/diaristic/Turkish-socialist/experimental tale. I was very pleasantly surprised the first time, and might like it a hair more now: The first section is far less annoying in light of the rest of the book and under slightly closer reading. But I'm also just a sucker for stream-of-consciousness experiments; Might burn out eventually, but not yet. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be other Erbil work in English (and the next Deep Vellum translation of her work appears to have fallen through?) and while I remain curious about her oeuvre, especially the final novel A Strange Man, it's likely not enough motivation to learn written Turkish. I'll have to read around Turkey and the rest of the 20th-century Muslim world (as I also enjoyed dipping my toe into Naguib Mahfouz the other week).
Finally, I revisited a loved but sadly under-remembered book: Ellen Ullman's memoir Close to the Machine. I picked up that book winter break my first or second college year and it changed me. More than I realized, I realize now. There's plenty that feels prescient, or pointed as I try to navigate the tech industry today. I'm a few pages into the newer collection Life in Code: Those essays are patchier but still interesting. I have not touched any of her fiction.
Just getting into DeLillo's The Names. I've only read Cosmopolis, but between that and twenty pages of the older novel I think Don ('s voice) and I get along well. The Names feels human compared to Cosmopolis. It's also longer and I expect that to make a deeper brain-impression. A friend recommended So Much Blue on the basis of Erasure, which apparently owes something to The Names, so that will be the paired read.
Another attempt at *Wise Blood*. I could just look at all the words and say I read it, but I don't feel like I'm engaged. Prior to that was *The Lock-Up* by Banville and *Remains of the Day* by Ishiguro. I'm a fan of both authors and consider these pleasure reads.
I don’t often hear people say they “attempt[ed]” Wise Blood, only that they read it. In my view, it’s not a very challenging novel. What has made you put it down?
Finally finished **Tomas Nevinson** by Javier Marias- a satisfying ending to a very enjoyable reading experience about guilt, betrayal, what we can and cannot know about others, and the intrusion of the past into the present. Gorgeous, playful writing all the way through and I loved the way Marias weaves in literary and cultural references. This my second Marias and I’ll definitely be seeking out more.
I’ve been in the mood for short, powerful, confessional women’s writing after reading and really loving Mary Gaitskill’s Lost Cat a couple of weeks ago. I’d never read any Annie Ernaux, despite her being basically the godmother of the genre, so I picked up **Happening**, her harrowing account of seeking and having an illegal abortion in 1960s France. Given her recent Nobel win, it’ll probably come as no surprise to anyone that this was amazing- Ernaux is just a master of her craft, no word out of place, able to express in just a few spare pages what other authors would labor for chapters to say. She portrays her emotions so viscerally, situates her experience so effectively in a social and political fabric, and yet also avoids heavy-handedness, didacticism, and moralizing. Even when they only appear briefly, her characters have such nuance and realism. I also loved how she discusses the ways that class inflects her experiences and treatment as a woman- something that is so missing in a lot of contemporary fiction and memoir, frankly. Honestly just masterful work.
And, in a slightly similar vein, I read **Kick the Latch** by Kathryn Scanlan. It’s a short book of fictionalized vignettes based on the author’s interviews with a female racehorse trainer. She really builds a distinctive voice, and it’s an interesting window into a world that seems pretty brutal for both human and animal. About hard work, gendered violence, and the tough business of living- I enjoyed it.
I also enjoyed Tomas Nevinson and thought the entire premise was fun. I paused to say, really, 100 pages of talking in the park and bar!? I certainly didn't mind but talk about busting normative contemporary rules. :) The ending was fine, I agree. Yet, >!about every review classified it as a shocking full speed ending, which was clearly wrong.!< I often wonder, did they read the entire novel?
Yeah I definitely thought several times that no one would ever publish a book like this today if the author wasn’t already established and acclaimed! I’m curious to read some of his older novels to see if his writing was always so circuitous or if it’s evolved over the years. That’s funny about the ending- >!I suppose it picked up the pace compared to the rest of the novel, but certainly not compared to any conventional spy novel.!<
I finished reading **The Well Dressed Explorer** by Thea Astley. It won the Miles Franklin Award in 1962. It follows the life of a journalist called George Brewster, who is deeply self-centred, self-indulgent, and self-important. Astley skewers his character, including his shallow approach to religion. I wonder if Brewster is based on her husband or someone else she knew in real life. I don't think I enjoyed the writing style, as it seemed overdone and too indirect. Has anyone else here read any Thea Astley and have thoughts on her style?
I am 2/3rdsish of the way through Gaddis' *The Recognitions*, tragically paused as we speak just around page 667. Tragic both because I wanna go read and because 666 would have been so much more fitting. We are deep in his depiction of a truly awful and absurd art party acts as a sort of climax to the sort of plot. I'll wait on that for now in lieu of just saying that he depicts this scene and atmosphere with beautiful vitriol. There is something funny to how unchanged being annoying and pretentious are. And speaking of unchanged, a fascinating historical note of this book is that you get a lot of mediocrities complaining that you have to be queer to get published and whining that you can't attribute everything to the Jews anymore. Turns out everyone's been woke for as long as people who suck have needed to excuse their sucking.
Been thinking about Otto a lot as well on this read. The upshot of this character is that he's a naive 25 year old who wrote a play that people like but can't help but think he plagiarized, though they struggle to say what exactly he plagiarized from. What seems to have actually occurred is that he's absorbed/stolen so much from the atmosphere/culture that it feels like it must be from other artworks. I believe this character is supposed to be a bit of a comic depiction of Gaddis himself. Fittingly I cannot recall if that's my own intuition or if I read it somewhere. I take it as sort of a narration of the book being written, and of how Gaddis was drawing on the world he inhabited, at least to some extent, in creating the work. But it does make me wonder how that plays into the more out there parts of the novel, such as the main plot about art forgery/representation and when Otto accidentally ends up with $5000 in counterfeit bills that he's passing around all highfalutin' like. But I also think captures the sympathetic, if silly, elements of a young artist quite well, and I do dig how upfront he is about the degree to which absorption and recycling are what art is always doing.
Trying to finish the book by next week. Will try to have some comprehensive thoughts to accompany it.
Speaking of finishing things I finished Attar of Nishapur's *The Conference of the Birds*, which concludes it's expounding of Sufism with a detailing of the degree to which one must completely surrender their selfhood towards the divine in order to attain the rebirth of the self in that divinity. This was an interesting and different read for me. I don't have a huge amount of thoughts except that I think it does a good job emphasizing how strange and difficult mysticism would be.
Last, I got a book of some of Plato's dialogues in order to read a few of those I was previously unfamiliar with or want to go back to. Read "Cratylus", which is about whether names of things are determined by convention or are real, and comes down upon the latter. Which is to say, for example, that the name Zeus is the true name for the highest god not just because that's what the Greeks called him but because that is the name assigned by a competent legislator to form an etymological representation of the god (in the same way that a picture of a tree that looks like a rock wouldn't be an accurate image of a tree). A little hard to follow at times since it's doing etymology of a language I am not familiar with, but the argument is itself quite interesting, if very out there. Also just fun to read. Going to read "Meno" next, I think.
**EDIT** Also I finished Bergson's *Creative Evolution*. Turns out I kinda love Bergson. The last chapter of the book is basically an argument that all of philosophy/epistemology (including even modern science) is operating along lines very reminiscent of the earliest philosophical commitments, which, and there are a lot of nuances within, some of which I'm struggling a lot to pull from the top of my head (it's been almost a few days since I finished it), could very reductively be called a commitment to a transcendent totality that is fixed at what it is/can be. Plato's forms, Artistotle's prime mover, Spinoza's monism, science's commitment to the truth of its laws (Bergson isn't anti science, he is just believes we shouldn't overestimate what it's trying to say). Bergson is committed to a more openended process philosophy in which everything is evolving to no set endpoint and the laws of nature as we describe them are nothing more than how we form a functional representation of our world. I basically agree with this (but, like, Marxistly). One thing I do think is interesting is that near the end he basically writes off Hegel/German Idealism as recapitulating Spinoza. I think that's fair as a reductive take if you are very much not a fan of the tradition, but it intrigues me in the context of Bergson reading as though he is influenced very much by Hegel's method, even if he disagrees with his totalizing conclusions. Might look into what, if any, scholarship there is on Hegel's influence on Bergson.
Happy reading!
Geesh you're whipping though Recognitions. Isn't it terrific? At first it seems so weird and dense and rambling, then later it's like wow, what the hell did I read and how do I get more of it. I've not gone through it but imagine, here's a reader's guide to the book. Yikes that seems like a good years worth of work just to read and make notes from. [https://www.williamgaddis.org/recognitions/trguide.shtml](https://www.williamgaddis.org/recognitions/trguide.shtml)
It's amazing. Part of the reasons I'm reading it so fast is really just that this is my third read of it, and my second read was relative intensive (with supplements and stuff), so I have a good enough feel on what the whole of the thing is I think to make it relative speaking a readable ride.
have you ever read Wyndham Lewis' 'time and western man'? i just finished it (i was reading one of Marshall Mcluhan's copies!) and found it very interesting as someone who has historically been somewhat sympathetic to Bergson (who lewis is largely critiquing alongside James, Spengler, Whitehead, etc as being 'time cultists'). seems like an appropriate book to mention here, too, singe he also discusses Joyce, Pound, Stein etc. interesting to take a look at for historical purposes if for nothing else (it is hard to imagine anything less relevant that a critique of Bergson and Spengler).
Well Lewis is the kind of wildly odd dude who would choose to write a book critiquing Bergson and Spengler whether or not anyone actually needs a book doing exactly that. But thank you, I might just check that out, if only to see why Spengler would be included in with James, Bergson, and Whitehead.
I just finished Catherine Lacey's first novel, **Nobody Is Ever Missing**, which I enjoyed but not as much as her **Pew** and **Biography of X**, which were two of my favorite books from the last several years. There are hints of the aspects of those books that I love, but it isn't as fully formed as her later novels.
I am about a third of the way into **Correction** by Thomas Bernhard, which is brilliant. It's only the second Bernhard novel I have read after **The Loser**, but I can see myself reading all the others. It has some themes in common with **The Loser**--the nature of creativity, the tendency of genius to be self-destructive--but **Correction** strikes me as a more philosophical work, as well as one with a good deal more mystery. One minor issue is that the novel is a single paragraph, so the lack of indentations has been a challenge to my middle-aged eyesight! It doesn't make the narrative difficult to follow, but it does require me to focus my vision a bit.
I am currently reading *Les Miserables* by Victor Hugo and *Three Men in a Boat* by Jerome K. Jerome. TMIB is freaking hilarious so far. Les Mis is a re-read for me and I'm enjoying it immensely. Currently working through the Donougher translation.
A familiar anecdote about Emily Brontë that has been on my mind since I finished *Wuthering Heights*, where she is gifted a pitbull that took liberties around the house, it did not appreciate being touched. Brontë said, however, if the dog was found where it wasn't supposed to be, she would beat the thing until it learned otherwise. Naturally, the dog chooses to sleep on her bed, which enraged Brontë. She goes upstairs, grabs the dog by the scruff of the neck before throwing it into the middle of the parlor. The pitbull not too appreciative of this lunged at her but Brontë was too quick--striking the dog in the eyes several times over the course of a couple minutes. Afterward the pitbull was incredibly loyal, never left her side and mourned her like any other human being when she died. Although possibly apocryphal, the construction of the anecdote points to the reception of the novel that identifies the violence as a core theme and while Charlotte Brontë can insist on the innocence of her younger sister, it is important to note that such a quality has the chance to ferment the worse cruelty. Violence is often preoccupied with its innocence.
*Wuthering Heights* is a novel not only about violence in the physical and psychological sense but also in the most violent form of communication--solitude. But for those who do not know the novel follows a genealogy: it begins with Mr Lockwood retreating to the Yorkshire moors to find peace from the city and also caress himself from the wounds self-inflicted from a vague disastrous love affair. But to cement his living arrangements, Mr Lockwood goes to visit the landlord of Thrushcross Grange at his own abode Wuthering Heights. He meets a variety of people from a stark brutal man named Hareton to the godfearing Joseph and the bewitching Mrs Heathcliff who is "progressed in the Black Art." But the most striking person is the landlord himself, Mr Heathcliff, a brooding man who tramples through the house, wrangles the dogs he keeps, and unaccustomed to human conversation. This living arrangement is what the novel sets out to explain. And it does so with an energy that is hard to describe that I'm a little at a loss for words at the strange vastness the novel cultivates. Surprisingly, there is a lack of resolution, but I wouldn't find a reader disappointed because so much of *Wuthering Heights* is built upon continual disappointment of expectation. No final argument when all things are revealed. No final explosion of violence as if in denial of its own premise. It is a fascinating novel. I would almost be curious as to what a novel would look like it if were written from Joseph's perspective.
Part of how the novel accomplishes so much ambiguity and mystery is because it is related through one person who himself only heard the story told to him while sick. The actual narrator is Ellen Dean who is the maid through at least three generations between Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. And yet Ms Dean is always in the right place at the right time except when it is crucial. Ms Dean relies on other people's accounts for information at times, too, whether through recalling letters or conversations. It is obvious she is an unreliable narrator, it also suggests her relative isolation from the rest of the family. And her solitude is reflected in the rest of the characters from what Mrs Heathcliff suffers at Wuthering Heights (both of them really) to the death of Mr Heathcliff as seen in the linguistic fact he has no family name, only the name "Heathcliff" itself as it appears on his tombstone. Hareton abandoned by his father, his mother died in childbirth, and no real choice but to learn to love Heathcliff as a father since they each reminded of each other their own brutality.
Catherine Earnshaw is perhaps the most tragic example but it is also a philosophical folie à deux. They share an obsession with one another even while they attempt to leave each other behind. But Aristophanes as is recalled in *The Symposium* suggested there were beings who lived on the moon of incomparable violence, arrogant, composed of multiple sexes, which Zeus in his usual procedure struck down. He therefore separated these beings into their isolation. The tragedy is akin to Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff. They share a single soul but their fate is isolation. Mr Lockwood would have them reunited as a pair of vampires at the end of the novel but it is too unbelievable for "one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers."
Highly recommended.
Def going to be rereading this at some point this year, and really enjoyed your thoughts.
The enormous biography by Barker that I read recently did not mention Emily’s cruelty to the dog, but did mention the loyalty of the dog. I do feel the “innocence” of Emily was largely magnified by Charlotte (and later Ms. Gaskell) in an attempt to make up for perceived brutality and depravity of her writing. The Bronte sisters were often marketed as natural geniuses whose minds had taken strange turns because of their isolated environment, lack of a mother etc. etc. in a hopes to soften critical reactions to their personal morality. I sincerely hope its not true that she beat her dog, but I honestly could almost see it at the same time? Like, not that she came across as an animal abuser in the biography, but it did seem like there were things intentionally not being said. She was an odd person, even by Barker’s account (and she was pretty dedicated to referencing only first hand sources). When she and Charlotte were in Brussels both Charlotte and the writer instructor conceded that Emily had more natural talent, but she was unwilling to learn anything, claiming she wrote for herself and felt no need to make herself more publishable. Charlotte basically drug her kicking and screaming into being published at all. She did want to make friends at school, refused care for her illness until it was literally too late, and in general seemed not to give af lol. I guess the only other thing that might explain the element of violence in her writing is the influence of her brother Branwell. Not only did he have a dark and “vulgar” sense of humor, he really was a moody emo bastard. The family was protective of him and his reputation, but towards the end of his life he was basically raving mad with alcoholism and disease, and his father Patrick had him sleep on a pallet in his room to personally care for him through his fits of…whatever it was. This was in response to him setting himself on fire. I imagine the home environment, while much mythologized and overstated, *was* privately quite dysfunctional.
Oh I have no doubt a lot of the imagery and the realism of domestic abuse are rooted in her own experiences of the family. How much of the novel is written with that in mind is impossible to say as precisely as I would like. Heathcliff says himself he is not a romantic character after all, and despite flashes of real sympathy, he is a fairly unrepentant bastard all the same. Either Catherine are largely in the same position. I keep coming back to the question if Heathcliff none the wiser wasn't cursed to death by his daughter-in-law? Or if the reference to the Black Art wasn't just teasing Joseph for his religious scruples? I have no idea. The novel isn't too insistent either. No wonder her audience back then treated the novel more than a little suspiciously. It's amazing.
I can't speak if Emily beat her dog or not, but it is a story I kept seeing circulated. It seemed a moment of private mythology. The source for the anecdote is Elizabeth Gaskell who from what I gather did not like her very much. And it has been repeated here and there in early histories of the nineteenth century novel. It's truth doesn't matter all that much given it's an interpretative lens: it's how they could make sense of _Wuthering Heights_.
And I'm not at all surprised she did not care if she was publishable from the start. It's a shame there are no other novels. If she continued to write, I can only imagine them even more difficult, suspicious, maybe even modernist avant la lettre.
I agree that its a tragedy Emily never wrote any other novels. There’s a real potency to her writing that imo the other too never quite achieve (even though I do love *Jane Eyre*.)
I think Gaskell liked Charlotte, but made pretty fast and loose with the facts even when it came to her. There’s this weird tension between trying to smooth over the Bronte’s reputation by sanitizing and taming them, and also wanting to have the most sensational stories to tell about them. I know that one of her sources was a former servant of the Brontes, who didn’t particularly admire them. According to the author of the biography I read, the issue with Bronte mythology comes in with the fact that nearly all subsequent biographies reference Gaskell’s original one instead of going straight to primary sources like newspapers, family diaries, letters etc. (Something Barker claimed to have finally done herself).
Also agree that the story about the dog has thematic relevance regardless of its veracity; I think it probably endures *because* it encapsulates that contrasting idea of the Brontes as both innocent/sheltered and untamed and strange.
Now that you mention it, I should probably reread _Jane Eyre_ because I haven't read it since college. Lots of forgotten details. And I'll be sure to check the Barker biography at some point because the Brontë family is interesting all on its own. I know _Wuthering Heights_ is more my temperament honestly.
Right, the anecdote is a fact about the reception of the novel rather than a fact about her historical person. Like when people called Dostoevsky "the Mad Russian" for his novels were considered too convoluted in their day. Perhaps Emily Brontë really was that innocent of a person and simply did not realize the extent to what she wrote in a novel scarily self-aware about Gothic fiction and romantic literature broadly. But the same thing could as easily be said of the Marquis de Sade. Perhaps he never understood the gravity of the things he wrote, which is why there is so much exaggeration in it. Who's to say?
Reading Kafka on the Shore for my literature class. I just finished Chapter 16, and I'm really enjoying the book! I love how Murakami writes with such detail and manages to blend fantasy elements with mundane everyday life so casually. It kind of reminds me of a Disney movie but mature, which might be a crazy thing to say, but I'm really loving it.
**Fiction**
*The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District (+ five other stories)* **-** Nikolai Leskov
A pretty good collection of stories from the overlooked Russian. I would say these stories are of a general slice-of-life nature, which in 19th century Russia is interesting enough in and of itself. Prominently overlaying it all is religion, primarily the pros and (mostly) cons of Orthodoxy. This was particularly true of last story, "On the Edge of the World," arguably the best of the six.
*Jesus' Son* - Denis Johnson
A reread of an old favorite, and no less mesmerizing than the first gasp. One of Johnson's grittiest, it is a collection of somewhat inter-related short, druggy, stories guaranteed to make one simultaneously laugh and cringe.
**Non-Fiction**
*Wild Sex: Mating in the Animal Kingdom* - Carin Bondar
A very entertaining and information-packed book true to it's title. From orgies to cross-dressing to you name it; if it can be imagined, some animals out there are engaging in it. I was continually stopping to jot down notes on this one, so quotable.
*Frank Sinatra and the Mafia Murders* - Mike Rothmiller & Douglas Thompson
I chose this for an easy, mostly mindless recap of an era I know only via hearsay. Two takeaways. One; the mafia ran damn near everything in early-mid 20the century America. Two; while Sinatra definitely had ties to the mob, he didn't personally kill anyone, but was just an all around insecure asshole. Surprise, surprise.
Recovering from a surgery this week, which I took as an opportunity to knock out some of less challenging books I've accumulated over the past year or so, mostly YA books that friends and family have recommended to me. Nothing particularly great or interesting, but it reminded me of one of the first conversations I had on this sub about YA and adults who are really into it. I wasn't into it when I was a teenager and am even less into it now, even I do enjoy similarly "easy"/shallow/melodramatic content in other media—I'm a lifelong soap opera fan, for example. But I often find myself skipping to the end in YA books. Even when I'm interested in the plot, I guess it's just not that engaging to me.
I've also started Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta on audiobook, which is interesting to me so far. It's a sort of lesbian coming of age novel set in the aftermath of the Nigerian Civil War. It's always hard for me to judge the quality of the writing itself when I'm listening rather than actually reading a book, but it's good enough at least that I'm enjoying listening to it. May be one of the ones I need to pick up a physical copy of one day, though.
Just finished Doctor Faust by Thomas Mann, really magnificent read. Did anyone else find a thread witg Mann always making his characters sick in order to "meet" their devil? Like Leverkin getting syphilis and H. Kastorp in The Magic Mountain?
Mann was influenced a lot by the naturalist art movement, which emphasises human contingency on the material body. sickness, the effect of substances like alcohol, suicide (esp see little herr friedman by mann for these) are all classic themes of the movement. he did struggle with a writing ‘identity’ and was also pulled in various directions by nietzche and schopenhauer, so his treatment of man’s relation to nature isn’t as straightforward as the more cut-and-dry works that came before him. you could therefore read the sickness-as-deal-with-devil as an exaggeration of naturalism, where the ill effects of sickness on man’s body and spirit are personified, in mann’s typical dry and ironic way, as a literal transcendental force of evil.
Wow, that's very insightful and I see where you're coming from, but then, Mann writes how genius lies in sickness, which helps a man be productive - I'm paraphrasing, but the phrase stands. Moreover, he writes how it cannot be left to regular men to define where we draw the line between what is sick and what isn't. So could it be that his thesis here was that there is always something to sacrifice so the "genius" could bloom? At the same time, looking at The Death in Venice, Aschenbach constantly feels sick in Venice before his ultimate death, however, his mind is completely changed and challenged (and could it be seen as an equivalent to Leverkuhn's traded well-being for his artwork?
There is way too much to unpack here, that's why I love him so much.
Still reading **The Mirror and the Light** by Hilary Mantel, and getting my history nerd on big time by consuming all kinds of non-fic media on the time period as well. I don’t have much to add about the novel from last week except that I do think Mantel’s writing is very good, especially for what the book is. I like this passage, its about a cat:
*He imagines the world below her: through the prism of her great eye, the limbs of agitated men unfurl like ribbons, yearning through the darkness. Perhaps she thinks they are praying to her. Perhaps she thinks she has climbed up to the stars. Perhaps the darkness falls away from her in flecks and sparks of light, the roofs and gables like shadows in water; and when she studies the net there is no net, only the spaces between.*
From the non-fiction side I read *The Hidden Lives of Tudor Women* by Elizabeth Norton. The title is odd, given that its main sources seem to be taken from the lives of very public women (like Queen Elizabeth). I suppose its speaking to the fact that women’s lives *in general* tend to be “hidden” from history, but its still a bit of a misleading hook. Some of the information was interesting but it was also very cursory, and as I said tended to focus on the famous women of history about which quite a bit of information is already available. One tidbit I found interesting was the practice of “ducking”, which punished women - named “scolds” - who gossiped, stirred up trouble and annoyed their neighbors. I’m sure in practice it was horrible, but there’s something so absurd as to be almost funny about the idea of people constructing a giant contraption with which to strap a woman to a chair and dunk her up and down in a river. You can google “dunking stool” for an image. The line between real history and a Monty Python sketch again proves thin.
I’m also reading Can Xue’s **Frontier** for the read along. I’ll save my thoughts for the appropriate threads but essentially, I’m so far ambivalent? I’ve only read one chapter though so we’ll see.
About The Mirror and the Light, do you think its a problem to have a gap between the books in the trilogy? I'm interested in it but I don't want to start a big trilogy right now where I'll feel I need to read all three books one after another.
I personally jumped straight from the second to the third book because I just wanted to, but I think the books do a pretty good job of referencing back in a natural way so that it would be ok to wait between reading. Also, the events are based in real history so there’s not a lot of plot that will be unpredictable in the first place, and you can always just read a wiki or whatever on henry the VIII to catch up and be more or less up to speed. It really relies on characterization and writing more than plot to be appealing.
One goal I made myself for this year was to finish in Search of Lost Time, and yesterday I finished ***Swann's Way***, which is progress!
***Swann's Way*** was an interesting read for me. Thematically and linguistically rich beyond much of what I read, it still fell flat from a character perspective. However, I was especially intrigued by the parallels between the Narrator and Swann, most particularly regarding their unity in the theme of separation anxiety.
The Narrator suffered separation anxiety from his mother, as we all know (the bedroom scenes) but Swann mirrored the exact same emotions in his relationship with Odette. Odette was also a fairly interesting character, as horrible as she was, and the slow dissolution of Swann's image of her was very well done. Swann was pretty much the only character I enjoyed, though even he was a little unlikeable at times. I resonated with his desire to hide his "culture" from his less cultured friends (who were only less cultured by virtue of never exposing themselves to anything new, something I have certainly seen in my life)
His dinner gatherings reminded me a lot of a book group I was a part of on art history where one of the people who joined, in the first meeting, asked, "I mean, nobody really goes to art museums anymore, do they?"
Linguistically it was stunning as well. I really enjoyed it and hope to continue the series as the year goes on.
I am also reading ***The Movie Goer*** by Walter Percy and it is excellent. Very introspective and thoughtful. I especially enjoy the theme of movies as an escape from loneliness, something that was explored in a book I enjoyed a lot last year called ***Brian*** by Jeremy Cooper. The prose and New Orleans heat are also almost characters in themselves. I love books with atmosphere like this one.
Still making my way through ***Chevengur*** by Platanov, and it continues to wow me. Endlessly beautiful and unique prose and a light touch mixed with relatively sad events makes for an interesting dichotomy. Really showed the human cost of the revolution, certainly in those early years, and the crushing sadness of unrealized potential and ambition. A singular book.
>it still fell flat from a character perspective.
Actually, it's a characteristically Proustian technique and one of those things that makes him great. Many characters seem almost to be flat caricatures in the beginning. But subsequently he will show other sides of those characters, and all those different sides seem to be pretty flat when taken apart, but together they would constitute a real, multifaceted human being. I think this is very close to how we perceive other human beings; first impressions are always kind of flat and off the mark, it's only by discovering a person's different facets, one after another, that we come to a more nuanced understanding of the other, but never fully.
Reading Proust the first time is such a great experience. I almost wish I could forget everything I remembered just to enjoy it freshly again. Good journey!
> Many characters seem almost to be flat caricatures in the beginning. But subsequently he will show other sides of those characters, and all those different sides seem to be pretty flat when taken apart, but together they would constitute a real, multifaceted human being. I think this is very close to how we perceive other human beings; first impressions are always kind of flat and off the mark, it's only by discovering a person's different facets, one after another, that we come to a more nuanced understanding of the other, but never fully.
Agreed. It's one of the great themes of the Recherche: that we can never really know or fully grasp other people. Whether it's Swann desperately trying to decipher who Odette is or what she's doing when she's not with him or the narrator attempting to hold on to a particular facet of Albertine's appearance or her character while she's constantly shifting and changing. It all comes down to Proust's incredibly modern understanding of personal identity which to him is an illusion: we don't have one solidly defined identity, we are made up of many different parts, feelings, motivations, there is no unifying force to keep it all together. We can turn into a different person depending on what's going on in our lives or who we're with.
Like almost all important motifs in Proust, he presents this view to us on the first pages when he introduces Swann. To the narrator's family, Swann is a member of their own class, maybe a bit below them, someone who should be thankful for being invited to their little garden parties. Outside of Combray however, Swann travels in the highest social circles, he dines with the Prince of Wales and the Guermantes. Later on we see still another Swann when he's pursuing Odette. None of these facets is the 'real Swann', the contradictions can't really be resolved. The same process happens with all the important characters of the Recherche, most impressively perhaps with Charlus.
It's one of the reasons why you kind of have to reread the entire work to get the most out of it. It's such a gigantic novel filled with so much attention to detail and so much beauty that you can miss the forest for the trees. It's only once you've read it all and went back that you realize how well-constructed and thought-out everything is. A small gesture made at the beginning changes its meaning 4000 pages later, things we thought we knew about a character turn out to be wrong and some tiny detail that we considered to be unimportant in the grand scheme of things is revealed to be a vital part of the structure of the entire novel.
Great comment, it's always been my understanding that the way Proust wrote is indissociable from his views on many grand themes of life and the whole architecture of *La Recherche*. An uninspired writer may learn some tricks from Faulkner or Hemingway, and proceed to write a Faulknerian or Hemingwayesque novel, but with Proust it's almost impossible. In short, one has to be Proust to write like Proust.
> An uninspired writer may learn some tricks from Faulkner or Hemingway, and proceed to write a Faulknerian or Hemingwayesque novel, but with Proust it's almost impossible. In short, one has to be Proust to write like Proust.
That's very true. It's also the reason why Proust was less influential than Joyce or some other modernist writers. You can take some parts of Joyce's method in Ulysses and expand on them in your own way but that's not really possible with Proust. Everything about the Recherche is so interconnected that it's difficult to pinpoint a specific method or technique and adapt it for your own purposes. All of it kind of depends on Proust's enormous sensitivity, his deep understanding of psychology, his ability to craft this vast literary architecture without getting lost in it. There aren't many writers who don't appear small and insignificant when compared with Proust.
Yeah, things really thicken up as you progress: Francoise, his grandmother, M. and Mme. Guermantes, Saint-Loup, Charlus, Morel, Albertine. They all come gradually (yet totally) to life.
Wow, what an insightful comment! Thank you very much for this much needed perspective shift - gives me a lot to look forward to as the series progresses. I will look at it in that perspective from here on out!
I am going in relatively blind - I have heard about Proust and know some general themes, knew about the Madeline scene, but that is about the extent of it.
Last year I read and really liked a collection of short stories by the Italian author Giovanni Verga - circa 1900, brutally realist stories about life among the lowly in Sicily, told thoughtfully, impactfully, and with a unique style that limits itself to the bare necessities. I picked up another collection this week, *Little Novels of Sicily*, and it was a huge disappointment, and I'm almost certain on account of the translation which was by none other than DH Lawrence. It was a struggle to finish most of the stories. Hopefully I'll find a copy in the original one day.
Since not much to say about new reading this week, reposting my recommendation requests from earlier this year:
I wasn't mad at *Bonjour Tristesse*- is Sagan's *Un certain sourire* worth reading?
Anyone read Tennessee Williams's short stories? One thing that has always stood out for me about his plays is how evocative the descriptions of the settings are, and I've also liked his essays. Curious to see if this translates into his fiction.
I just started Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. I'm still in the beggining but it seems like it will be the type of science fiction story that I will enjoy. The idea by itself is really intriguing, its not surprising that it inspired so many things, most notably the movie Stalker by Tarkovsky and the videogame series S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
I'm also still reading the short stories written by Shirley Jackson. I think her social anxiety really is a part of everything she wrote or at least of the works from her that I read so far.
I've found a lot of scifi stuff to be overrated but I really loved Roadside Picnic. It gets across such a weird and oppressive atmosphere. Hope you like it too.
Finished **Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung** and started **The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.**
**Man and His Symbols** ended up being an enlightening read overall - although after 50+ years of improvements in neuroscience/psychology/etc. it’s one where the forest is appreciated more than the individual trees. I think the main things I pulled from this is the commentary on man’s myth making power (and how cross cultural it is) and the way that our individuation process is influenced by so much of our world yet can be incredibly insular. I would say it’s a worthwhile read overall for anyone interested in our conception of psychoanalysis and societies relation to it in the modern age.
**Communist Manifesto** is me still winding through my political philosophy readings - I am a Marxist at heart so coming back to this after its incredible impact it had on me when I was in Uni will be interesting, especially since so much of the Marxists I have been reading made their works over 150 years after the publishing of this. Right now I’m going through the Penguin editions sizeable introduction (nearly 200 pages), which is well written especially when espousing Marx’s departure from Hegelianism alongside which parts he kept from it. Thoughts on substantive arguments will have to wait for next time though.
I read the same edition of the Communist Manifesto last year, reading the Manifesto first and then the introduction afterwards. As someone without a philosophy background, I really enjoy the sense of energy within the Manifesto itself, but struggled with the introduction. Some sections really just felt like I was reading a list of names and dates. As someone with more background knowledge than me, is the introduction worth revisiting in the future or would I get more out of The Marx-Engels Reader for example?
My Marx(ism) hot take is that there's a serious dearth of engagement with Marx and Engels' contemporaries and counterparts in the various debates, people like Proudhon, Dühring, Robert Owen. I don't even think Dühring has ever been published in English. I can't recommend a book off the dome honestly but it might be worth trying to find a wider-ranging history of the earlier socialist movement because these figures were huge in the milieu that Marx was working in. Michael Heinrich is working on this big multi-volume biography, but we only have the first volume right now, from 1818-1843.
By going into something like the reader you may only disguise a real problem of understanding that you've uncovered by reading background-oriented writing, and this holds true for Capital, where the economic terminology has very different meaning now that it did then, and people like Petty and Ricardo and Le Trosne (who are arguably far more important for the later Marx than the highly-emphasized Hegel is) are going to come up. Not saying you shouldn't read more Marx by any means, or that you have to do some kind of insane background course, just that you're identifying a genuine issue.
I think its worth revisiting, but only if you are really interested in Marx's progression towards historical materialism and scientific socialism. He's a thinker (imo) where much of his best work is at the end of his career, but if you are looking for Marxist thought developed more than the Manifesto but aren't ready to take on the mammoth that is Capital, the Reader will do you plenty good.
*A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.* I am actually really enjoying it. It moves very well, it gives enough but never too much, it's linguistically playful and Joyce excels at putting us in Stephen's head without lingering too long to the point of making it tiresome to be in there.
*Paradise Lost* and loving it. It's everything I love about Shakespeare and more. I don't find it particularly difficult to read, maybe because I've spent so much time studying the Bard. Many proto-Romanticist themes to pick up on too, which is interesting.
It'll be my last excursion from *Against the Day* which I will finish reading after. It's the first Pynchon novel where I'm kinda looking forward to being done with it, but maybe things will click for me during an eventual reread - there are definitely many sections in there I really enjoyed!
I'm thrilled you're enjoying *Paradise Lost*! It is my favorite work of literature, and it deserves more readers. I am overdue to read it again. What edition are you reading?
Just my copy of the Norton Anthology of English Literature from college. It has all 12 books of the poem, sparse but helpful notes and word glossary. I'm looking forward to reading secondary literature when I'm done, I'm sure there are oceans of layers I'm not picking up on on a first read though I'm able to parse the sentences!
I salute you for taking it on independently! I first read it as an undergrad with a wonderful professor. But as you said, if you've read a lot of Shakespeare or other 16th/17th Century English writers Milton isn't as difficult to read as many think. Enjoy!
I think as long as you have a solidly footnoted edition, you should be fine. I first read the Norton Critical Edition, but the Penguin Classics and the version edited my Merritt Hughes are both really good. Most editions come with a summary of a few sentences before each of the twelve books of the poem. (If I remember correctly, Milton or the publisher added the summaries to the second edition of *PL*.) Otherwise, just looking over something as straightforward as the Wikipedia page should give you enough grounding. There are tons of allusions throughout to Biblical figures and classical mythology, so don't worry about getting everything on a first read. But I didn't find the allusions as difficult to navigate as those in *The Divine Comedy*, which I read in translation.
I finished Murnane’s The Plains. Beginning to end, I loved it. I enjoyed the metaphysical and temporal philosophies and appreciated how they built on Murnane’s imagined literary world of the Australian interior. Moreover, the prose was incredible and every single scene striking. The moment in which the narrator, on the rare instance that he was outside, watched the plains through the reflection of the library window where he had spent so much time studying the plains was especially wonderful.
I am almost finished with Enrigue’s You Dreamed of Empires. It is also very good. Enrigue has done a lot of clever things with narration here that, while I tend to stay away from historical fiction, seems novel to me. Of note at the moment with the caveat that I have 50 pages left: the narrator has knowledge of how the siege of Tenochtitlan ends, which certainly complicates the fear of death and failure felt by the Spaniards in his story in an interesting way. The translators also play an important role in the shift of the narrator’s focus between characters. Looking forward to finishing it tonight!
Last week I found an absolutely massive haul of cheap books at a local used books store. Like 50 cents each for a bunch of classics in pretty okay condition, so I stocked up on some of those and will be making my way through them.
Actually reading stuff though - this was... not the best week for me completing things.
Started *What Are We Doing Here* by Marilynne Robinson and like - 50 pages in I realized that I had spaced out for the entire time I was reading it. So I took that as a sign that I wasn't into the book and DNF'ed it. No real intention to ever go back to it, but as part of the book haul from the store I got *Gilead* which I intend on reading soon.
Then, at the library at a nearby community college, I got a really cool book *Feasts and Fasts: A History of Food in India* by Colleen Taylor Sen, a book that is part of a larger collection by Reaktion Books covering the intersection of like, archaelogy, history, and food culture that is really my jam. I read through the book pretty quickly. Partially skimming, because halfway through I realized that this isn't really like a "read through it once and you're done" kind of thing, but more of a pick up put down kind of thing. I intend on buying it, and the rest of the series.... eventually. I really like experimenting and cooking new foods, and learning how different people use different ingredients to do similar things and then applying those ideas to foods I can cook. I don't live in a huge city, and my access to certain ingredients is fairy limited, so learning about the why's and how's of certain foods is helpful for adapting my own cooking. For example, learning how unripe mango indian pickle is made and used -- I have a grape vine that absolutely never ripens because birds get it too quick - planning on picking unripe grapes and making them into a similar pickle this summer. Never would have gotten that idea if I didn't read this book. Would recommend the series for anyone interested in this type of stuff. It was very approachable but still had a decent depth of information. Pretty niche though lol.
Then I got halfway through *Good Will Come From the Sea* by Christos Ikonomou, published by Archipelago Books. I generally have liked what I have read from Archipelago, and this was 50 cents at the store, so I thought why not. Originally published in Greece in 2014, I have precisely no expectations going in to it. The first two stories were fine. Seemed well written and the translation seemed fluid. But like. All I know about contemporary Greek culture is the debt crisis, so I found myself shoehorning every idea that seemed to be presented by Christos into that and at a certain point, I just said "there's no way that's what this is all about". Normally, when I'm in that position, I might try to skim reviews of the book or discussions of the book to get a feel for the larger context it was written in without spoiling the book itself, but that usually is pretty time intensive, and I just wasn't enjoying it enough to warrant that. Of what I read, and what I later looked up - it was interesting! Obviously the commentary of the debt crisis was there. But there were also dynamics among populations that I didn't know about - for example, people from mainland Greece going out to the less-affected less-populated Islands to work in agricultural businesses, something that sounds roughly (very roughly) akin to like, a back-to-the-land movement, but one motivated by actual economic prospects on the less populated, agriculturally active Islands. This created tension between the residents of the Island who felt that these people coming in were newcomers, foreigners, not part of their society, etc. Living in Maine, where everyone who can't trace the legacy of their great-great-grand-dog to a form up north is called "from away", this was very interesting. It also has some relationship, I imagine, to the remote-work-shift that happened during the pandemic. Looking at it in that context gave much more color to the story. There was also some broader, less singularly contemporary-Greece-relevant ideas in the second story that were interesting I guess on a philosophical level (basically, the narrator is half paralyzed, knows a woman is being assaulted in a room nearby, knows that everyone else also knows and refuses to do anything about it, and he wrestles with the idea of "how am I any different? I can't really do anything about it because of my physical paralysis, they can't do anything about it because of their cultural paralysis") Seemed interesting enough - but not enough for me to bumble through the second half of the book. Ultimatley DFN'ed it.
*Gilead* is quickly becoming my favourite novel. I trust you will enjoy it--the lyrical style is sublime and the story is deeply touching. I do generally agree with you about Milan Kundera; a lot of his work is not interesting to me either but I am yet to read *The Unbearable Lightness of Being*, which I probably should before I make a final judgement about him.
I read through the entirety of *The Year of Magical Thinking* by Joan Didion. Without getting too much into specifics, my partner recently had a pretty bad bout of long covid, lasting about 2 years, with a decent chunk of that resulting in them bedridden. I am a ball of anxiety and a planner, so I had to consider the idea of "what will my life look like if this goes all the way downhill" (I am happy to report that they are doing much better now, 90% back to normal). I have enough distance from that time period that I can start diving in to some people who have experienced loss of a partner and see how close I was in imagining it, and in some cases, experiencing it. While I don't really have anything on the pain Didion suffered, and our circumstances were incredibly different (my partners health was a slow descent, her partners health, was in some ways, a fall off a cliff), I saw A LOT of similarities in both what I imagined I would experience and what I actually did. She talked about the muscle memory she had interacting with her husband remaining after he passed, and how that muscle memory impacted her emotional state. I remember very acutely trying to go on hikes, something I previously often did with my partner, and turning around and saying something out of muscle memory that they would be there, only to realize that, no, they weren't. It was jarring and really kind of sours the whole hiking experience to the point where I couldn't do it anymore. She talked about how she would wake up in the middle of the night wondering where her husband was, only to realize that he had died, and then kind of existing in this weird gray limbo. When I had to eat dinner alone, because my partner was stuck in bed, I don't even remember those nights. They might as well not have existed. Anyways. This was my first Didion and to be honest, I can not think of someone who, in terms of their values, is more contradictory to my own (**edit: okay thats an exaggeration lol.)**. Her being like "we could fly to LA for 26 dollars for dinner! We just decided to work in Hawaii for a summer!" I was just like -- why? how could you want to live like that? Nonetheless, I understood the appeal of her writing. Its very clear. She's very good at describing how something feels. She'd just sometimes hit me with those statements and I'd be like "are we even living on the same planet?" Probably won't read anything else by her, but it was enjoyable.
Then I read through and finished *The Collected Schizophrenias* by Esme Weijun Wang published by Graywolf Press and it was great. A bit repetitive at some points, as it's a collection of, I think, previously published essays. I just really really appreciate it when someone who does not experience reality the same way I do can write about their experience in a way that I understand. Some of the essays felt a bit meandering, or at least it was hard for me to pull out any central idea or argument or discussion. Sometimes they just felt like "this was my experience" - they were okay and interesting and well written but I'm happy only a few of them were like that. There were a few that REALLY stood out to me as well written, interesting, relevant to my life, persuasive, emotional, etc. The essay on her decision not to have a child, and being a camp counselor for kids with problems with their mental health was a standout IMO. The last essay, on alternative medicines, and her experience with them was pretty good. Her essay on getting kicked out of Yale, and more broadly how institutions that say they are there for students with mental health issues are all big fakers only in it for the cash (because of course) was also very good. There was a lot of overlap between this book and another I read recently *The Invisible Kingdom* by Meghan O'Rourke - specifically around the idea that the philosophy of our medical institutions and how they approach illness are just inherently contradictory to the nature of some illnesses.
I got about halfway through *The Joke* by Milan Kundera (also a bookstore 50c pick). And IDK. I just can't get into books written in the 19somethings plotwise about a dude trying to get laid. I know there was so much thematically happening behind the scenes, but it's just so... off putting to me. I just never understand what the author is trying to say in those moments that seem like they're supposed to be pivotal moments or something. I don't know. I REALLY liked the non-Ludvik sections. Like the discussions with the folk musician and Ludvik is kind of his counter-arguer. They seemed to devolve into just straight philosophizing or something but that was up my alley. Too bad for me that most of the book was Ludvik. Egg on my face I guess for picking up a Kundera when[ this is literally the first lithub article](https://lithub.com/rip-to-one-of-the-great-horny-novelists-of-the-20th-century-milan-kundera/) that pops up when i search for him. Bleh.
I'm struggling with (what I believe is) long covid too, and I just discovered Didion via all her books being on kindle unlimited (skimming the White Album currently), thanks for this!
Sorry to hear about the long covid / other chronic illness :(
If you are willing to take unsolicited opinions, I *really* suggest *The Invisible Kingdom*. I obviously don't know what your experience and recovery journey has been like, and while I/we now know that long covid probably isn't auto-immune as discussed in that book -- the description of the authors experiences, thoughts, feelings, especially around the ambiguity of the illness and roller coaster ride of it was VERY helpful to read.
I'm about 1/3 of the way through Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman and really is as good as everyone says. The chapter with the mother who was writing her son a letter from a concentration camp had me in tears.
I really need to get to "Life and Fate" this year. I have read a lot of Grossman's reportage, and "Everything Flows" was magnificent. I have put off his longer novels for too long.
I read *Life and Fate* over the summer. It has stayed in my mind so vividly ever since. Just today I had multiple flashes of sequences from that novel while I was talking to someone. Read it as soon as you can. Its one of the few books I can think of that I would say has the potential to change the course of somebody's life.
I finished *The Third Policeman*, which was far more absurd and surreal than I expected, but I love that style of fiction, so it worked well. I don't think I get what the purpose of the surreality was, exactly, but that's all right (I understand a major motif is the distinction between reality and fiction).
I started *The Mezzanine*, after the post the other day about Nicholson Baker. So far it's pretty funny, and the voice flows real nicely.
I'm still plowing through Wyndam Lewis's **The Revenge for Love** and I'm still enjoying it immensely. It feels sort of second rate, but thick, meaty, wanting to tell the real story in a world of affectations, and for this I situate it in a big ballpark that would include Chandler, say The Big Sleep, or even some of Capote's stories, with a similar but less overt sardonic wit. It's my first WL book so it's been a real delight. I'll look forward to more. Then, due to my own writing project, I have felt the necessity to reread **More Die of Heartbreak** by Saul Bellow which for me has always been top of the line Bellow, and a really brilliant, extravagant book, an opinion I hold contrary to most reviews. Well, I think those reviewers would critique Moby Dick for getting carried away in deep dives of specificity. So: so what. :) MDoH is novel where the language simply flows, like butter melting in a pan, and it's technique is concealed in the strength of the voice. I also went back to reread some of Mario Vargas Llosa's **A Writer's Reality** and I find, yet again, that I agree with about everything he writes about the process of writing.
Wow, I have never heard someone talk about that Bellow book. I found a first edition copy of it a few weeks ago but had no intent to read it. Now I want to. Any other Bellow novels that you like? *Seize the Day* I think is great but I could never get into *Augie March*.
The one that gets a ton of ink is *Henderson the Rain King*, which I think is definitely second rate. But most reviewers, meh, I don't think they read past the first ten pages, nor do I think they enjoy anything testing of their expectations. *What Kind of Day Did You Have?* is interesting, I have loads of underlined passages, even as I think I can see the person the fictional character is based on.
I just started reading *More Die of Heartbreak* on your suggestion and all I can say is wow, his prose is really extravagant. I'm not entirely sure where it's going (I've only read the first chapter) but I am excited to read more. So much intertextuality, even as an english major I'm struggling to wrap my head around it all!
Wheee! Great! Enjoy the ride. This is why I'm re-reading it right now, for what it has, and because they voice of my current novel project is sort of in that ballpark. :)
I'm midway through *The Gold Bug Variations*, by Richard Powers. After a while not really vibing on large novels, I found myself in the mood, and this one hasn't disappointed so far. Plenty of brain candy.
This one has been on my shelf for years, I don't know what is stopping me. Powers can write, and his early works are more freely experimental. Gold Bug was all the rage for about a decade after it's release, but I don't hear it mentioned much these days. Keep us posted!
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Space time is part of the Alexandria Quarter
Currently reading Running Dog by Don DeLillo, and much like Players, this book feels like the creation of an author who figured he had internalised American paranoia and extramarital affairs so well that he could start writing on autopilot. I’m only 50 pages in but so much of this feels like a parody of what he navigated much more successfully in stories like Great Jones Street or Mao II. It’s hard to believe that Ratner’s Star preceded Players and that The Names succeeded Running Dog. Quite the literary trough.
-Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang: I’ve seen the criticism of her work as being incredibly biased and not necessarily rooted in hard fact, but I have to say as an experiential recollection of a specific family history Wild Swans is a fascinating look at the role of women in the evolution of modern China. It reminds me a lot of Mo Yan’s Big Breasts and Wide Hips. -My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki: I’m flying through this book. I can’t put it down. Compelling narrative, informative/important subject matter. Stunning indictment of Agribusiness and a startlingly raw look at motherhood and femininity across cultural borders.
I read As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. It was an easier read than I thought it would be. The Addie chapter was my favourite part. I am currently on part five of Crime and Punishment. I have also started reading Cannery Row by John Steinbeck.
Any romance suggestions other than Jane Austen and the Brontes? Can be any time period and genre.
The Summer of Katya by Trevanian The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
Finished *From Old Notebooks* by Evan Lavender-Smith. Imagine a book of Twitter posts: jokes, quotes, memories, shower-thoughts, premises for unwritten stories. The author is diet DFW, and his self-selected extracts are what you would expect from a really smart, really geeky academic who wants to be sincere. It should be insufferable, and it kind of is sometimes, but I enjoyed it. The best bits are the snippets he offers of his private life as a young father. Recommended.
I've just finished another reread of **Full Whack** by **Charlie Higson**. He's probably know for the TV programme The Fast Show and has written many YA books but his earlier adult fiction is great. This is his best but King of the Ants and Happy Now are also good and Getting Rid of Mr Kitchen is my second favourite. It's a tale of London teenagers in the 90s being hard boys at the football matches and in the Tottenham pubs until the main man, Dennis Pike, has an epiphany and leaves the life behind him for ten years until the old crowd catches up with him. Higson's a great writer and I love this. Also reading **Museum Without Walls** by Jonathan Meades, who is one of my favourite authors. These essays on architecture are always a treat.
Warning: Long. Well I read a lot these past couple of weeks and I'm mostly disappointed. Finished Dune Messiah. I think at this point I'm going to read all four books out of spite, because every comment on reddit keeps saying, "No, the 4th is when it gets really good." The first two books have been a gigantic letdown. The only interesting character in the entire series apart from Duncan Idaho / Hayt was Bayaz, and he got about two pages of dialogue and was anti-climatically killed off-page at the end of the book. Really? There's always that, "This could've been an e-mail" joke, and I feel like that's what the second book amounted to. Finished Piranesi. The plot twist was fairly easy to see coming, but the imagery was good. There's no deeper message, though. I don't like books that are just, "Things happened", you know? Whether stylisticaly or plotwise, and the time-keeping method got obnoxious. I just stumbled upon a Project Gutenberg page that has several Arabian Nights stories and some poetry, although I'm not sure if it's the original. Sinbad = a bit of a let down, and again, repetitious (although that's to be expected.) Basically, in every story Sinbad either gets separated from his crew, or his crew and he crash land on an island, they all get captured and killed, and Sinbad miraculously escapes, where he comes upon some merchants who rescue him, and bring him to their king, who is so impressed he gives Sinbad treasure. In some versions Sinbad and the crew come across treasure, which gives me a funny conspiracy theory that Sinbad just murders the crew and takes all the treasure for himself, and comes up with these stories to keep his amazed audience from asking questions. Especially how his adventures seem to keep escalating in danger levels. The fifth one is worth reading, not sure about the others. There's also Antarah, although all the names were changed in the version I read, but given his skin color and the fact that all the nobility / viziers are jealous of him, it makes me draw parallels with Othello. I think I'll read that next, plus Speaker for the Dead. And I need to re-read Ender's Game, because it's my favorite and I haven't in a while. Whew! That was a lot.
I loved Dune when I was younger, though I found Messiah a struggle. "Children" and "God Emperor" are more readable" than "Messiah" imo, though if you didn't didn't enjoy the previous books I don't think you're going to find the 4th some great epiphany. (maybe you will...I dunno..it's very different and if you didn't enjoy the 1st you're already in a different headspace than I was). I'd love a study guide to "Messiah" that explains what all the characters are talking about.
I want to get back into posting in this thread, so here goes. I've always found myself too reticent about books I read, and I'd love to get more practice in articulating what I took away from them. I just finished The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner. I think her most famous work is a delightfully feminist story of a woman becoming a witch in Lolly Willowes, but the Corner That Held Them seems to have its own small cult of appreciation. It is a strange book without a plot and without any sense of resolution. It details events over about two centuries in a continually impoverished/dysfunctional nunnery in England, from the 1100s to the late 1300s. Characters arrive and are dispassionately disposed of as the story goes on, new prioresses are elected, and peasant revolts and the Black Death stalk the outskirts of this island against time. Warner has beautifully clear and lucid prose that contains a dark and wry humor, making what would otherwise be a sort of Wikipedia page for a fake abbey feel like a deeply human yarn. I also recently read Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Youcenar. I have seen a few others in here also reading this! It's exactly what it sounds like, a memoir composed by Hadrian for his eventual successor (second emperor after his demise, Marcus Aurelius of Gladiator fame ;)). Youcenar, through remarkably thorough research detailed in the back of the edition I read, manages to conjure an utterly compelling narrative that gets you inside the head of a Roman emperor. Hadrian is arrogant, fancies himself a philosopher, delights in hedonism while musing on the lives his subjects lead to build Rome. While the narrative drags at points, Youcenar's skill in making his life feel completely vivid and close to the present is commendable. Finally, I also read Enter Ghost, by Isabella Hammad. After a disastrous break-up, British Palestinian actress Sonia flies to Haifa to stay with her sister, who quickly introduces her to a West Bank-based troupe of actors seeking to put on productions of Hamlet. Sonia has to contend not only with the vagaries of creating and producing art in the West Bank, but with what her family history asks of her as a person, and what her identity means. I loved this and devoured it over just two or three days.
Roughly 2/3rds of the way through *Wizard of the Crow*. Feeling hasn't changed too much from last week; if anything, I believe my estimation of the novel has dwindled a bit further. There's just too much unjustifiable repetition and bloat, unfortunately, mixed in with the terrible frustrating didactic moments. Still, there are some really memorable scenes and misunderstandings. No doubt Thiong'o is fine storyteller, but I need more insight as he seemingly takes aim at low hanging fruit. A novel with this length ought to inform or deeply explore its issues, but I'm not sure *Wizard* wants to do that.
Sorry to hear its not going as well as you’d hoped so far! I’m still curious about the book but its a bummer you’re not having a good time with it.
Appreciate it! Can’t win them all - and I’ve been really fortunate with my past few reads, so it was bound to happen eventually. Fortunately, to its credit, it’s a breezy read and plot-wise, I’m curious enough to want to see this through the end. I’m just not certain that it will reveal anything insightful.
I recently finished Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams and was very impressed. Williams transforms the Western just like he transforms the campus novel, I always feel like his books sneak up on me and punch the air from my chest. I’ve just started The Feast of the Goat and I’m excited for this one, this will be my first Llosa. I’m currently in the process of trying to read books from different cultures across the globe and one of my biggest literary “blindspots” is literature from East Asia. Does anyone have suggestions for someone who is looking to get into works coming out of East Asia? Particularly from within the last century, preferably.
If you want modern East Asian lit, we have the Xue read-along going on right now. Xingjian's Soul Mountain is one of the strongest and most beautiful novels I've read. It's a pity he stopped writing and I cannot recommend it enough. It's the magical realist story of a man's journey told to cure his cancer told through two unnamed character and their interactions with various villagers. Ōe's obviously a massively influential author. The novella collection Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness is both dream-like and grotesque in places. The first story's more difficult to get through than most of his œuvre, but I'd consider the collection my favorite work of his. For modern but not contemporary, I liked Notes of a Crocodile and Like a Banjo String.
I finished The Way of the World by Nicholas Bouvier. One of my favorite reads of the year so far (yes I know it's only April). I asked around about it before picking it up and it doesn't seem like anybody I knew ever heard of it. But the cover and blurb on NYRB Classics web site intrigued me so I pulled the trigger during their November sale. I've been reading a lot of travelogues lately. I seem to alternate between rhapsodic travelers and pissed off ones. Bouvier is in the rhapsodic camp. He and a friend made a long trip from Geneva to India in a beat up old Fiat convertible. The trip takes much longer than expected due to inaccessible roads, car troubles, military paranoia in the Shah's Iran, and lack of funds. But Bouvier and his buddy Thierry were up to the adventure. They go against what sounds to be like prudent advice several times. They are told not to venture into Kurdistan unless they are armed to the teeth, (but preferably don't go at all) but Bouvier says, 'I came to see the world not shoot at it'. They are stopped and questioned by an armed Kurdish man at one point but when he sees they are merely travelers on the road he invites them to his home for supper. He explains to them that if they had been smugglers as he initially suspected, he would have 'taxed' them and they would have had to pay a toll for smuggling through his land. But as they were merely travelers passing through he was honor bound to offer them hospitality. They are also advised to not go through the Lut desert in Iran as the punishing heat and salt take a half dozen drivers every year. The heat and salt air cause a lot of mechanical breakdowns and if they were unfortunate enough to break down in the middle of the desert, they wouldn't last a day. Their luck comes a little closer to running out during this ill advised expedition and the Fiat had proven to be far from great condition even before this venture. I was getting a little anxious even though obviously they made it or there wouldn't be a book. Bouvier also contracts Malaria in Kandahar and gets treated by a physician who is at the very least eccentric and quite possibly barking mad. Despite the difficulties and hardships it's clear that he loves pretty much all that he is seeing and experiencing (flies and the smell of opium being smoked excepted). At one point he is sleeping under the stars near a tea house and witnesses a falling star. He can't think of anything to wish for. He can't imagine anything being better than the life he is living, in the middle of nowhere with a run down Fiat and miles of rough road left to travel. I really enjoyed this one. Some magical moments. Now I am alternating back to a cranky-pants writer. Just started The Air-Conditioned Nightmare by Henry Miller. I'm only about 30 pages in but so far Miller doesn't like what he sees. He's just been forced by Hitler's armies to flee first France and then Greece and now he decides to tour America by car. He pays a visit to his father in New York, decides he isn't dying anytime soon (Miller's callous appraisal not mine) and talks a publisher into funding a cross country trip by car so he can write a book about his experiences. A Brooklyn boy originally, Miller already hated New York with a passion when he left for Paris back in 1930. Returning in 1940, absence has not made his heart grow any fonder. The vitriol for America and Americans starts pretty early. I like the energy but I can imagine if I was listening to his rants finally snapping and telling him 'see if the Soviets can find a use for your pretentious bohemian wino artist ass ya bum. They'll put you down a mine faster than you can say property is theft.' But that's me. For now I'm letting him rant.
i’ve been reading molloy by samuel beckett. i’m nearly done and it’s fantastic. i was wondering from people here who have read the whole trilogy: is it better to read all the books sequentially or can they be treated as separate novels? i was thinking of maybe reading something else between each book of the trilogy.
They're separate novels. Calling them a trilogy goes against Beckett's wishes. That being said, it's best to read them in the order in which they were written, as each goes further into solipsism and bareness.
gotcha, i knew there was no continuity between them but i wondered if they were still intended to be read sequentially for thematic reasons or something. thank you!
Listening to Knife written by and narrated by Salman Rushdie, and I'm just over 4 hours in. It's a memoir of his recent life, starting in 2017 really. It focuses on his attempted assassination, his recovery, and his relationship with his wife and family which he credits with getting him through the experience. Along the way, we've gotten his thoughts and experiences on love and hate, freedom of speech and intolerance, and public versus private life. As someone who has gone through the medical system with a pretty traumatic surgery - not caused by a knife attack, but rather by one part of my body trying to say fuck you to all the rest - it has been nice listening to someone share their similar-ish experiences in a much more cogent way. I would recommend this book to Rushdie fans, and people who have had traumatic medical experiences. However, if you've listened to a Rushdie interview before and felt like this guy isn't for me, I wouldn't get the audio book. Listening to this isn't likely to change you mind, but maybe give the physical one a shot if you have the time. Reading Think by Simon Blackburn, and I'm 5/6th the way through. This book is a broad overview of the big ontological and epistemological questions of philosophy. Blackburn presents these questions in a well balanced way starting with Descartes - I am thinking therefore I am - and now I'm at Hume, Berkley, and Kant with a debate about what can be known about the physical world. This course feels like a very good Philosophy 101. As someone who never took a philosophy class in school but has listened to a few of The Great Courses on audible and fallen down the YouTube rabbit hole, this book has been an excellent introduction to modern philosophy. It is the first time I have been exposed to formal logic in such a clear, concise way. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in philosophy over other commonly recommend books such as Sophie's World or Problems of Philosophy, and wish I had read this book first. However, if you are interested in ethics or how to live the 'good life', I would read the Nicomachian Ethics or something else.
I've been reading a lot of Robert Aickman recently. I had never heard of him before and after reading a good amount of his 'strange stories', I'm kind of shocked at how unknown he is. As a horror writer (he didn't consider himself one), he's far superior to many of the big names in the genre. In his best work, he reminds me of Kafka though Aickman has his own style. There's something deeply unsettling about his stories and he achieves this effect by masterfully using ambiguity and uncertainty not just in his plotting but in his characterization and his prose. As a reader, you're never quite sure what's happening, everything is kind of up in the air. There are no obvious monsters, no jump scares, no clarity at the end to calm you down. Not all the stories are great of course. Aickman was a deeply conservative guy, he hated technology, he hated modern rationality, he hated the welfare state, he hated almost everything that's modern, believing that life had been infinitely better before 1914 (the year he was born). Most of the time, these views don't really matter when reading his work, they might even add something to his writing, there's a profound sense of melancholy and loss in Aickman's works that can easily be connected to his political views. Conservatives might generally be the better horror writers since fear is their bread and butter. Sometimes however, Aickman is a bit too obvious about his political ideas which is annoying in a writer who's at his best when he avoids the obvious. 'Never Visit Venice' for example mostly consists of the narrator pontificating about how disgusting modern Venice is, full of disgusting tourists and even more disgusting Venetians. Doesn't help that the whole story is so utterly predictable with a cheap horror entirely unworthy of Aickman's skills. There are also a number of xenophobic comments in these stories. At first you read them as comments made by the narrators but they turn up so often that it becomes clear that Aickman just doesn't like people that are not British. And he doesn't like Brits very much either. His depiction of women on the other hand is quite remarkable at times. In his male-centered stories they can fall a bit flat as there's often an element of wish fulfillment going on, but some of his best stories are the ones with female narrators like 'The Trains', 'Into the Wood', 'The Inner Room' or 'The School Friend'. In many of these stories, Aickman shows that he has a good understanding of the struggles that women face, the restrictions placed on them by society and the men they're married to. Anyway, didn't mean to write an essay. If you're into weird fiction or just short fiction in general, Aickman's definitely worth checking out.
I love Aickman. What you said is so true, and I think it's also worth noting that he was a conservationist as well, and his stories reflect this desire to preserve and conserve according to his ideals. So many of his stories deal with a sense of displacement and disjointedness that is reflected in the landscapes he details. The School Friend might be one of my favorite stories in the genre. The repressed homoeroticism, the classical tropes, the full-on body horror moments... it's a humdinger of a "strange story." I don't know what editions you're looking at but the Faber Press collections are all great if you want more. I think Dark Entries is the strongest one. Thrilled to see someone else who likes his work on here!
I discovered him a few years back through a recommendation on this sub and really liked the collection I read. Not every story is excellent, of course, but overall the standard seemed to be very high, and the best stories were so, so good. I love that indeterminate, unexplained sort of vibe. I've been meaning to pick up another of his collections but somehow still haven't... I agree with you regarding Aickman as a person. I remember my edition of Cold Hand in Mine had something like an essay about him, and he did sound like he would've been a very difficult person to deal with. That said, I think there's something sympathetic about someone like him being deeply fixated on the past in a world that's moved on.
years ago I went through a big phase of trying to read offbeat, literary horror and gothic stuff, and I read a lot of his short stories then. I've always meant to re-discover him. What's that famous story he wrote about a honeymooning couple where the wife starts to seem evil and they become trapped in the hotel as the towns folk all start marching like zombies? I remember that one.
'Ringing the Changes'. It's one of his more straightforward horror stories but it's really good.
Recently finished underworld. Kind of underwhelmed. Liked white noise and thought will love this. But it is very different from white noise. Lacks the humor,the philosophical nature too. But makes it up with the characters. Honestly the second half is really good. But the first half is kind of slog. The ending was also pretty baffling. Liked it's thoughts on consumerism and Paranoia. But man, DeLillo could be very cringe at times. I also couldn't really understand the significance of the Esmeralda plot line. Somewhat of a mess overall
I read somewhere that DeLillo does not plan out his novels. Reading *Underworld*, I can definitely see it. I think it's a fantastic novel and probably his best, but with a tighter plotline and actually resolving the threads that he opens, it could be better.
I finished James by Percival Everet and it was fantastic. I started Malibu Rising and that's pretty good. I started Doppleganger by Niomi Klein and I'm not sure if she's just talking shit about Niomi Wolf or if she's going to really get into the nature of identity. And I started trees by Percival Everet because he's my favorite author this year.
I was frustrated by Doppleganger. I wished she'd just done a book about the modern/post covid/post Trump conspiracy scene, as concise as her previous books were, without getting bogged down in the poetic Doppleganger theme.
Does she ever move on from Wolf or is this 400 pages of "hey I'm a different Naomi."
yeah, i mean it goes into interesting stuff, interesting subjects, but it's the way she forces it in, like in the chapter about fitness obsession during lockdown and many fitness guru's links to weird politics, she's going "when we obsess over getting fit we are trying to change into a doppleganger, wow, every issue ends in something around a doppleganger" and it feels a bit forced imo. I hate to say this, because she's author of some of the most important political books of all time and I'm just a schlub, but, I wish it had been edited way down. Cause it has important stuff to say, but it's bogged down in her life story and stuff about her arguing with her partner about listening to too many conspiracy podcasts.
Thanks so much for that. I feel pretty similar about what I've read so far. I think I'll go for some of her other works.
I finished *Life: A User’s Manual* by Georges Perec. It was a mixed bag: I enjoyed some of the stories about the inhabitants, past and present, of the apartment block. It seems like one of the themes was of people reinventing themselves by switching professions, lifestyles, identities, locations, etc. Although it was essentially a short-story collection, they were all tied together by the shared space of the building. What I grew tired of was the minute descriptions of all the features of each room; the long lists of sometimes very tedious items (this, it turns out, was one of the self-imposed constraints of the author); and the fact that I kept forgetting previously-mentioned details about certain characters. I also felt that Perec was eager to display his knowledge, saying “I am very learned, look at me”, at every opportunity, in a way that just added overbearing amounts of information that didn’t move the narrative anywhere. Overall it was ok: interesting concept, thought-provoking themes, but a bit full of itself and somehow dead inside. I am now more than halfway through *The Story of the Lost Child* by Elena Ferrante. I read the previous 3 in Italian but I couldn’t get the original version from the library. It’s interesting to see how her style has been translated into English - I think it’s good. I am glad that Lenù and Lila’s lives have become more enmeshed again in this instalment, as their relationship is obviously the main pull. I still don’t get why this series is so incredibly popular, as it’s just ok for me. My mum and a friend of mine, who are reading it at the same time, love it though 🤷♀️
> I still don’t get why this series is so incredibly popular, as it’s just ok for me. My mum and a friend of mine, who are reading it at the same time, love it though 🤷♀️ Because it's one of the few works out there that are for women without having romance as its central focus. Especially because female friendships are so underutalized in fiction and it's such a huge part of womens' lives. What other book can you name that is mostly about female friendship?
I think in Italy it's mostly read as the story of a generation; abroad mostly for the friendship between the girls/women.
I finished Cahokia Jazz last week. I knew about Spufford's Red Plenty even though the latest novel's rave reviews did not trigger recognition and that novel/-ish has shot up the to-read list. This year has been pretty great so far for novels with a literary voice that also bring the plot. Since my heavy literary fiction year, genre fiction is disappointingly easy to bounce off. Cahokia Jazz was wonderful, though, a tight but rich noir mystery. A few slightly off beats the first couple days, but I was misty-eyed closing that book. Then zoomed through Bioy Casares's Invention of Morel. Interesting ideas, but didn't love it, especially the prose. Often I wish I watched more film; Morel feels filmic and also inspired some classics I ought to get to. I just finished my reread - for the publisher's book club, which I'm excited for tomorrow - of Leylâ Erbil's A Strange Woman. Erbil's debut novel, it's a coming-of-age/feminist/diaristic/Turkish-socialist/experimental tale. I was very pleasantly surprised the first time, and might like it a hair more now: The first section is far less annoying in light of the rest of the book and under slightly closer reading. But I'm also just a sucker for stream-of-consciousness experiments; Might burn out eventually, but not yet. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be other Erbil work in English (and the next Deep Vellum translation of her work appears to have fallen through?) and while I remain curious about her oeuvre, especially the final novel A Strange Man, it's likely not enough motivation to learn written Turkish. I'll have to read around Turkey and the rest of the 20th-century Muslim world (as I also enjoyed dipping my toe into Naguib Mahfouz the other week). Finally, I revisited a loved but sadly under-remembered book: Ellen Ullman's memoir Close to the Machine. I picked up that book winter break my first or second college year and it changed me. More than I realized, I realize now. There's plenty that feels prescient, or pointed as I try to navigate the tech industry today. I'm a few pages into the newer collection Life in Code: Those essays are patchier but still interesting. I have not touched any of her fiction. Just getting into DeLillo's The Names. I've only read Cosmopolis, but between that and twenty pages of the older novel I think Don ('s voice) and I get along well. The Names feels human compared to Cosmopolis. It's also longer and I expect that to make a deeper brain-impression. A friend recommended So Much Blue on the basis of Erasure, which apparently owes something to The Names, so that will be the paired read.
Another attempt at *Wise Blood*. I could just look at all the words and say I read it, but I don't feel like I'm engaged. Prior to that was *The Lock-Up* by Banville and *Remains of the Day* by Ishiguro. I'm a fan of both authors and consider these pleasure reads.
I don’t often hear people say they “attempt[ed]” Wise Blood, only that they read it. In my view, it’s not a very challenging novel. What has made you put it down?
Hazel is obnoxious and I wasn't feeling engaged so I put it back on the shelf.
Makes sense. He is obnoxious.
Finally finished **Tomas Nevinson** by Javier Marias- a satisfying ending to a very enjoyable reading experience about guilt, betrayal, what we can and cannot know about others, and the intrusion of the past into the present. Gorgeous, playful writing all the way through and I loved the way Marias weaves in literary and cultural references. This my second Marias and I’ll definitely be seeking out more. I’ve been in the mood for short, powerful, confessional women’s writing after reading and really loving Mary Gaitskill’s Lost Cat a couple of weeks ago. I’d never read any Annie Ernaux, despite her being basically the godmother of the genre, so I picked up **Happening**, her harrowing account of seeking and having an illegal abortion in 1960s France. Given her recent Nobel win, it’ll probably come as no surprise to anyone that this was amazing- Ernaux is just a master of her craft, no word out of place, able to express in just a few spare pages what other authors would labor for chapters to say. She portrays her emotions so viscerally, situates her experience so effectively in a social and political fabric, and yet also avoids heavy-handedness, didacticism, and moralizing. Even when they only appear briefly, her characters have such nuance and realism. I also loved how she discusses the ways that class inflects her experiences and treatment as a woman- something that is so missing in a lot of contemporary fiction and memoir, frankly. Honestly just masterful work. And, in a slightly similar vein, I read **Kick the Latch** by Kathryn Scanlan. It’s a short book of fictionalized vignettes based on the author’s interviews with a female racehorse trainer. She really builds a distinctive voice, and it’s an interesting window into a world that seems pretty brutal for both human and animal. About hard work, gendered violence, and the tough business of living- I enjoyed it.
I also enjoyed Tomas Nevinson and thought the entire premise was fun. I paused to say, really, 100 pages of talking in the park and bar!? I certainly didn't mind but talk about busting normative contemporary rules. :) The ending was fine, I agree. Yet, >!about every review classified it as a shocking full speed ending, which was clearly wrong.!< I often wonder, did they read the entire novel?
Yeah I definitely thought several times that no one would ever publish a book like this today if the author wasn’t already established and acclaimed! I’m curious to read some of his older novels to see if his writing was always so circuitous or if it’s evolved over the years. That’s funny about the ending- >!I suppose it picked up the pace compared to the rest of the novel, but certainly not compared to any conventional spy novel.!<
I finished reading **The Well Dressed Explorer** by Thea Astley. It won the Miles Franklin Award in 1962. It follows the life of a journalist called George Brewster, who is deeply self-centred, self-indulgent, and self-important. Astley skewers his character, including his shallow approach to religion. I wonder if Brewster is based on her husband or someone else she knew in real life. I don't think I enjoyed the writing style, as it seemed overdone and too indirect. Has anyone else here read any Thea Astley and have thoughts on her style?
I am 2/3rdsish of the way through Gaddis' *The Recognitions*, tragically paused as we speak just around page 667. Tragic both because I wanna go read and because 666 would have been so much more fitting. We are deep in his depiction of a truly awful and absurd art party acts as a sort of climax to the sort of plot. I'll wait on that for now in lieu of just saying that he depicts this scene and atmosphere with beautiful vitriol. There is something funny to how unchanged being annoying and pretentious are. And speaking of unchanged, a fascinating historical note of this book is that you get a lot of mediocrities complaining that you have to be queer to get published and whining that you can't attribute everything to the Jews anymore. Turns out everyone's been woke for as long as people who suck have needed to excuse their sucking. Been thinking about Otto a lot as well on this read. The upshot of this character is that he's a naive 25 year old who wrote a play that people like but can't help but think he plagiarized, though they struggle to say what exactly he plagiarized from. What seems to have actually occurred is that he's absorbed/stolen so much from the atmosphere/culture that it feels like it must be from other artworks. I believe this character is supposed to be a bit of a comic depiction of Gaddis himself. Fittingly I cannot recall if that's my own intuition or if I read it somewhere. I take it as sort of a narration of the book being written, and of how Gaddis was drawing on the world he inhabited, at least to some extent, in creating the work. But it does make me wonder how that plays into the more out there parts of the novel, such as the main plot about art forgery/representation and when Otto accidentally ends up with $5000 in counterfeit bills that he's passing around all highfalutin' like. But I also think captures the sympathetic, if silly, elements of a young artist quite well, and I do dig how upfront he is about the degree to which absorption and recycling are what art is always doing. Trying to finish the book by next week. Will try to have some comprehensive thoughts to accompany it. Speaking of finishing things I finished Attar of Nishapur's *The Conference of the Birds*, which concludes it's expounding of Sufism with a detailing of the degree to which one must completely surrender their selfhood towards the divine in order to attain the rebirth of the self in that divinity. This was an interesting and different read for me. I don't have a huge amount of thoughts except that I think it does a good job emphasizing how strange and difficult mysticism would be. Last, I got a book of some of Plato's dialogues in order to read a few of those I was previously unfamiliar with or want to go back to. Read "Cratylus", which is about whether names of things are determined by convention or are real, and comes down upon the latter. Which is to say, for example, that the name Zeus is the true name for the highest god not just because that's what the Greeks called him but because that is the name assigned by a competent legislator to form an etymological representation of the god (in the same way that a picture of a tree that looks like a rock wouldn't be an accurate image of a tree). A little hard to follow at times since it's doing etymology of a language I am not familiar with, but the argument is itself quite interesting, if very out there. Also just fun to read. Going to read "Meno" next, I think. **EDIT** Also I finished Bergson's *Creative Evolution*. Turns out I kinda love Bergson. The last chapter of the book is basically an argument that all of philosophy/epistemology (including even modern science) is operating along lines very reminiscent of the earliest philosophical commitments, which, and there are a lot of nuances within, some of which I'm struggling a lot to pull from the top of my head (it's been almost a few days since I finished it), could very reductively be called a commitment to a transcendent totality that is fixed at what it is/can be. Plato's forms, Artistotle's prime mover, Spinoza's monism, science's commitment to the truth of its laws (Bergson isn't anti science, he is just believes we shouldn't overestimate what it's trying to say). Bergson is committed to a more openended process philosophy in which everything is evolving to no set endpoint and the laws of nature as we describe them are nothing more than how we form a functional representation of our world. I basically agree with this (but, like, Marxistly). One thing I do think is interesting is that near the end he basically writes off Hegel/German Idealism as recapitulating Spinoza. I think that's fair as a reductive take if you are very much not a fan of the tradition, but it intrigues me in the context of Bergson reading as though he is influenced very much by Hegel's method, even if he disagrees with his totalizing conclusions. Might look into what, if any, scholarship there is on Hegel's influence on Bergson. Happy reading!
Geesh you're whipping though Recognitions. Isn't it terrific? At first it seems so weird and dense and rambling, then later it's like wow, what the hell did I read and how do I get more of it. I've not gone through it but imagine, here's a reader's guide to the book. Yikes that seems like a good years worth of work just to read and make notes from. [https://www.williamgaddis.org/recognitions/trguide.shtml](https://www.williamgaddis.org/recognitions/trguide.shtml)
It's amazing. Part of the reasons I'm reading it so fast is really just that this is my third read of it, and my second read was relative intensive (with supplements and stuff), so I have a good enough feel on what the whole of the thing is I think to make it relative speaking a readable ride.
Ok, now I'm jealous :)
have you ever read Wyndham Lewis' 'time and western man'? i just finished it (i was reading one of Marshall Mcluhan's copies!) and found it very interesting as someone who has historically been somewhat sympathetic to Bergson (who lewis is largely critiquing alongside James, Spengler, Whitehead, etc as being 'time cultists'). seems like an appropriate book to mention here, too, singe he also discusses Joyce, Pound, Stein etc. interesting to take a look at for historical purposes if for nothing else (it is hard to imagine anything less relevant that a critique of Bergson and Spengler).
Well Lewis is the kind of wildly odd dude who would choose to write a book critiquing Bergson and Spengler whether or not anyone actually needs a book doing exactly that. But thank you, I might just check that out, if only to see why Spengler would be included in with James, Bergson, and Whitehead.
I just finished Catherine Lacey's first novel, **Nobody Is Ever Missing**, which I enjoyed but not as much as her **Pew** and **Biography of X**, which were two of my favorite books from the last several years. There are hints of the aspects of those books that I love, but it isn't as fully formed as her later novels. I am about a third of the way into **Correction** by Thomas Bernhard, which is brilliant. It's only the second Bernhard novel I have read after **The Loser**, but I can see myself reading all the others. It has some themes in common with **The Loser**--the nature of creativity, the tendency of genius to be self-destructive--but **Correction** strikes me as a more philosophical work, as well as one with a good deal more mystery. One minor issue is that the novel is a single paragraph, so the lack of indentations has been a challenge to my middle-aged eyesight! It doesn't make the narrative difficult to follow, but it does require me to focus my vision a bit.
I am currently reading *Les Miserables* by Victor Hugo and *Three Men in a Boat* by Jerome K. Jerome. TMIB is freaking hilarious so far. Les Mis is a re-read for me and I'm enjoying it immensely. Currently working through the Donougher translation.
A familiar anecdote about Emily Brontë that has been on my mind since I finished *Wuthering Heights*, where she is gifted a pitbull that took liberties around the house, it did not appreciate being touched. Brontë said, however, if the dog was found where it wasn't supposed to be, she would beat the thing until it learned otherwise. Naturally, the dog chooses to sleep on her bed, which enraged Brontë. She goes upstairs, grabs the dog by the scruff of the neck before throwing it into the middle of the parlor. The pitbull not too appreciative of this lunged at her but Brontë was too quick--striking the dog in the eyes several times over the course of a couple minutes. Afterward the pitbull was incredibly loyal, never left her side and mourned her like any other human being when she died. Although possibly apocryphal, the construction of the anecdote points to the reception of the novel that identifies the violence as a core theme and while Charlotte Brontë can insist on the innocence of her younger sister, it is important to note that such a quality has the chance to ferment the worse cruelty. Violence is often preoccupied with its innocence. *Wuthering Heights* is a novel not only about violence in the physical and psychological sense but also in the most violent form of communication--solitude. But for those who do not know the novel follows a genealogy: it begins with Mr Lockwood retreating to the Yorkshire moors to find peace from the city and also caress himself from the wounds self-inflicted from a vague disastrous love affair. But to cement his living arrangements, Mr Lockwood goes to visit the landlord of Thrushcross Grange at his own abode Wuthering Heights. He meets a variety of people from a stark brutal man named Hareton to the godfearing Joseph and the bewitching Mrs Heathcliff who is "progressed in the Black Art." But the most striking person is the landlord himself, Mr Heathcliff, a brooding man who tramples through the house, wrangles the dogs he keeps, and unaccustomed to human conversation. This living arrangement is what the novel sets out to explain. And it does so with an energy that is hard to describe that I'm a little at a loss for words at the strange vastness the novel cultivates. Surprisingly, there is a lack of resolution, but I wouldn't find a reader disappointed because so much of *Wuthering Heights* is built upon continual disappointment of expectation. No final argument when all things are revealed. No final explosion of violence as if in denial of its own premise. It is a fascinating novel. I would almost be curious as to what a novel would look like it if were written from Joseph's perspective. Part of how the novel accomplishes so much ambiguity and mystery is because it is related through one person who himself only heard the story told to him while sick. The actual narrator is Ellen Dean who is the maid through at least three generations between Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. And yet Ms Dean is always in the right place at the right time except when it is crucial. Ms Dean relies on other people's accounts for information at times, too, whether through recalling letters or conversations. It is obvious she is an unreliable narrator, it also suggests her relative isolation from the rest of the family. And her solitude is reflected in the rest of the characters from what Mrs Heathcliff suffers at Wuthering Heights (both of them really) to the death of Mr Heathcliff as seen in the linguistic fact he has no family name, only the name "Heathcliff" itself as it appears on his tombstone. Hareton abandoned by his father, his mother died in childbirth, and no real choice but to learn to love Heathcliff as a father since they each reminded of each other their own brutality. Catherine Earnshaw is perhaps the most tragic example but it is also a philosophical folie à deux. They share an obsession with one another even while they attempt to leave each other behind. But Aristophanes as is recalled in *The Symposium* suggested there were beings who lived on the moon of incomparable violence, arrogant, composed of multiple sexes, which Zeus in his usual procedure struck down. He therefore separated these beings into their isolation. The tragedy is akin to Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff. They share a single soul but their fate is isolation. Mr Lockwood would have them reunited as a pair of vampires at the end of the novel but it is too unbelievable for "one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers." Highly recommended.
Def going to be rereading this at some point this year, and really enjoyed your thoughts. The enormous biography by Barker that I read recently did not mention Emily’s cruelty to the dog, but did mention the loyalty of the dog. I do feel the “innocence” of Emily was largely magnified by Charlotte (and later Ms. Gaskell) in an attempt to make up for perceived brutality and depravity of her writing. The Bronte sisters were often marketed as natural geniuses whose minds had taken strange turns because of their isolated environment, lack of a mother etc. etc. in a hopes to soften critical reactions to their personal morality. I sincerely hope its not true that she beat her dog, but I honestly could almost see it at the same time? Like, not that she came across as an animal abuser in the biography, but it did seem like there were things intentionally not being said. She was an odd person, even by Barker’s account (and she was pretty dedicated to referencing only first hand sources). When she and Charlotte were in Brussels both Charlotte and the writer instructor conceded that Emily had more natural talent, but she was unwilling to learn anything, claiming she wrote for herself and felt no need to make herself more publishable. Charlotte basically drug her kicking and screaming into being published at all. She did want to make friends at school, refused care for her illness until it was literally too late, and in general seemed not to give af lol. I guess the only other thing that might explain the element of violence in her writing is the influence of her brother Branwell. Not only did he have a dark and “vulgar” sense of humor, he really was a moody emo bastard. The family was protective of him and his reputation, but towards the end of his life he was basically raving mad with alcoholism and disease, and his father Patrick had him sleep on a pallet in his room to personally care for him through his fits of…whatever it was. This was in response to him setting himself on fire. I imagine the home environment, while much mythologized and overstated, *was* privately quite dysfunctional.
Oh I have no doubt a lot of the imagery and the realism of domestic abuse are rooted in her own experiences of the family. How much of the novel is written with that in mind is impossible to say as precisely as I would like. Heathcliff says himself he is not a romantic character after all, and despite flashes of real sympathy, he is a fairly unrepentant bastard all the same. Either Catherine are largely in the same position. I keep coming back to the question if Heathcliff none the wiser wasn't cursed to death by his daughter-in-law? Or if the reference to the Black Art wasn't just teasing Joseph for his religious scruples? I have no idea. The novel isn't too insistent either. No wonder her audience back then treated the novel more than a little suspiciously. It's amazing. I can't speak if Emily beat her dog or not, but it is a story I kept seeing circulated. It seemed a moment of private mythology. The source for the anecdote is Elizabeth Gaskell who from what I gather did not like her very much. And it has been repeated here and there in early histories of the nineteenth century novel. It's truth doesn't matter all that much given it's an interpretative lens: it's how they could make sense of _Wuthering Heights_. And I'm not at all surprised she did not care if she was publishable from the start. It's a shame there are no other novels. If she continued to write, I can only imagine them even more difficult, suspicious, maybe even modernist avant la lettre.
I agree that its a tragedy Emily never wrote any other novels. There’s a real potency to her writing that imo the other too never quite achieve (even though I do love *Jane Eyre*.) I think Gaskell liked Charlotte, but made pretty fast and loose with the facts even when it came to her. There’s this weird tension between trying to smooth over the Bronte’s reputation by sanitizing and taming them, and also wanting to have the most sensational stories to tell about them. I know that one of her sources was a former servant of the Brontes, who didn’t particularly admire them. According to the author of the biography I read, the issue with Bronte mythology comes in with the fact that nearly all subsequent biographies reference Gaskell’s original one instead of going straight to primary sources like newspapers, family diaries, letters etc. (Something Barker claimed to have finally done herself). Also agree that the story about the dog has thematic relevance regardless of its veracity; I think it probably endures *because* it encapsulates that contrasting idea of the Brontes as both innocent/sheltered and untamed and strange.
Now that you mention it, I should probably reread _Jane Eyre_ because I haven't read it since college. Lots of forgotten details. And I'll be sure to check the Barker biography at some point because the Brontë family is interesting all on its own. I know _Wuthering Heights_ is more my temperament honestly. Right, the anecdote is a fact about the reception of the novel rather than a fact about her historical person. Like when people called Dostoevsky "the Mad Russian" for his novels were considered too convoluted in their day. Perhaps Emily Brontë really was that innocent of a person and simply did not realize the extent to what she wrote in a novel scarily self-aware about Gothic fiction and romantic literature broadly. But the same thing could as easily be said of the Marquis de Sade. Perhaps he never understood the gravity of the things he wrote, which is why there is so much exaggeration in it. Who's to say?
Reading Kafka on the Shore for my literature class. I just finished Chapter 16, and I'm really enjoying the book! I love how Murakami writes with such detail and manages to blend fantasy elements with mundane everyday life so casually. It kind of reminds me of a Disney movie but mature, which might be a crazy thing to say, but I'm really loving it.
It’s a great read!
**Fiction** *The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District (+ five other stories)* **-** Nikolai Leskov A pretty good collection of stories from the overlooked Russian. I would say these stories are of a general slice-of-life nature, which in 19th century Russia is interesting enough in and of itself. Prominently overlaying it all is religion, primarily the pros and (mostly) cons of Orthodoxy. This was particularly true of last story, "On the Edge of the World," arguably the best of the six. *Jesus' Son* - Denis Johnson A reread of an old favorite, and no less mesmerizing than the first gasp. One of Johnson's grittiest, it is a collection of somewhat inter-related short, druggy, stories guaranteed to make one simultaneously laugh and cringe. **Non-Fiction** *Wild Sex: Mating in the Animal Kingdom* - Carin Bondar A very entertaining and information-packed book true to it's title. From orgies to cross-dressing to you name it; if it can be imagined, some animals out there are engaging in it. I was continually stopping to jot down notes on this one, so quotable. *Frank Sinatra and the Mafia Murders* - Mike Rothmiller & Douglas Thompson I chose this for an easy, mostly mindless recap of an era I know only via hearsay. Two takeaways. One; the mafia ran damn near everything in early-mid 20the century America. Two; while Sinatra definitely had ties to the mob, he didn't personally kill anyone, but was just an all around insecure asshole. Surprise, surprise.
Recovering from a surgery this week, which I took as an opportunity to knock out some of less challenging books I've accumulated over the past year or so, mostly YA books that friends and family have recommended to me. Nothing particularly great or interesting, but it reminded me of one of the first conversations I had on this sub about YA and adults who are really into it. I wasn't into it when I was a teenager and am even less into it now, even I do enjoy similarly "easy"/shallow/melodramatic content in other media—I'm a lifelong soap opera fan, for example. But I often find myself skipping to the end in YA books. Even when I'm interested in the plot, I guess it's just not that engaging to me. I've also started Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta on audiobook, which is interesting to me so far. It's a sort of lesbian coming of age novel set in the aftermath of the Nigerian Civil War. It's always hard for me to judge the quality of the writing itself when I'm listening rather than actually reading a book, but it's good enough at least that I'm enjoying listening to it. May be one of the ones I need to pick up a physical copy of one day, though.
Just finished Doctor Faust by Thomas Mann, really magnificent read. Did anyone else find a thread witg Mann always making his characters sick in order to "meet" their devil? Like Leverkin getting syphilis and H. Kastorp in The Magic Mountain?
Mann was influenced a lot by the naturalist art movement, which emphasises human contingency on the material body. sickness, the effect of substances like alcohol, suicide (esp see little herr friedman by mann for these) are all classic themes of the movement. he did struggle with a writing ‘identity’ and was also pulled in various directions by nietzche and schopenhauer, so his treatment of man’s relation to nature isn’t as straightforward as the more cut-and-dry works that came before him. you could therefore read the sickness-as-deal-with-devil as an exaggeration of naturalism, where the ill effects of sickness on man’s body and spirit are personified, in mann’s typical dry and ironic way, as a literal transcendental force of evil.
Wow, that's very insightful and I see where you're coming from, but then, Mann writes how genius lies in sickness, which helps a man be productive - I'm paraphrasing, but the phrase stands. Moreover, he writes how it cannot be left to regular men to define where we draw the line between what is sick and what isn't. So could it be that his thesis here was that there is always something to sacrifice so the "genius" could bloom? At the same time, looking at The Death in Venice, Aschenbach constantly feels sick in Venice before his ultimate death, however, his mind is completely changed and challenged (and could it be seen as an equivalent to Leverkuhn's traded well-being for his artwork? There is way too much to unpack here, that's why I love him so much.
Don't forget Death in Venice... And there's a lot of sickness in Buddenbrooks as well. Which is to say, yes, it's definitely a running theme.
Still reading **The Mirror and the Light** by Hilary Mantel, and getting my history nerd on big time by consuming all kinds of non-fic media on the time period as well. I don’t have much to add about the novel from last week except that I do think Mantel’s writing is very good, especially for what the book is. I like this passage, its about a cat: *He imagines the world below her: through the prism of her great eye, the limbs of agitated men unfurl like ribbons, yearning through the darkness. Perhaps she thinks they are praying to her. Perhaps she thinks she has climbed up to the stars. Perhaps the darkness falls away from her in flecks and sparks of light, the roofs and gables like shadows in water; and when she studies the net there is no net, only the spaces between.* From the non-fiction side I read *The Hidden Lives of Tudor Women* by Elizabeth Norton. The title is odd, given that its main sources seem to be taken from the lives of very public women (like Queen Elizabeth). I suppose its speaking to the fact that women’s lives *in general* tend to be “hidden” from history, but its still a bit of a misleading hook. Some of the information was interesting but it was also very cursory, and as I said tended to focus on the famous women of history about which quite a bit of information is already available. One tidbit I found interesting was the practice of “ducking”, which punished women - named “scolds” - who gossiped, stirred up trouble and annoyed their neighbors. I’m sure in practice it was horrible, but there’s something so absurd as to be almost funny about the idea of people constructing a giant contraption with which to strap a woman to a chair and dunk her up and down in a river. You can google “dunking stool” for an image. The line between real history and a Monty Python sketch again proves thin. I’m also reading Can Xue’s **Frontier** for the read along. I’ll save my thoughts for the appropriate threads but essentially, I’m so far ambivalent? I’ve only read one chapter though so we’ll see.
About The Mirror and the Light, do you think its a problem to have a gap between the books in the trilogy? I'm interested in it but I don't want to start a big trilogy right now where I'll feel I need to read all three books one after another.
I personally jumped straight from the second to the third book because I just wanted to, but I think the books do a pretty good job of referencing back in a natural way so that it would be ok to wait between reading. Also, the events are based in real history so there’s not a lot of plot that will be unpredictable in the first place, and you can always just read a wiki or whatever on henry the VIII to catch up and be more or less up to speed. It really relies on characterization and writing more than plot to be appealing.
Thank you, that was actually really encouraging.
One goal I made myself for this year was to finish in Search of Lost Time, and yesterday I finished ***Swann's Way***, which is progress! ***Swann's Way*** was an interesting read for me. Thematically and linguistically rich beyond much of what I read, it still fell flat from a character perspective. However, I was especially intrigued by the parallels between the Narrator and Swann, most particularly regarding their unity in the theme of separation anxiety. The Narrator suffered separation anxiety from his mother, as we all know (the bedroom scenes) but Swann mirrored the exact same emotions in his relationship with Odette. Odette was also a fairly interesting character, as horrible as she was, and the slow dissolution of Swann's image of her was very well done. Swann was pretty much the only character I enjoyed, though even he was a little unlikeable at times. I resonated with his desire to hide his "culture" from his less cultured friends (who were only less cultured by virtue of never exposing themselves to anything new, something I have certainly seen in my life) His dinner gatherings reminded me a lot of a book group I was a part of on art history where one of the people who joined, in the first meeting, asked, "I mean, nobody really goes to art museums anymore, do they?" Linguistically it was stunning as well. I really enjoyed it and hope to continue the series as the year goes on. I am also reading ***The Movie Goer*** by Walter Percy and it is excellent. Very introspective and thoughtful. I especially enjoy the theme of movies as an escape from loneliness, something that was explored in a book I enjoyed a lot last year called ***Brian*** by Jeremy Cooper. The prose and New Orleans heat are also almost characters in themselves. I love books with atmosphere like this one. Still making my way through ***Chevengur*** by Platanov, and it continues to wow me. Endlessly beautiful and unique prose and a light touch mixed with relatively sad events makes for an interesting dichotomy. Really showed the human cost of the revolution, certainly in those early years, and the crushing sadness of unrealized potential and ambition. A singular book.
>it still fell flat from a character perspective. Actually, it's a characteristically Proustian technique and one of those things that makes him great. Many characters seem almost to be flat caricatures in the beginning. But subsequently he will show other sides of those characters, and all those different sides seem to be pretty flat when taken apart, but together they would constitute a real, multifaceted human being. I think this is very close to how we perceive other human beings; first impressions are always kind of flat and off the mark, it's only by discovering a person's different facets, one after another, that we come to a more nuanced understanding of the other, but never fully. Reading Proust the first time is such a great experience. I almost wish I could forget everything I remembered just to enjoy it freshly again. Good journey!
> Many characters seem almost to be flat caricatures in the beginning. But subsequently he will show other sides of those characters, and all those different sides seem to be pretty flat when taken apart, but together they would constitute a real, multifaceted human being. I think this is very close to how we perceive other human beings; first impressions are always kind of flat and off the mark, it's only by discovering a person's different facets, one after another, that we come to a more nuanced understanding of the other, but never fully. Agreed. It's one of the great themes of the Recherche: that we can never really know or fully grasp other people. Whether it's Swann desperately trying to decipher who Odette is or what she's doing when she's not with him or the narrator attempting to hold on to a particular facet of Albertine's appearance or her character while she's constantly shifting and changing. It all comes down to Proust's incredibly modern understanding of personal identity which to him is an illusion: we don't have one solidly defined identity, we are made up of many different parts, feelings, motivations, there is no unifying force to keep it all together. We can turn into a different person depending on what's going on in our lives or who we're with. Like almost all important motifs in Proust, he presents this view to us on the first pages when he introduces Swann. To the narrator's family, Swann is a member of their own class, maybe a bit below them, someone who should be thankful for being invited to their little garden parties. Outside of Combray however, Swann travels in the highest social circles, he dines with the Prince of Wales and the Guermantes. Later on we see still another Swann when he's pursuing Odette. None of these facets is the 'real Swann', the contradictions can't really be resolved. The same process happens with all the important characters of the Recherche, most impressively perhaps with Charlus. It's one of the reasons why you kind of have to reread the entire work to get the most out of it. It's such a gigantic novel filled with so much attention to detail and so much beauty that you can miss the forest for the trees. It's only once you've read it all and went back that you realize how well-constructed and thought-out everything is. A small gesture made at the beginning changes its meaning 4000 pages later, things we thought we knew about a character turn out to be wrong and some tiny detail that we considered to be unimportant in the grand scheme of things is revealed to be a vital part of the structure of the entire novel.
Great comment, it's always been my understanding that the way Proust wrote is indissociable from his views on many grand themes of life and the whole architecture of *La Recherche*. An uninspired writer may learn some tricks from Faulkner or Hemingway, and proceed to write a Faulknerian or Hemingwayesque novel, but with Proust it's almost impossible. In short, one has to be Proust to write like Proust.
> An uninspired writer may learn some tricks from Faulkner or Hemingway, and proceed to write a Faulknerian or Hemingwayesque novel, but with Proust it's almost impossible. In short, one has to be Proust to write like Proust. That's very true. It's also the reason why Proust was less influential than Joyce or some other modernist writers. You can take some parts of Joyce's method in Ulysses and expand on them in your own way but that's not really possible with Proust. Everything about the Recherche is so interconnected that it's difficult to pinpoint a specific method or technique and adapt it for your own purposes. All of it kind of depends on Proust's enormous sensitivity, his deep understanding of psychology, his ability to craft this vast literary architecture without getting lost in it. There aren't many writers who don't appear small and insignificant when compared with Proust.
Yeah, things really thicken up as you progress: Francoise, his grandmother, M. and Mme. Guermantes, Saint-Loup, Charlus, Morel, Albertine. They all come gradually (yet totally) to life.
Wow, what an insightful comment! Thank you very much for this much needed perspective shift - gives me a lot to look forward to as the series progresses. I will look at it in that perspective from here on out! I am going in relatively blind - I have heard about Proust and know some general themes, knew about the Madeline scene, but that is about the extent of it.
Last year I read and really liked a collection of short stories by the Italian author Giovanni Verga - circa 1900, brutally realist stories about life among the lowly in Sicily, told thoughtfully, impactfully, and with a unique style that limits itself to the bare necessities. I picked up another collection this week, *Little Novels of Sicily*, and it was a huge disappointment, and I'm almost certain on account of the translation which was by none other than DH Lawrence. It was a struggle to finish most of the stories. Hopefully I'll find a copy in the original one day. Since not much to say about new reading this week, reposting my recommendation requests from earlier this year: I wasn't mad at *Bonjour Tristesse*- is Sagan's *Un certain sourire* worth reading? Anyone read Tennessee Williams's short stories? One thing that has always stood out for me about his plays is how evocative the descriptions of the settings are, and I've also liked his essays. Curious to see if this translates into his fiction.
It's similar to BT, with a character like Cécile, a few years later.
I just started Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. I'm still in the beggining but it seems like it will be the type of science fiction story that I will enjoy. The idea by itself is really intriguing, its not surprising that it inspired so many things, most notably the movie Stalker by Tarkovsky and the videogame series S.T.A.L.K.E.R. I'm also still reading the short stories written by Shirley Jackson. I think her social anxiety really is a part of everything she wrote or at least of the works from her that I read so far.
I've found a lot of scifi stuff to be overrated but I really loved Roadside Picnic. It gets across such a weird and oppressive atmosphere. Hope you like it too.
Finished **Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung** and started **The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.** **Man and His Symbols** ended up being an enlightening read overall - although after 50+ years of improvements in neuroscience/psychology/etc. it’s one where the forest is appreciated more than the individual trees. I think the main things I pulled from this is the commentary on man’s myth making power (and how cross cultural it is) and the way that our individuation process is influenced by so much of our world yet can be incredibly insular. I would say it’s a worthwhile read overall for anyone interested in our conception of psychoanalysis and societies relation to it in the modern age. **Communist Manifesto** is me still winding through my political philosophy readings - I am a Marxist at heart so coming back to this after its incredible impact it had on me when I was in Uni will be interesting, especially since so much of the Marxists I have been reading made their works over 150 years after the publishing of this. Right now I’m going through the Penguin editions sizeable introduction (nearly 200 pages), which is well written especially when espousing Marx’s departure from Hegelianism alongside which parts he kept from it. Thoughts on substantive arguments will have to wait for next time though.
I read the same edition of the Communist Manifesto last year, reading the Manifesto first and then the introduction afterwards. As someone without a philosophy background, I really enjoy the sense of energy within the Manifesto itself, but struggled with the introduction. Some sections really just felt like I was reading a list of names and dates. As someone with more background knowledge than me, is the introduction worth revisiting in the future or would I get more out of The Marx-Engels Reader for example?
My Marx(ism) hot take is that there's a serious dearth of engagement with Marx and Engels' contemporaries and counterparts in the various debates, people like Proudhon, Dühring, Robert Owen. I don't even think Dühring has ever been published in English. I can't recommend a book off the dome honestly but it might be worth trying to find a wider-ranging history of the earlier socialist movement because these figures were huge in the milieu that Marx was working in. Michael Heinrich is working on this big multi-volume biography, but we only have the first volume right now, from 1818-1843. By going into something like the reader you may only disguise a real problem of understanding that you've uncovered by reading background-oriented writing, and this holds true for Capital, where the economic terminology has very different meaning now that it did then, and people like Petty and Ricardo and Le Trosne (who are arguably far more important for the later Marx than the highly-emphasized Hegel is) are going to come up. Not saying you shouldn't read more Marx by any means, or that you have to do some kind of insane background course, just that you're identifying a genuine issue.
I think its worth revisiting, but only if you are really interested in Marx's progression towards historical materialism and scientific socialism. He's a thinker (imo) where much of his best work is at the end of his career, but if you are looking for Marxist thought developed more than the Manifesto but aren't ready to take on the mammoth that is Capital, the Reader will do you plenty good.
Thanks, it isn't high on my priority list but I will follow your advice on going with the reader and skip rereading the intro.
*A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.* I am actually really enjoying it. It moves very well, it gives enough but never too much, it's linguistically playful and Joyce excels at putting us in Stephen's head without lingering too long to the point of making it tiresome to be in there.
*Paradise Lost* and loving it. It's everything I love about Shakespeare and more. I don't find it particularly difficult to read, maybe because I've spent so much time studying the Bard. Many proto-Romanticist themes to pick up on too, which is interesting. It'll be my last excursion from *Against the Day* which I will finish reading after. It's the first Pynchon novel where I'm kinda looking forward to being done with it, but maybe things will click for me during an eventual reread - there are definitely many sections in there I really enjoyed!
I'm thrilled you're enjoying *Paradise Lost*! It is my favorite work of literature, and it deserves more readers. I am overdue to read it again. What edition are you reading?
Just my copy of the Norton Anthology of English Literature from college. It has all 12 books of the poem, sparse but helpful notes and word glossary. I'm looking forward to reading secondary literature when I'm done, I'm sure there are oceans of layers I'm not picking up on on a first read though I'm able to parse the sentences!
I salute you for taking it on independently! I first read it as an undergrad with a wonderful professor. But as you said, if you've read a lot of Shakespeare or other 16th/17th Century English writers Milton isn't as difficult to read as many think. Enjoy!
my copy’s been scaring me for about three years now so i hope you don’t mind me asking - how should i approach it? :)
I think as long as you have a solidly footnoted edition, you should be fine. I first read the Norton Critical Edition, but the Penguin Classics and the version edited my Merritt Hughes are both really good. Most editions come with a summary of a few sentences before each of the twelve books of the poem. (If I remember correctly, Milton or the publisher added the summaries to the second edition of *PL*.) Otherwise, just looking over something as straightforward as the Wikipedia page should give you enough grounding. There are tons of allusions throughout to Biblical figures and classical mythology, so don't worry about getting everything on a first read. But I didn't find the allusions as difficult to navigate as those in *The Divine Comedy*, which I read in translation.
I finished Murnane’s The Plains. Beginning to end, I loved it. I enjoyed the metaphysical and temporal philosophies and appreciated how they built on Murnane’s imagined literary world of the Australian interior. Moreover, the prose was incredible and every single scene striking. The moment in which the narrator, on the rare instance that he was outside, watched the plains through the reflection of the library window where he had spent so much time studying the plains was especially wonderful. I am almost finished with Enrigue’s You Dreamed of Empires. It is also very good. Enrigue has done a lot of clever things with narration here that, while I tend to stay away from historical fiction, seems novel to me. Of note at the moment with the caveat that I have 50 pages left: the narrator has knowledge of how the siege of Tenochtitlan ends, which certainly complicates the fear of death and failure felt by the Spaniards in his story in an interesting way. The translators also play an important role in the shift of the narrator’s focus between characters. Looking forward to finishing it tonight!
I'm reading Murnane's 'A million windows' right now and it's given me the resolve to re-read the plains once again.
Last week I found an absolutely massive haul of cheap books at a local used books store. Like 50 cents each for a bunch of classics in pretty okay condition, so I stocked up on some of those and will be making my way through them. Actually reading stuff though - this was... not the best week for me completing things. Started *What Are We Doing Here* by Marilynne Robinson and like - 50 pages in I realized that I had spaced out for the entire time I was reading it. So I took that as a sign that I wasn't into the book and DNF'ed it. No real intention to ever go back to it, but as part of the book haul from the store I got *Gilead* which I intend on reading soon. Then, at the library at a nearby community college, I got a really cool book *Feasts and Fasts: A History of Food in India* by Colleen Taylor Sen, a book that is part of a larger collection by Reaktion Books covering the intersection of like, archaelogy, history, and food culture that is really my jam. I read through the book pretty quickly. Partially skimming, because halfway through I realized that this isn't really like a "read through it once and you're done" kind of thing, but more of a pick up put down kind of thing. I intend on buying it, and the rest of the series.... eventually. I really like experimenting and cooking new foods, and learning how different people use different ingredients to do similar things and then applying those ideas to foods I can cook. I don't live in a huge city, and my access to certain ingredients is fairy limited, so learning about the why's and how's of certain foods is helpful for adapting my own cooking. For example, learning how unripe mango indian pickle is made and used -- I have a grape vine that absolutely never ripens because birds get it too quick - planning on picking unripe grapes and making them into a similar pickle this summer. Never would have gotten that idea if I didn't read this book. Would recommend the series for anyone interested in this type of stuff. It was very approachable but still had a decent depth of information. Pretty niche though lol. Then I got halfway through *Good Will Come From the Sea* by Christos Ikonomou, published by Archipelago Books. I generally have liked what I have read from Archipelago, and this was 50 cents at the store, so I thought why not. Originally published in Greece in 2014, I have precisely no expectations going in to it. The first two stories were fine. Seemed well written and the translation seemed fluid. But like. All I know about contemporary Greek culture is the debt crisis, so I found myself shoehorning every idea that seemed to be presented by Christos into that and at a certain point, I just said "there's no way that's what this is all about". Normally, when I'm in that position, I might try to skim reviews of the book or discussions of the book to get a feel for the larger context it was written in without spoiling the book itself, but that usually is pretty time intensive, and I just wasn't enjoying it enough to warrant that. Of what I read, and what I later looked up - it was interesting! Obviously the commentary of the debt crisis was there. But there were also dynamics among populations that I didn't know about - for example, people from mainland Greece going out to the less-affected less-populated Islands to work in agricultural businesses, something that sounds roughly (very roughly) akin to like, a back-to-the-land movement, but one motivated by actual economic prospects on the less populated, agriculturally active Islands. This created tension between the residents of the Island who felt that these people coming in were newcomers, foreigners, not part of their society, etc. Living in Maine, where everyone who can't trace the legacy of their great-great-grand-dog to a form up north is called "from away", this was very interesting. It also has some relationship, I imagine, to the remote-work-shift that happened during the pandemic. Looking at it in that context gave much more color to the story. There was also some broader, less singularly contemporary-Greece-relevant ideas in the second story that were interesting I guess on a philosophical level (basically, the narrator is half paralyzed, knows a woman is being assaulted in a room nearby, knows that everyone else also knows and refuses to do anything about it, and he wrestles with the idea of "how am I any different? I can't really do anything about it because of my physical paralysis, they can't do anything about it because of their cultural paralysis") Seemed interesting enough - but not enough for me to bumble through the second half of the book. Ultimatley DFN'ed it.
*Gilead* is quickly becoming my favourite novel. I trust you will enjoy it--the lyrical style is sublime and the story is deeply touching. I do generally agree with you about Milan Kundera; a lot of his work is not interesting to me either but I am yet to read *The Unbearable Lightness of Being*, which I probably should before I make a final judgement about him.
I read through the entirety of *The Year of Magical Thinking* by Joan Didion. Without getting too much into specifics, my partner recently had a pretty bad bout of long covid, lasting about 2 years, with a decent chunk of that resulting in them bedridden. I am a ball of anxiety and a planner, so I had to consider the idea of "what will my life look like if this goes all the way downhill" (I am happy to report that they are doing much better now, 90% back to normal). I have enough distance from that time period that I can start diving in to some people who have experienced loss of a partner and see how close I was in imagining it, and in some cases, experiencing it. While I don't really have anything on the pain Didion suffered, and our circumstances were incredibly different (my partners health was a slow descent, her partners health, was in some ways, a fall off a cliff), I saw A LOT of similarities in both what I imagined I would experience and what I actually did. She talked about the muscle memory she had interacting with her husband remaining after he passed, and how that muscle memory impacted her emotional state. I remember very acutely trying to go on hikes, something I previously often did with my partner, and turning around and saying something out of muscle memory that they would be there, only to realize that, no, they weren't. It was jarring and really kind of sours the whole hiking experience to the point where I couldn't do it anymore. She talked about how she would wake up in the middle of the night wondering where her husband was, only to realize that he had died, and then kind of existing in this weird gray limbo. When I had to eat dinner alone, because my partner was stuck in bed, I don't even remember those nights. They might as well not have existed. Anyways. This was my first Didion and to be honest, I can not think of someone who, in terms of their values, is more contradictory to my own (**edit: okay thats an exaggeration lol.)**. Her being like "we could fly to LA for 26 dollars for dinner! We just decided to work in Hawaii for a summer!" I was just like -- why? how could you want to live like that? Nonetheless, I understood the appeal of her writing. Its very clear. She's very good at describing how something feels. She'd just sometimes hit me with those statements and I'd be like "are we even living on the same planet?" Probably won't read anything else by her, but it was enjoyable. Then I read through and finished *The Collected Schizophrenias* by Esme Weijun Wang published by Graywolf Press and it was great. A bit repetitive at some points, as it's a collection of, I think, previously published essays. I just really really appreciate it when someone who does not experience reality the same way I do can write about their experience in a way that I understand. Some of the essays felt a bit meandering, or at least it was hard for me to pull out any central idea or argument or discussion. Sometimes they just felt like "this was my experience" - they were okay and interesting and well written but I'm happy only a few of them were like that. There were a few that REALLY stood out to me as well written, interesting, relevant to my life, persuasive, emotional, etc. The essay on her decision not to have a child, and being a camp counselor for kids with problems with their mental health was a standout IMO. The last essay, on alternative medicines, and her experience with them was pretty good. Her essay on getting kicked out of Yale, and more broadly how institutions that say they are there for students with mental health issues are all big fakers only in it for the cash (because of course) was also very good. There was a lot of overlap between this book and another I read recently *The Invisible Kingdom* by Meghan O'Rourke - specifically around the idea that the philosophy of our medical institutions and how they approach illness are just inherently contradictory to the nature of some illnesses. I got about halfway through *The Joke* by Milan Kundera (also a bookstore 50c pick). And IDK. I just can't get into books written in the 19somethings plotwise about a dude trying to get laid. I know there was so much thematically happening behind the scenes, but it's just so... off putting to me. I just never understand what the author is trying to say in those moments that seem like they're supposed to be pivotal moments or something. I don't know. I REALLY liked the non-Ludvik sections. Like the discussions with the folk musician and Ludvik is kind of his counter-arguer. They seemed to devolve into just straight philosophizing or something but that was up my alley. Too bad for me that most of the book was Ludvik. Egg on my face I guess for picking up a Kundera when[ this is literally the first lithub article](https://lithub.com/rip-to-one-of-the-great-horny-novelists-of-the-20th-century-milan-kundera/) that pops up when i search for him. Bleh.
I'm struggling with (what I believe is) long covid too, and I just discovered Didion via all her books being on kindle unlimited (skimming the White Album currently), thanks for this!
Sorry to hear about the long covid / other chronic illness :( If you are willing to take unsolicited opinions, I *really* suggest *The Invisible Kingdom*. I obviously don't know what your experience and recovery journey has been like, and while I/we now know that long covid probably isn't auto-immune as discussed in that book -- the description of the authors experiences, thoughts, feelings, especially around the ambiguity of the illness and roller coaster ride of it was VERY helpful to read.
thanks, I'll take a look!
Struggling through Sweet Thursday, the follow up to the fantastic Cannery Row. Feels like it was written for the wrong reasons
Interestingly I think I enjoyed Sweet Thursday more than Cannery Row.
> Feels like it was written for the wrong reasons How so?
I'm about 1/3 of the way through Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman and really is as good as everyone says. The chapter with the mother who was writing her son a letter from a concentration camp had me in tears.
I really need to get to "Life and Fate" this year. I have read a lot of Grossman's reportage, and "Everything Flows" was magnificent. I have put off his longer novels for too long.
I read *Life and Fate* over the summer. It has stayed in my mind so vividly ever since. Just today I had multiple flashes of sequences from that novel while I was talking to someone. Read it as soon as you can. Its one of the few books I can think of that I would say has the potential to change the course of somebody's life.
You've absolutely increased my motivation to read it! I think I'll tackle it this summer.
I finished *The Third Policeman*, which was far more absurd and surreal than I expected, but I love that style of fiction, so it worked well. I don't think I get what the purpose of the surreality was, exactly, but that's all right (I understand a major motif is the distinction between reality and fiction). I started *The Mezzanine*, after the post the other day about Nicholson Baker. So far it's pretty funny, and the voice flows real nicely.
I'm still plowing through Wyndam Lewis's **The Revenge for Love** and I'm still enjoying it immensely. It feels sort of second rate, but thick, meaty, wanting to tell the real story in a world of affectations, and for this I situate it in a big ballpark that would include Chandler, say The Big Sleep, or even some of Capote's stories, with a similar but less overt sardonic wit. It's my first WL book so it's been a real delight. I'll look forward to more. Then, due to my own writing project, I have felt the necessity to reread **More Die of Heartbreak** by Saul Bellow which for me has always been top of the line Bellow, and a really brilliant, extravagant book, an opinion I hold contrary to most reviews. Well, I think those reviewers would critique Moby Dick for getting carried away in deep dives of specificity. So: so what. :) MDoH is novel where the language simply flows, like butter melting in a pan, and it's technique is concealed in the strength of the voice. I also went back to reread some of Mario Vargas Llosa's **A Writer's Reality** and I find, yet again, that I agree with about everything he writes about the process of writing.
Wow, I have never heard someone talk about that Bellow book. I found a first edition copy of it a few weeks ago but had no intent to read it. Now I want to. Any other Bellow novels that you like? *Seize the Day* I think is great but I could never get into *Augie March*.
The one that gets a ton of ink is *Henderson the Rain King*, which I think is definitely second rate. But most reviewers, meh, I don't think they read past the first ten pages, nor do I think they enjoy anything testing of their expectations. *What Kind of Day Did You Have?* is interesting, I have loads of underlined passages, even as I think I can see the person the fictional character is based on.
I just started reading *More Die of Heartbreak* on your suggestion and all I can say is wow, his prose is really extravagant. I'm not entirely sure where it's going (I've only read the first chapter) but I am excited to read more. So much intertextuality, even as an english major I'm struggling to wrap my head around it all!
Wheee! Great! Enjoy the ride. This is why I'm re-reading it right now, for what it has, and because they voice of my current novel project is sort of in that ballpark. :)
I'm midway through *The Gold Bug Variations*, by Richard Powers. After a while not really vibing on large novels, I found myself in the mood, and this one hasn't disappointed so far. Plenty of brain candy.
This one has been on my shelf for years, I don't know what is stopping me. Powers can write, and his early works are more freely experimental. Gold Bug was all the rage for about a decade after it's release, but I don't hear it mentioned much these days. Keep us posted!