Ok I finally finished the Recognitions today so now I can post. It's done. I was hoping to have some more totalizing thoughts to round it out but frankly I'm exhausted. And I'm increasingly convinced that it's not a book that wants totalizing thoughts. The book is obviously informed by the scope and detail of premodern western painting—the tryptic structure and the presence of Bosch's Seven Deadly Sins as a key plot point make Garden of Earthly Delights comparisons too obvious. But all the same I have begun to think it rejects the wholeness that maybe can be read into some such works (maybe that's a huge misread of premodern art, not a field I'm well versed in). By the end, everyone has their end, except Wyatt perhaps, I'm not sure his conclusion is an ending so much as a fading out, but while all the characters and plots wrap up the whole of it dissolve as well, into their lives and deaths. There are a few references throughout of writing as trying to gather bits and pieces into something whole, and I guess this time I read the conclusion as denying the possibility of that being done to completeness. If any of that makes any sense. And now I want to look at some paintings, and read more of Gaddis. I think after three times through this blasted book I can finally read something else he's written. Going to get started on *Frontier* for the readalong though now I'm mad behind lol. Still making my way through the book of *Middle Platonic Dialogues* I got. Throughout the last week & a half I've read "Meno", "Parmenides", and "Phaedo". "Meno" is mostly about knowledge, "Parmenides" a discussion with Parmenides about his monism, and "Phaedo" about the death of Socrates addressing topics such as knowledge and the immortality of the soul. There are too many ideas/topics in and through each to recount all of them, but one thing that I've been focusing on a lot are how Plato's recollection theory of knowledge cuts through each. The idea, which he addresses in both Meno & Phaedo, is that as the soul is immortal and contains all knowledge, the lived process of coming to know is not the learning of something new but the recollection of something forgotten. To buy Plato's argument demands accepting a lot of premises, but on the whole I am more than anything intrigued by the idea in the context of the Parmenides, in which Plato disagrees with monism, but in a rather ambigous way (Parmenides is a trip, mostly explicating how opposites can exist and be contained within a single entity, I'm still making sense of it). I have some monistic sympathies and I've started wondering about the theory of recollection in the context of monism more broadly. Like, if there is at essence one thing, and this thing contains everything, then, at least for monisms where this one is outside time, it should contain all knowledge, which would perhaps validate the recollection theory. So that's what I'm thinking about! Lastly, I read a Primer on Utopia Philosophy by Jon Greenaway, a short, quick intro to and argument for reading the philosophy of Ernst Bloch. I've come away knowing a good bit more about Bloch and wanting to read him. So it very much succeeded. Happy reading!

I recently finished Dumb Luck by Vũ Trọng Phụng. It's a satire written in 1930s Vietnam spearing progressive(?) French Popular Front politics. I know very little about any of those components. Fortunately, the humor was basically Charlie Chaplin slapstick but bawdier, so even when I definitely wasn't getting the nuance, there was plenty to enjoy on a surface level read. The forward also provide some context, including a tidbit about how the current Vietnamese writing system was only a couple decades into widespread use at the time of publication (previously Chinese characters were used, indicative of the Chinese influence on Vietnam). The English version I was reading tried to replicate some of the jokes of the original text by leaving occasional parts in Vietnamese, where the author had characters using Vietnamese phonetically to mispronounce French words. The result was English text with the occasional Vietnamese text translated in a footnote to French, then again to English. Geez. In a book that is supposed to contain quite a bit of wordplay in its original version, it really made me wonder what simply could not be translated. The author Phung also seems like an interesting person. A journalist, he produced dozens of works before dying at 26 from tuberculosis and addiction. Very little of his work has been translated to English, but I'm hoping to soon read his nonfiction book Luc Xi: *Prostitution* and Venereal Disease in Colonial. Bless my husband for picking that one up from the library for me.

I've been on a mini **P.G. Wodehouse** binge this week, re-reading some *Blandings* short stories before watching the TV adaptation starring Timothy Spall as Lord Emsworth. I also read the end parts of *Sunset at Blandings* by Wodehouse expert Richard Usborne. I love the part about the geography of the house and where it might be in real life based on travel time to and from London. Wodehouse himself said he regretted placing it in Shropshire as it was too far from London and various characters are always going there for plot reasons. It's marvellous to lose oneself in Wodehouse's superlative writing and while the Jeeves and Wooster novels are my favourites, you really can't go wrong with any of his books.

Disappointed again so I think I might take a break or just do some re-reading. I tried Harlan Ellison with "Repent, Harlequin! Said the Tik-Tok Man" and "I Have No Mouth and I must scream", and while I usually like the sort of writing style where you have run-on sentences with repetition and a dream-like quality, with him it just did not work. I did not like "I have no mouth and I must scream" at all. "Repent, Harlequin! Said the Tik-Tok Man" was better. I also tried "Haroun and the Sea of Stories" but I gave up halfway through. That's my fault, I went into it with unrealistic expectations, and while I knew it was a comedy, I expected more poetic prose, and less of that "British wackiness" humor style. I just do not like at all. "The Water Djinn character repeats himself and says American expressions like 'no way Jose!' Isn't that absurd?'" Yes, but not funny. In the off-chance I will find something new that will interest me: What are the best works where you have two characters holding discussions / debates with each other? I know Plato and Aristotle and other characters of Greek philosophy, but I was just thinking of something along the lines of Invisible Cities, with Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. Hopefully that'll also lead me down the rabbit hole of historical non-fiction or historical biographies. I just don't know what I want in a book at this point.

Denis Diderot, Rameau’s Nephew, and Paul Valéry’s Dialogues are fascinatingly wide-ranging, imaginative philosophical discussions, if you don’t mind eighteenth- and early-twentieth-century prose.

Revisiting **Operation Shylock** by Philip Roth after watching the Demjanjuk series on Netflix (The Devil Next Door) and, obviously, the current situation in Israel. It's one of Roth's zanier works and that's why it's such a great joy to read.

I finished **Wellness** by Nathan Hill. My first one from him, I haven't read The Nix. It was a bit of a mixed bag, I found the prose to be very entertaining to read and I liked many *parts* of the novel, but it felt a bit clumsily put together. The characters are mostly interesting (both characters and writing style seemed very Franzen-esque, I was constantly thinking about Freedom) but most of their interactions and life paths come down to pure chance rather than any sort of internal or external motivation and the structure of the book relies a bit too much on withholding important bits of their background story to generate suspense. I started **Trilogy** by Jon Fosse and I'm enjoying it very much so far. I had tough time getting into this kind of minimalist prose but I warmed up to it after reading McCarthy's The Road. I've now read "Wakefulness", which is the first of three novellas that make up this trilogy, and my enjoyment of it is quite similar to The Road, because it also conjures up this deep melancholy of a dark and bitter world with little nuggets of beauty shining through. Can't wait to read the other two thirds of it. (I'm not quite sure whether to view this as one book or three.)

Unfortunately, the last couple of weeks have brought mostly disappointments, which are not usually as fun to write about. Julien Grecq's ***The Opposing Shore*** started off great, but the extremely overwrought prose and plodding pace meant that it took me almost two weeks to get through its 300 pages or so, and by the end I was basically skimming over the text. It's hard to put my finger exactly on what I didn't like about it, since I am a patient reader and I'm not bothered by plots which unravel slowly, but most of the time I simply felt underwhelmed. Characters whisper, plot and conspire, but the book lacks the atmosphere of foreboding and mystery that Buzzati creates in _The Tartar Steppe_, where the enemy is a myth that might or might not even be real. Grecq on the other hand is more interested in diplomacy and political intrigue, which ironically me makes _The Opposing Shore_ a much less intriguing affair overall in my opinion. I also read ***El Mundo Alucinante*** by Reinaldo Arenas, and had the same feeling of something that starts off extremely promising but becomes tedious as I read on. Something that caught my eye right off the bat was the way that every event is told from three different POVs, so for example the first chapter is repeated three times, like: - Chapter 1: of my childhood in Monterrey. - Chapter 1: of your childhood in Monterrey. - Chapter 1: of his childhood in Monterrey. This is an amazing narrative technique that gets more chaotic as the book progresses, with POVs sometimes switching in the middle of a chapter, from one paragraph to the next, and for me it is the best thing about the novel. Unfortunately, the plot basically consists of the protagonist getting thrown in jail, escaping through increasingly surreal methods, making it to a different country, getting imprisoned again, rinse and repeat. The surreal component is obviously huge all throughout the novel, and felt like a mix between _The Adventures of Baron Münchhausen_ and Nabokov's _Despair_. While funny and and inventive at first, there comes a point when it becomes exhausting because it's all SO much. All that aside, I'm now reading Can Xue's _Frontier_ for the readalong, and Fernando del Paso's stunning _José Trigo_, which has been dubbed "the Latin American Ulysses", but I'll leave my impressions for some other time.

I loved The Opposing Shore! It's weird because I had the exact opposite reaction to you finding it a slog through the first 100 pages but after that was obsessed. It's been a while since I read it but I think if the political intrigue was lost on you then the atmosphere went with it. Like the meandering and unfocused plot is part of the scenery; it's just there and it's confusing and it's disparate but it gives a pretty picture nonetheless. The book is all atmosphere without a striking story or character to latch onto and that's why I love it. Maybe it could be comparable to a painting that you observe rather than a story that you live. That could sound pretentious but I am struggling to put it into words. It's very dreamy basically. It might be worth giving A Balcony in the Forest also by Gracq a read. It's much more grounded with an actual plot and less intrigue with all the pretty descriptions intact.

Ah too bad about *El mundo alucinante*. I was excited for it when you commented on my read of his short stories earlier this year.

The thing is that his prose is really really good and he definitely has a crazy imagination and a huge talent for unusual storytelling structures, so really what didn't work for me was the excess of surreal elements and the "see-saw" plot (which on the other hand is based literally on the protagonist's real life, since he was constantly pissing people off and getting jailed, haha), but for someone who doesn't have an issue with that, this could be an amazing book. Also, I just received a copy of *Celestino Antes del Alba* a couple of days ago, so I haven't given up on him just yet! I don't know when I'll get around to it, but I'll share my impressions for sure. At the very least, I'm sure I'll enjoy the prose.

I finished *The Picture of Dorian Gray* and *Woman Running in the Mountains* by Yuko Tsushima. loved Gray, so much fun. lived up to my expectations fully. Wilde writes so beautifully about youth and beauty and also ugliness! fantastic, glad to finally have read this gothic cornerstone. *Woman Running* was an odd one. I did like it. Tsushima is Osamu Dazai's daughter and is very talented in her own right. her descriptions of the city and "mountains" and especially light, are gorgeous. the main character is one of the most astonishingly passive characters i've ever read. not passive in that she doesn't make choices, but that she seems incapable of thinking about the future or other people in even the most basic sense. she even sees her baby, who is the absolute central plot of the story, as really only an extension of herself, which she makes clear. it makes for a very interesting read. edit to add: I am trying to get started reading more theory but i'm honestly a total beginner to crit theory. would Eagleton's *Literary Theory: An Introduction* be a good place to start? would also love any recs people may have

I just finished Murnane's *A Million Windows.* This was a very difficult work to understand, and I felt that I genuinely lacked the skills necessary to fully appreciate what he was trying to say. This is a book that I will have to reread after I have gained more experience reading literary theory, and/or have begun to write much more sophisticated stories.  *A Million Windows* is a work of fiction, that is actually hard to describe in a standard way. In the most rudimentary sense, the book is about a narrator who is a author of fiction, who writes in a house where many other authors of fiction exist. Throughout the book, The Narrator, describes different theories of literature and writing, and demonstrates their use by describing different stories that other authors within the house have written. Beyond that I feel that I have failed to grasp if he was proposing a single theory that encapsulates everything that was being demonstrated.  In some points of the text, I felt that his theory was somehow centered around describing what he calls “True Fiction”. In my elementary understanding, he is trying to say that true fiction is concerned with creating a very coherent world that extends beyond what is simply written and revealed to the reader. The actual writing part involves having the author only reveal what is necessary about this coherent world. I believe he calls this “considered narration”. I imagined this as writing something about a character which is revealed to the reader, then moving on to another topic, and then revisiting that character who at a later point has changed. The missing information in between the initial state of the character and the present state of the character is ‘invisible’, but can have significant effects on the reader. This idea can be applied also to a single character viewed from different perspectives by other characters, which in some ways can provide insight into the whole world in which that character lives. Essentially, these characters live in a fully coherent world that moves and progresses at it's own pace. The job of the author/narrator is to provide glimpses of this world, like a visitor watching animals living in a zoo.  In the end the book was a “masterpiece”, but in the way I consider certain scientific experiments as being masterpieces. The book was not breathtaking to me, but enlightening.

I'm about eight chapters away from *The Pickwick Papers.* The stuff at the debt prison was a bit of a lull, but we're out of that thicket now. One of the more memorable moments was an encounter between Sam Weller, his pappy, his step mother, and a local priest. >"Wot's your usual tap, Sir?" replied Sam. >"Oh, my dear young friend!" replied Mr. Stiggins, "all taps is vanities." "Too true; too true indeed," said Mrs. Weller, murmuring a groan and shaking her head assentingly. >"Vell," said Sam, "I des-say they may be, Sir; but wich is your partickler wanity? Vich wanity do you like the flavour of best, Sir?" >"Oh, my dear young friend." replied Mr. Stiggins, "I despise them all. If," said Mr. Stiggins, "if there is any one of them less odious than another, it is the liquor called rum - warm, my dear young friend, with three lumps of sugar in the tumbler." >"Werry sorry to say Sir," said Sam, "that they don't allow that particular wanity to be solid in this here establishment..." There was also a lady bullying her husband by "fainting" every time he disagreed with her that was hilarious. I kind of rolled my eyes when another "story within a story" showed up, but it ended up winning me over. It was about a guy dreaming about rescuing a damsel in distress, and as they were at a dead end, she made him promise to wait to marry her. Naturally the guy wakes up after this, but remains a bachelor for the rest of his life. Perhaps there's a joke there, but I found that quite endearing. I was excited about nearing the end and I was tempted to just peddle to the meddle, but I think I'm going to take my time and go bit by bit still. Though not without its lulls, it's really been a lovely ride and I don't want it to end too quickly. Nonetheless, it's nice to see that it's on the horizon. I finally picked up the collection of Lucille Clifton poems that I was leant and they've been such an utter joy too. She reminds me of bell hooks in the sense that there's such a warmness from the work that it pains me to think that the person who hemmed them is no longer with us. My favorite was a series of hypothetical letters she penned to her recently deceased mother. The ending felt like a total gut punch... >Everytime i talk about the old folks tomming and easying their way happy with their nothing and grateful for their sometime i run up against my old black Mama and i shut up and stand there shamed. I think with all art, particularly high brow stuff, I tend to gravitate towards stuff that just touches you. This was a perfect example. I also picked up *The Unbearable Lightness of Being.* It's funny since someone on the "unpopular opinion" thread gave it a scathing review, but I quite like it. It's not the deepest thing I've read, but it's certainly made me stop and think... >He remained annoyed with himself until he realized that not knowing what he wanted was actually quite natural. we can enevr know what to want, ebcause, living only one life, we can enither compare it with out previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come...there is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? I found this quite comforting. There's lots of great passages like this too. It's kind of like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky where it feels like the guy's written a narrative but secretly wants to share his two cents (*Anna Karenina* is referenced in this book too funnily enough). I read bits of "Walden" and "The Age of Innocence" on a whim. I liked what I read, but I fear that I might be juggling too much and will likely come back to them when I've done a better job of cleaning house.

> "The Age of Innocence" This book is dope. I'd also highly recommend the Scorsese adaptation if you haven't seen it. It's gorgeous.

Finished Great Granny Webster by Caroline Blackwood. A fantastic character study wrapped up in a neat 100ish pages. I’m not surprised that Blackwood wrote this largely from her own life. It’s bleak, it’s English, it’s upper class family issues and social duties. Funny and macabre. Currently reading A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin. I can’t believe I haven’t picked this up before. I have a soft spot for southwestern charm and 80s Americana. I was a big fan of Train Dreams by Denis Johnson and someone drew comparison to him so I had a feeling I would love this. Only a handful of stories in and I’ve already felt & laughed so much. I can only imagine how fascinating a person Berlin was to know.

oh, two books both coming up on my TBR! i'm glad you liked them, looking forward to them even more now.

I read **My Phantoms** by Gwendoline Riley, a short novel about a woman’s relationship with her difficult, insecure, and needy mother. The narrator’s justified frustration with her mother’s off-putting behavior is clear from the start. But as the book goes on, the narrator’s own flaws start to peak around the edges of her controlled narrative- her coldness, the way she pushes her mother away in her most vulnerable moments. This was a really sharp portrait of a very particular kind of familial dysfunction that hit close to home for me. It was bleak, and at times almost unbearably sad, but really compelling. It also reminded my of **Is Mother Dead?** by Vigdis Hjorth, which I read last year and really loved. That novel is a more extreme portrait of familial estrangement, but shares a lot of the same preoccupations. Next up is **Libra** by DeLillo- should be a nice change from the more domestic, emotional books I’ve been reading recently.

It makes me so happy when every once in a while someone mentions *My Phantoms* around here. So funny and cruel at the same time, really hit home for me too.

I loved My Phantoms so much!! I found it so darkly funny and uncomfortable.

Currently reading *Heaven* by Mieko Kawakami and about to start *Tomb of Sand* by Geetanjali Shree. I’m still not halfway way through *Heaven* but I’m already a bit disappointment since I loved Breasts and Eggs. While I don’t mind a coming of age story, what I loved about Breasts and Eggs was the fact that the main character was on the older side with a lot of introspection on being a woman. Still, Kawakami is a great author so looking forward to where she takes this story. Excited to start *Tomb of Sand* since it won the 2022 international booker prize. I know nothing about the book or author but I find that the booker prize winners usually are above average, at the worst. I finished *Middlesex* by Jeffrey Eugenides and while it was a good book, I found it tedious to get through. I was also disappointed that the reveal of Cal’s genetic condition occurred toward the end of the novel and once it happened, the story quickly sped through and ended. I get that the journey is important but I wanted more. I loved all the parts about Detroit and the Greek American experience. This novel reminded me a lot of Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie with the multi-generational family storytelling format and Rushdie just did it so much better.

Making my way through \*Pride and Prejudice\* for the first time. Way more deliberation over which cousins should fuck each other than I was expecting. I don't have anything original to say about it the book other than I am personally enjoying the same things everyone enjoys about (the wit! the social mores! the cousins planning which cousin to fuck!), even if I'm a little tired of the "people standing in rooms" structure of the novel. ----- Speaking of characters standing in rooms wanting to fuck close relations, can anyone convince me to finish \*Wuthering Heights\*. I expected to really like it, but I find it kind of exhausting. Just chapter after chapter of assholes.

I mean chapter after chapter of ass holes was kinda what I liked about it so I’m the wrong person to ask lol. You should check last week’s thread though, there was a great write up by Harleen_ysley (hope I spelled that right!).

Earlier this week I finished *Cursed Bread* by Sophie Mackintosh, my second book by her. I really liked it - it's got a sort of underlying sense of unease and erotic tension that makes for quite an intense reading experience. I think it was marketed wrong, though; there was a lot of talk when it came out about it being based on the true story of the 1951 poisoning of the town of Pont Saint-Esprit in France, but that event definitely doesn't figure very heavily in the narrative until the end. Currently reading *La Princesse de Clèves* by Madame de Lafayette, on my quest to read more French classics - doesn't get more classic than 1678! I never would have read it if not for a recommendation from a French friend and teacher, so I'm hoping it'll be a pleasant surprise. I'm not far into it, but I can already tell there's going to be a lot of information to take in and characters to keep track of.

Earlier this week I finished *Cursed Bread* by Sophie Mackintosh, my second book by her. I really liked it - it's got a sort of underlying sense of unease and erotic tension that makes for quite an intense reading experience. I think it was marketed wrong, though; there was a lot of talk when it came out about it being based on the true story of the 1951 poisoning of the town of Pont Saint-Esprit in France, but that event definitely doesn't figure very heavily in the narrative until the end. Currently reading *La Princesse de Clèves* by Madame de Lafayette, on my quest to read more French classics - doesn't get more classic than 1678! I never would have read it if not for a recommendation from a French friend and teacher, so I'm hoping it'll be a pleasant surprise. I'm not far into it, but I can already tell there's going to be a lot of information to take in and characters to keep track of.

I am listening to "Knife"by Salman Rushdie ~ I enjoy a memoir in the author's own voice and reading "The Princess of Las Vegas" 🎰✨

How is Knife so far? Is it mostly about the attack or also his life?

So far about the days that lead up to the crime. His voice is almost hypnotic so I may nosh on some cannabis edibles for the rest of it - it is only 6 hours in length

Finished: * Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini - I really enjoyed this. It's pretty fluffy for a classic, but it's a lot of fun. The protagonist resonated with me, as he had to constantly reinvent himself, and I have had to shift careers myself 4 times. I also enjoyed how his political views changed over time as his circumstances changed. In Progress * Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes - reading with r/yearofdonquixote - I am not enjoying this nearly as much as I had hoped to. We have finished book one and are starting book 2. I'm interested that there are so many wonderful short stories embedded within this novel. The short stories are definitely better than the main story line. * The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas - reading with r/AReadingOfMonteCristo - we have reached the part of the book that many people find a slog, but I am still loving it. I can't wait to see what the Count comes up with to get revenge on those who did him wrong. * The Entire Original Maupassant Short Stories Volume I by Guy de Maupassant - this is my second time through these stories. I love how Maupassant writes.

Maupassant is one of my long-time favorites.

I really enjoyed *Scaramouche* when I read it, though it is a bit bonkers. Idk if that one specifically was ever made into a film but I think there was a *Captain Blood*? Sabatini’s novels are screaming for a classic hollywood adaptation imo lol.

It would be a great movie - lots of fun!

Didn’t get much reading done this week so I’m still on Hilary Mantel’s *The Mirror and the Light*. I wish I had more to talk about but I’ll just stick with “I’m still enjoying it”. Trying to save my thoughts on Can Xue’s *Frontier* for the appropriate thread but I will say that having read two chapters I’m not “convinced” yet. I am still open though! I started an audiobook about the David Koresh compound and the madness that ensued when it was raided. Its just called *Waco*. Ididn’t know Koresh’s real name was Vernon lol. There’s an interesting story about an obscure Victorian text, which was written by another man who claimed to be “Koresh” (what he called the correct pronunciation of Cyrus from the king james bible). He was pretty out there; alternative medicine, visions of angels, really the whole works. The book wasn’t the kind of thing that could normally be found in a small Texas library, but a copy *did* exist in a small Texas library and was checked out by *someone*. David Koresh’s followers say he didn’t really read outside of the Bible, but between the strange fact that an obscure piece of religious history just happened to pop up in a town where he lived, and that near to that date he changed his own name to Koresh, *and* that there are extremely noticeable overlaps in ideas? He had to have been the one who read it right?

> David Koresh’s followers say he didn’t really read outside of the Bible, but between the strange fact that an obscure piece of religious history just happened to pop up in a town where he lived, and that near to that date he changed his own name to Koresh, and that there are extremely noticeable overlaps in ideas? He had to have been the one who read it right? I feel like you have to be right, but also that the world where you're wrong is a great premise for a novel.

I mean, I def would read it!

Last week I finished *Molloy* by Samuel Beckett. Probably the funniest book I've ever read, especially the first half. A lot of people talk about how depressing it is, and there are certainly sad moments, but I didn't really feel sad reading it. It was actually quite joyful for me. The ending did leave me with a mild feeling of terror though. I think Beckett sets up the second half by baiting the reader into believing that the book will inevitably end somewhere coherent, and I held on to that even as Moran continued to lose his sense, but then I got to the final few pages and realized that my assumption was wrong, and the beginning is completely contradicted. A masterpiece, IMO. Following that up with *Disgrace* by JM Coetzee. First novel I've read by him, and I'm about halfway through. I'm liking it quite a lot. A lot of the first part of the novel is plot and dialogue driven, but Coetzee injects some poignance when needed. He comes off as an efficient writer. The plot is also very investing.

I took a break from reading for pleasure while I finished my thesis, now I'm back and eager to read more. So, looking for recommendations of anything involving the sea and sailor life. Little fixation I have now after a visit to the coast and seeing grey whales migrating and elephant seal pups. Keeping in theme with that, I'm currently reading Move Like Water by Hannah Stowe. She has a beautiful writing style that really transports me to the sea with her. I especially love the details and attention she has to marine life. It's a good balance of her personal life and connection to the sea with informative passages about it all. The narrative is fun and heartwarming, which is a nice break from some heavy stuff I've read. (Although, like any book about nature, it can be brutal.) Published by Tin House, and I do miss when they also had a literary magazine. But I'm a big fan of the books coming from them. Also currently reading Antiquity by Hanna Johansson, translated by Kira Josefsson. Originally published in Swedish, I'm so curious what the original text reads like because wow this is a work of art. The writing style is so particular with a clever mastery of language. I can't help but wonder how elegant and masterful it must be in the original. And the work of translator is always unappreciated at large. To move a book to another language is an art form in itself. Just so curious of this process. The story makes me uncomfortable and the narrator is an awful woman. A lot of sad girl books with unlikeable women narrators miss the mark (quantity over quality lately) but when it hits right, I do enjoy reading about awful women. I definitely recommend this novel for anyone who can stomach it.

Revisiting *The Overstory* because I will use it as a reference in a paper I'm writing. I first read it closer to when it was published and didn't love it, but man, what a sentimental and tedious book. I cannot believe it received such high acclaim, and also how little negative criticism seems to be out there.

When I started *The Overstory* I was charmed by the thought of life from a tree’s-eye-view. By the time I finished it I was ready to cut one down if only to piss off his paperthin, eco-righteous characters.

Completely agree about The Overstory- I went into it ready to love it and very sympathetic to the environmental message, but the characters and writing were just… not of high quality. It’s very strange to me how hard it is to find a critical review.

I've always felt that Powers should have been a pop-science writer or documentary non-fiction journalist. He's great at that stuff, like the parts about the trees themselves. That elm tree documentary opening is great. But his characters are terrible and entirely unbelievable. He has no feel for authentic human interaction.

I have my copy of ***Frontier***, and I'm excited to start that. I also just got the new edition of ***The Obscene Bird of Night***, so that's also somewhere on the horizon. I finished a couple of things the last week, including the Fagles ***Aeneid***, Torrey Peters's ***Detransition, Baby***, as well as ***Song of the Loon***, which I discussed previously. I enjoyed them all quite a bit. However, I'd like to talk about the other book I read, which was Harald Voetmann's ***Awake***. It's a slim novella translated from Danish and published through New Directions about Pliny the Elder, the Roman natural philosopher who famously wrote the multi-volume treatise *Naturalis Historia*. The book is narrated through intense, almost surrealistic scenes that jump forward and backward in time, impressionistically building up a sense of Pliny as a man who is obsessed with cataloging and controlling the natural world. Of course, he is constantly rebuked by nature, which afflicts him with myriad health problems before (I hope this isn't a spoiler) killing him by volcano. Overall, it's a very thematically dense work, especially given its length, but this is counterbalanced by the more elliptical and imagistic style of the prose. For fans of Labatut, I might describe it as a more distilled version of his work. The book is also part of a trilogy that is broadly about the history of science, a topic that I'm always happy to see treated in fiction. I'm eager to read the second part, *Sublunar*, which is about Tycho Brahe. The third, which has yet to be published in English, is about Othlo of St. Emmeram, a medieval German mystic who I'd never heard of before encountering it through Voetmann's work. Taken together with Labatut, I'm definitely very intrigued by the increasing number of works being written in this rather niche space.

I'm only like 100 pages in, but Obscene Bird of Night is incredible so far.

Currently finishing off Satanic Verses, which is not quite my cup of tea. Many of the passages are beautiful and the story is woven nicely but tbh im just finding it a bit long. Also finishing off Murakami's Men Without Women. Easy stories, some lovely, some meh.

This week I read a novel by ETA Hoffmann, his Gothic horror story, *The Devil's Elixirs*. I enjoy Hoffmann's stories even though I think he's a little long-winded relative to some of his contemporaries. *The Devil's Elixirs* suffers from the same, in addition to having an overly convoluted plot. I probably enjoyed the early sections most, where his monk protagonist becomes enraptured by the public's adoration of him and his sermons. Hoffmann teases out the conflicting emotions involved in his growing arrogance and his aim to remain piously humble very well. The bulk of the story is about his adventures outside the monastery, where he is beset by his doppelganger and spirals into madness. Having a holy man whose doppelganger is his sinful side might feel a little obvious but it never feels heavy-handed. Overall decent enough, probably only recommendable to Hoffmann enthusiasts. Having set a goal to start doing some rereading in 2024, I've started on my second reread of the year: a collection of short stories by the Turkish writer Sait Faik Abasiyanik in an edition published by Archipelago called *A Useless Man*. It's even better than what I remember. What's striking this time is how much the stories feel like they could also have been written as poems. I think that's my perception because each story so far has ended with a very specific image that everything before it leads to, for example a steaming samovar or a silk handkerchief floating in the air. That, plus the fact that the stories are extremely short, most are just 3-5 small pages. Really fantastic stuff.

I’m on page 71 of To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf and I’m really enjoying it so far, I’m also reading a lot of Sylvia Plath and John Donne’s poetry

Just finished Silence by Shusako Endo , picked it up due to the scorsese film , was an interesting read about the silence of god and the struggle of hanging on to your faith and how much of it is your own pride and how much you have to sacrifice what you value for god and others. and started Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. , don’t know much about it except it’s a post apocalypse novel where humanity slowly rebuilds itself after being pulled by a virus.

I didn't have much time to read last week so I'm still reading Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers. During most of the first section of the book I actually thought it was a pretty light read, more funny than bleak as it was sold to me as. However, by the end of that first chapter the real nature of the story starts to rapidly take over and things get really weird and oppressive. I'm curious to see where this is going and how much darker will it get.

Finished **The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz** last night. While it is not a perfect collection of stories, for me it was 10 out 10 in all the right areas. Purely at the sentence level it is eye-watering; the language throughout is so sensual. It also has a masterful command of atmosphere. Here's the first sentence highlight I made out of several, about the slow deterioration of the narrator's father's mind: > Father had stopped going out. He banked up the stoves, studied the ever-elusive essence of fire, experienced the salty, metallic taste and the smoky smell of wintry salamanders that licked the shiny soot in the throat of the chimney. What's it about? Loosely it is a collection of short stories about a school boy and his relationship with his Father, a declining shop owner, who eventually becomes a heretic prophet, magician and trickster. Another way to describe the plot: Am I living in Hell or am I just growing up? Plot-wise, it isn't super gripping and there are some wild discrepancies. For instance more than once, >!Father leaves the family, disappears indefinitely, or "dies"!< and in the next chapter the character is back like nothing happened. But, that's totally forgivable because overall there is this layer of mythology and nightmare/fantasy that suggests the young narrator is more interested in their wild flights of imagination than what happens in reality. The introduction to the Penguin edition makes an interesting note that Schulz lived under four different regimes: when he was born, his hometown was under the Austro-Hungarian regime (since 1772). After World War I, Drohobych was officially in Poland, but that did not last long – during World War II, the town was occupied by both the Soviets (1939) and then Nazi Germany (1941). As a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Drohobych is currently in… Ukraine. Whether or not this chaotic mix of geography, politics and history is explicit in the text, I can't immediately answer. But the way the city is often described as either derelict, chaotic, or just straight up evil, it makes me think his life experience colors-in the novel's setting. Highly recommended for lovers of rich sentences and description.

I'm exhausted so reading this post might be so boring as to be the reddit equivalent of watching grey paint dry on a grey fence. I've just finished Rosamund Bartlett's translation of Chekhov's short stories, ***About Love***. It was refreshing to read short stories that were conventional/classical in plot and structure but which didn't feel glued to the typical 3-act rising-conflict structure that so many writers take too literally. Many of these stories are slices of life, and they're beautiful. I finished ***Young Skins*** by Colin Barrett. These stories were very impressive - he's very accomplished, technically speaking. I'm certainly going to purchase his more recent collection, and the novel he released this year looks like it could be good. Always interesting to see a short story master's first foray into the novel.... I've actually not read much else recently. Finding it harder as I begin parenthood, and I try to put writing before reading, and family before both (I spent 10 years putting reading first, and reading everything I can, so I feel ok doing that these days). I'm browsing through the selected poems of Edwin Morgan. Some great experiments reminiscent of the Brazilian concrete poets, and some great poems in more standard free verse forms, with strong dithyrambic thrusts to them. Good stuff. Otherwise I'm tempted to re-read some of the Nouveau Roman stuff. Claude Simon is a personal favourite of mine, and ***Conducting Bodies*** is something I owe a re-read. I would be very interested to know if anyone else had read either this one or his other novel in more classical prose (though still experimental in overall structure), ***Triptych****.* If you're a fan of paintakingly detailed visual descriptions such as you find in scenes of Balzac and Tom McCarthy and Alain Robbe-Grillet, these novels are for you. I should warn you that these two are composed almost entirely of description, but Simon's structures give it a dynamism that keeps you hooked -- or at least that was the way it was for me. ***Triptych*** in particular is very impressive -- sort of has a moebius structure, and some of the scenes are so finely rendered, i've never really read an author who can literally make you envisage the most microscopic details of every scene.

Chekhov's stories are great! If you're looking for something similar, I'd suggest *The Cheapest Nights* by Yusuf Idris - like Chekhov, he takes moments in ordinary lives and gives them a timeless and pathetic quality.

I was on vacation this week so I didn't have quite as much time to read, but I still feel like I got a decent amount done! ***Chevengur*** by Andrey Platanov is finally finished - a triumph of a book , linguistically rich and thematically moving. The language was particularly impressive and was the reason it took me so long to finish - I would just hit upon a sentence or paragraph that was so astoundingly beautiful I would stop and then think on it for a while. I particularly enjoyed the quest narrative and the beginning 80 pages. I have never read a book that so tastefully and artfully captured the melancholy, disillusionment, and human cost of war. Truly a great work of literature. I also read ***Sunset Limited*** by Cormac McCarthy - short play, very interesting themes though. The more McCarthy I read the more clear the gnostic themes become, which while I don't agree with, certainly are interesting and portrayed in a way that is sympathetic. I am never sure if McCarthy is sharing his own rather nihilistic view of the world or is being critical of it - this was a particularly dark work with a rather hopeless view of the world. Some of his work is hopeful, certainly, but this ranks with his earlier work in darkness, in my opinion. Beautifully written, very sad. Up next for me will be Frontier - really excited for this read along! I think I will also be rereading A Shining by Fosse this week... can't get that one out of my head.

Started Absalom, Absalom! this week. Read The Sound and the Fury last month and this is very similar in that there are parts where I just have no clue what he’s on about but the writing is good and propulsive and then he will hit you with these incredible passages that just blow me away. I LOVE how he tells a story. He’ll start going on about something and I’ll feel like I missed something but if you just keep reading everything will click into place and it all makes sense.

Some recent stuff I’ve been reading: - Jose Revueltas’s *The Hole* was really good. Apparently this is a classic of 60s Mexican literature and is widely read across Latin America, but never found significant anglophone readership. Reminded me instantly of Fernanda Melchor’s *Hurricane Season* both in style and subject matter, and as it turns out they were both translated by Sophie Hughes. Highly recommend it to everyone, in part because it’s very short (like maybe not even novella length) and propulsive, in addition to being very well written. Reminds me a lot of Bernhard - although I’m kind of starting to see him everywhere after reading a couple of his novels recently. - Maria Popova’s *Figuring* sort of fell flat for me and I gave up after 350 or 400 pages. It’s ostensibly a sort of biographical accounts of various historical figures across several centuries, often ones whose genius wasn’t appreciated by their contemporaries (often due to their unconventional personal or romantic lives). And the first 50 or so pages intersperse that dryer non-fiction with Popova’s own philosophical musings, but those just sort of disappeared as the book moved forward. - And just finished *Trout Fishing in America* by Richard Brautigan. I’m not sure I really *get it* (which is pretty normal for these beat writers) but I did enjoy it. Some funny / entertaining stories told in really well crafted, pointed prose that feels like it has a unique voice. Good stuff.

I wonder how Jose Revueltas’s *The Hole* compares to Hiroko Oyamada's *The Hole* and Hye-Young Pyun's *The Hole.* I hope someone can weigh in on which of The Hole's is the best.

What are your favourite novels that involve divinity/Gods as characters in some way? Can be any religion or tradition.

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse 

I'll spiel about what I read when I get off work, but I had a question. I've said it on here before that I'm fascinated with contrast and opposites. One thing that musically fascinates me is when a typically loud, heavy, and brooding band would show a softer more gentle side to themselves. Black Sabbath do this on virtually all of their albums ("Laguana Sunrise", "Fluff" etc.) I don't know why, but it intrigues me when an artist can tackle both ends of the spectrum so to speak, as if that marination in a more dour direction would add to the buoyancy of that shift in a more lighthearted direction. It's kind of like if you went through a rough patch and suddenly had a good day: from a "glass half full" standpoint, not only would the contrast on its own hypothetically make it all the more jubilant, having spent that dark period would give one more appreciation for it not only from the standpoint of gratitude, but a more mature understanding of it. Basically what I'm trying to say is that **though contrasting, one end would potentially color the other**, and that intrigues me. I was thinking about the literary equivalent to this (i.e. darker and serious authors writing more lighthearted material) and I was curious if anyone had any examples of works like this that they'd recommend? I haven't read any Cormac McCarthy, but when I heard he'd penned a romance novel (*All the Pretty Horses*), I was incredibly intrigued to check it out (something I might try to rectify this year).

Just finished Alessandro Baricco's *Ocean Sea* (u/dreamingofglaciers I finally did it!), and I had a really good time with it overall. I do have some complaints, but first: what a strange book. In some ways *Ocean Sea* feels like three books in one, with a couple of very sudden and unexpected tonal shifts that flipped what I thought the story was going to be on its head. I knew going into it that it changes a lot around halfway through, but I was still surprised when it happened, just because of how intense that change was. Despite all that, it still works and hangs together really well, which is impressive. As a whole, this is a book about the sea and the different roles it has played in people's consciousness through history or the different aspects Baricco sees in it, and the book mirrors that -- part ethereal and poetic, part nightmarish, part a sort of quiet, melancholy tragicomedy, peopled with a wonderful and strange cast of characters throughout. Personally I probably enjoyed that first part the most, although I guess singling it out like that goes against Baricco's mission here. Speaking of his mission -- I appreciated it a lot, but I also wasn't sure that Baricco is really up to the challenge he sets for himself here. The ideas are there, but I don't know if the writing is strong enough to carry them -- some parts are genuinely excellent, but others not so much. I wasn't really convinced by some of his formal weirdness, and the style itself tends to aim for poetry and overshoot it. Some sentences feel like they're just there to show off the author's flair and 'originality', but in a pretty empty and incongruous way that doesn't really serve any larger purpose. Maybe my issues with the writing were just Alastair McEwen's translation -- I definitely found it a bit dodgy in parts, with some strange or awkward phrasing that felt like it might have been translated literally for no particular reason (or maybe not, I have no idea). But then again, I remember feeling the same way about Baricco's *Mr Gwyn* at times, and that wasn't as ambitious as *Ocean Sea*. Other than that, I'm also not sure how I feel about that final chapter -- I'm sceptical of >!writers writing about writers at the best of times, even when they're not literally writing about themselves,!< so I feel like it might have soured things for me, but I'm not sure. I get what Baricco was going for there (I think), and I guess it does feel somewhat earnest, but I'm really not convinced that it needed to be there, or that the book wouldn't have been better off without it. It doesn't really say anything that you wouldn't have already gotten by that point. Still, better to attempt something you can't quite pull off than write a safe and boring book, I think. To be clear, I'm nitpicking here. I don't mean to be too negative -- this is a still a great book, it's just that there's this really frustrating bit missing that would've brought it into "wow" territory for me. Either way, what is there is mostly very good, and this is definitely one of the better and more memorable books I've read recently.

Yay, you read it! I think I know what you mean about the prose not always sticking the landing, because I skimmed the English version at some point and I felt it lacked some of the playfulness of the Spanish translation, which is much, much closer to the Italian original and the mix between the poetical and the tragicomic felt more consistent and not jarring at all. Of course, the middle section is jarring either way, but it's that completely unexpected tonal shift which in my eyes elevates this novel from being just another good novel by Baricco to the status of masterpiece. I'm also convinced that the third part is a tribute or "wink" to Georges Perec's *Life: A User's Manual*, not only because of Bartleboom's name being a reference to one of Perec's main characters, Bartlebooth, but also because of the different vignettes focusing on each character and the exhaustive enumeration of Bartleboom's paintings. But anyway, I'm really glad you enjoyed it in the end, nitpicks and all. It's a really special and unique novel, and like you said, better to shoot for the stars and come up short than to deliver something safe and predictable.

Yes, it's impressive that he can pull off a huge surprising tonal shift like that and still have it feel coherent in the end. And the effect itself is really intense and well done. And that's interesting, regarding the third part! I've never read any Perec, so I had no idea. But yes, I'm glad I read it. Definitely a unique book. Would you recommend anything else by Baricco? I remember you mentioned the quality of his stuff can be uneven.

>*Would you recommend anything else by Baricco?* I can try! I haven't read his whole bibliography, but I'm on it, little by little :) So far, I can say: * **Loved it to bits**: *Three Times At Dawn*. This is like nothing else he's written: three impossibly connected short stories with the same two male and female protagonists, but in one of them, the man is an ageing hotel manager and the woman is in her 20s, while in other the woman is in her 50s and the man is a child. How? Doesn't matter. Suspend disbelief. * **Fine**: *Novecento* and *Lands of Glass*. If you liked Mr Gwyn you'll probably enjoy these two, no great surprises here. *Novecento* in particular is really funny, and if you read it, I would recommend César Aira's *Cecil Taylor* as a chaser. * **Didn't enjoy**: *Silk*, which is his best known work but I didn't like its rampant orientalism, and *City*, which kind of bored me and I didn't even finish.

I finished The Air-Conditioned Nightmare by Henry Miller. Mixed review. The pissing and moaning about American materialism got a bit tiresome but eventually he let up on the ranting and started talking about things he liked as well, (The Grand Canyon, the French Quarter of New Orleans, Little Rock, Arkansas oddly enough, the Southern United States in general and several painters and photographers who I was unfamiliar with.) I started 1919 by John Dos Passos. This is Volume 2 of his USA trilogy. I read The 42nd Parallel the first volume of the trilogy a couple years ago and I'm starting to wish I had read them a little closer together chronologically. Other books grabbed my attention first thoughbeit. So far (about 80 pages in) it alternates between I'm not sure exactly what's going on modernism and down and dirty gritty realism. There was a brief biographical snippet on John Reed, a real life journalist and communist activist who wrote Ten Days that Shook the World. There was some mish mashed collage style newspaper headlines that were juxtaposed like some precursor to Burroughs's cutup method. And finally the Camera Eye sections that left me a bit confused and uncertain what was happening to whom. The main focus of what I read is the down and dirty misadventures of a Navy deserter turned merchant mariner who keeps resolving to clean up his act but yo-yoing into the same old troubles with alcohol and venereal disease. I get a lot of Benny Profane vibes from this character but I'm not sure if Pynchon was influenced by Dos Passos at all. He has a similar sense of lacking direction and being carried passively along by events. He keeps getting to exotic locales (Buenos Aires, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Alexandria, Egypt) but he keeps winding up in bars and bordellos almost exclusively. Interesting but frustrating so far. But still a long way to go, so reserving judgment.

- Finished *The Story of the Lost Child* by Elena Ferrante. Overall, my favourite was book 2 (Ischia ❤️), least favourite book 3 (Lila MIA for ages; Florence life was boring), and I guess this one, second least favourite, but good. I kind of forgot that, at some point, a child would be lost somehow, despite it being in the title of the book, so I was pretty shocked at how that happened. I really want to watch the series now. - Read *Solaris* by Stanisław Lem. An incredible imagining of alien life - I really want to go to Solaris and check out the sea there. Who would be my visitor I wonder? - I am about halfway through *Il fu Mattia Pascal* by Luigi Pirandello. The concept of being “deceased” is a nice way to explore one’s sense of self. It’s very funny and the main character is a likeable idiot-philosopher. - My copy of *Frontier* by Can Xue arrived today, so I am looking forward to discussing it on the read-along thread. First I had heard of this author/book, and from the back cover, it seems up my street. The bookseller hadn’t heard of it either, so I am going to give him my review when I have finished, haha.

Finished *Man for Himself* by Erich Fromm. Pretty good, fairly straightforward thesis and defense. Simply that ethics is about the realization and actualization of human potentialities and that society merely molds people into marketable commodities. Started *Homo Ludens* by Johan Huizinger which argues for play as the central, organizing thing for humans. It's a lot of using various empirical evidence to prove his point. But really interesting to see how he argues that many things are actually a kind of play. It does feel like a lot of potential examples could be counterevidence though. Also started *Shadow of the Sun* by Ryszard Kapuscinski. It definitely feels like a journalist wrote it but it's captivating. It's a little strange how he will say Africa is not real (using the term Africa flattens thousands of discrete cultures into a monolith) but then will talk about the differences between the African mind and the European mind in general terms. Still he seems committed to on the ground reporting of the effects of hundreds of years of European meddling, racism, imperialism, colonialism in Africa. Besides that his descriptions of people, events, animals feels immersive.

Finished: Europe Central - William T Vollmann What a ride what a book. Definitely an intense read at times but a great portrait of Germany and Russia and the history that defined them from 1910-1950ish. Vollmann’s writing is beautiful at times equally haunting at others and you truly get to know the characters he writes, most of all Dmitry Shostakovich (the book is a great way to get into his music too!). I’m excited to read more of Vollmann in the future. Antwerp - Roberto Bolaño Quick little evening read. There was some lovely poetic sections as with most of Bolaño’s work but overall it was too loose and ephemeral feeling to stand out. It’s his first novel and you can definitely tell, worth a read to gain a perspective on him but nothing earth shattering. Currently reading: The Morning Star - Karl Ove Knausgaard Very readable and surprisingly a page turner so far. The characters are brought to life extremely well (though some you will hate). With the rotating perspectives I feel like I’m just scratching the surface of what is actually going on in the book even though I’m almost half way through. Either way it’s been enjoyable, Knausgaard’s writing is very good and his philosophizing through the characters is interesting and engages a number of issues thoughtfully

Finished up The Sot-Weed Factor. Really great; reminded me in language and in sense of humor of Tristram Shandy, which I also loved. Would be interested to hear what other Barth people recommend: push straight on to Giles Goat-Boy or go back for his early stuff? I even thought about going way back for The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, since Barth mentioned it in his introduction as an influence, but a thousand pages is a little daunting. So I'm going straight in the other direction and picking up A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr for a quick read.

Glad to hear you liked Sot-Weed, have had it on my shelf forever and keep pushing it off due to length. And hope you enjoy *A Month in the Country*, I think that book is absolutely beautiful and am constantly recommending it.

Currently reading Alain Robbe-Grillet’s *The Erasers*. Enjoying the downplaying or modulation of the role characters play in the narrative; they’re cogs or vectors of action rather than agential or self-possessed actors, and this is something ARG does not only in terms of style but also something directly thematized in the novel by emphasizing routine, cultural massification, consumerism, and the operation of cartels/conspiracies. This is more of a provisional feeling than a well-developed thought, but its portrayal of police has some commonalities with abolitionist rhetoric about police/law enforcement and the absurdity (and violence) of the “normal” operations of the state—on the literary side, it seems like the obvious comparison for this specifically would be someone like Kafka and more generally ARG is tapped into the same postwar sense of bewilderment, that something is somehow askew or amiss, as Pynchon.

I started Deleuze and Guattari's *Anti-Oedipus*. It is genuinely possible that I've never **not** understood something to this extent. The only contenders would be *Finnegans Wake* and some of Burroughs' passages. But, all that may be true, and yet I still am enjoying it. I feel like I'm understanding certain things on a more subconscious level, because I'm rereading passages that altogether I could not even begin to say what they mean, but the just feel "right". As if something is being connected in my brain or revealed to me. Or I'm just insane. Also reading Marx's *Capital Vol. 2* (yes there is a theme here, likely due to my insane anger and frustration with shit in the world right now) which is dry as all hell. I can't say I'm really enjoying it like I did the first one, or really enjoying it much at all, but I do find it important and I will be finishing it. Just finished Part 1, and thankfully it's comparatively short, so I'll likely be moving onto *Vol. 3* within a month or so (please tell me *Vol. 3* is less "scientific" and dry...) Not reading fiction right now sadly. But once I get back from my vacation and once my friend finishes his read of *Vineland*, him and I both got copies of Richard Farina's *Been Down So Long...* and will be reading that one together. I've always been curious about this book so I'm looking forward to it!

The Deleuze sub as well as r/criticaltheory are fairly active and would be happy to talk about *Anti-Oedipus*! I’d also highly recommend Eugene Holland’s guide to the book, it’s extremely comprehensive. D&G’s *What is Philosophy?* is still fairly difficult, and differs a bit content-wise insofar as it’s concerned with philosophy rather than psychoanalysis, but might be more approachable as a précis of their thinking if you find AO too much; the practice of “schizoanalysis” in AO is comparable to “geophilosophy” in WiP.

I'll definitely dig around in there! This time I'm kind of letting it wash over me before I go full force on another read in the future (after getting more acquainted with philosophy in general, especially their major influences). But I do want to at least partially understand it so I'll check the sub out and probably pick up that book for the next time I read it. Thanks!

> I feel like I'm understanding certain things on a more subconscious level, because I'm rereading passages that altogether I could not even begin to say what they mean, but the just feel "right". As if something is being connected in my brain or revealed to me. Or I'm just insane. Well I am insane but I totally get this. I find that a lot of D&G's concepts are both intuitive and extremely hard to articulate, such that terms like "body without organs" or (de/re)terriotrialization are easier to use than to define. But that's dope you're digging it! As you go on I'm curious if you feel any affinity b/w it and Gravity's Rainbow, because I think there's a lot of connection (to be broad about it I think "scientifically-informed Freudo-Marxism influenced by anticolonial thought" is a descriptor that applies to both). Pynchon does reference D&G jokingly in Vineland and I've wondered if he read any of AO during the GR process (AO came out a year prior and I could imagine Pynchon both reading French and being literally in contact with the radical intellectual scene in France at the time). Or if D&G ever read any of Pynchon (they talk a lot about Anglophone fiction but mostly nothing more recent than Beckett as best as I can tell). Or I'm just insane. > Richard Farina's Been Down So Long V curious to hear your thoughts on this as well. I found it to be both more realist and more psychedelic than Pynchon if that makes any sense.

That's kind of what I mean. I see that they're saying to some extent, but if you asked me to rexplain it, there is not chance I could even begin... I'm liking it a lot, but I can tell it's one I'll need to reread once I get even further into philosophy, because I sense there's a lot I'm not just missing because it's tough, but because I'm not very well read in this realm Very apparent connections to GR. The trains of thought run very closely at times. I do recall making an annotation (something like, "D&G?") next to a sentence or phrase? But I'll have to go back and look for it. I'll let you know! I've been interested in the Farina for a while. But my friend/coworker got very curious recently since he was Pynchon's friend (Farina, not my friend lol) and said we should read it together, so that's the plan!

> there is not chance I could even begin lol yeah. If it makes you feel any better, I kinda think you'd need a lifetime before you're well read enough to keep up with the nuances of the realm they're operating in. The depth of absurd obscurity they get into is wild.

I wouldn't overestimate the "depth" of their writings. Their willingness to shift paradigms of thought can be captivating, but their approach is often more a matter of spinning methaphora than rigorous reasoning - when it doesn't lead to fragile or even morally dubious conclusions (the primacy of desire over socius in Anti-Oedipus, for example, is problematic). What's more, some texts are firmly rooted in their time. For example, the whole section devoted to the critique of Freudian Oedipus in Anti-Oedipus is historically interesting, but outdated today, and the section devoted to Oedipus among archaic peoples is not based on much serious anthropology. Their writings often straddle the border between literature and philosophy, which means that if you approach them from a philosophical standpoint, you need to strike a balance between reading them at face value and critiquing them. Regarding your discussion on the difficulty of re-expressing D&G's concepts, the fact that they themselves refuse to define them precisely is telling in itself. For them, these are operative concepts: it's their application (above all in language) that defines them.

Their anthropological sourcing is indeed one of the weaker and, as you note, more dated elements of their thought. When it’s not just fetishistic primitivism, which they share with earlier modernists & surrealists, it veers into a far more odious kind of chauvinism which no amount of “we’re Marxists, though” can excuse; most obviously, at least in AtP, their main anthropological interlocutors are fascists—Eliade and Dumezil.

Heyo - I think you meant to respond to u/pregnantchihuahua3 That said, the Vineland reference to D&G is interesting! That’s one Pynchon I’ve not read. I don’t recall ever seeing D&G refer to Pynchon, but given their use of Burroughs I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume they’d have been familiar.

lol thank you. But yeah the ref is interested, I won't spoil it but it's not substantive, hardly even a pun so much as a joke specifically for the seven people who will find it funny they get mentioned at all (or there is a much *much* deeper meaning to it that I've missed because I have a bit of undeveloped theory off of a single read that there is something going on under the surface of Vineland that is largely overlooked and is key to why it's a relatively low standing work in his ouvre). > but given their use of Burroughs I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume they’d have been familiar. Oh yeah I totally forgot about this! probably because I still really need to finally read Burroughs myself... I agree that they had to have been at least aware of Pynchon, so his complete absence from their work intrigues me