jebi_se

Brushing Away

2012-02-12T11:52:00.000-05:00

January ended with mixed messages. The weather whispered renewal in defiance of the calendar. This confusion fortunately didn't extend to my reading. Balzac, Turgenev and Lampedeusa each affected me greatly. There was a bit of waddled after that. The puddles of uncertainty often irk. I read We The Animals by Justin Torres which struck me as a talking therapy submitted to a MFA Program. Itwasn't bad, but the ruminations on the feral didn't lead very far.

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray was dispatched next. This wasn't akin to Infinite Jest in any constructive sense. Thoughts towards such a thesis are hopeful, at best. Murray has an ear for the speech of adolescents but as a novel it was soggy and unsatisfying. I finished the week by enjoying a collection of essays On British Fiction, edited by Zachary Leader and featuring a number of favorite authors: Amis, McEwan and Hitchens. A fortunate byproduct of this reading has been an inclination to plunge back into the novels of Iris Murdoch.

My favorite title of the year, so far

2012-02-03T17:29:00.002-05:00

No, it wasn't Hobo With A Shotgun, but rather the fascinating What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander. The rather forward indication of both Carver and the Shoah is a younger man's gambit. At least today, while exhausted from work, yeah, I say I find it a masterful stroke.

Pausing

2012-02-01T18:25:00.001-05:00

From the AP wire: "Poland's 1996 Nobel Prize-winning poet Wislawa Szymborska, whose simple words and playful verse plucked threads of irony and empathy out of life, has died. She was 88."

When I went to NYC in 1996, I stumbled about toting my copy of Gravity's Rainbow and appearing lost. I finally went out to see Joel on Long island. He had a poem from Ms. Szymborska on his fridge. We communed over such. That was a lifetime ago.

On The Mend

2012-01-26T16:24:00.003-05:00

Over the weekend I finished both The Dynamite Club and Eric Ambler's Journey Into Fear. I appreciated both, but wasn't moved. This glib calm allowed me to proceed headlong into a terrible cold. I quickly discovered that my immobilizing illness didn't allow the panache to address the sinuous sentences of Javier Marias. Instead I pushed into Balzac's deeply cynical Cesar Birotteau.

Strange to say, I haven't been able to read much, not even the aromatic pulse of Balzac's prose.

Wee Small Hours

2012-01-22T00:47:00.001-05:00

It isn't quite that temporal estimation, but I can still offer this from Celine.

To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose. People don't deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them. To hell with them!”
― Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Jon LIKED This

2012-01-21T17:07:00.003-05:00

Somwhere between this and this one become inclined to register their age, ponder their place around the literary pyramid and offer burnt offerings to the sighing stones of our own foundations.

Comforts Abound

2012-01-21T16:56:00.002-05:00

I'm listening to Osvaldo Golijov's mesmerizing opera Ainadamar and as it is bitter cold outside, we have elected to read this afternoon, I've nearly put the Dynamite Club to bed. It isn't bad at all, a survey of sorts which finds success in cultivating cliques of fascinating detail. I just read this:

Often the surfeit of life is breathtaking, given the gnarled means for resolution.

Adaptive Reuse

2012-01-21T14:59:00.002-05:00

Just before noon today I was walking on Bardstown Road and I saw a cluster of birds feeding. This was a pleasant sight. I then noticed that they were eating from a puddle of human vomit.

My reading of The Dynamite Club continues well apace. I fear this will be yet another samizdat book where the only discussion is well after the fact. Consequently my reading of Javier Marias has halted for a day or so. It is likely a conflation of Your Face Tomorrow and the over-heralded adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, sailor, Spy which elicited groundswells concerning Eric Ambler amongst others. I dare say the analysis of the anarchists in John Merriman's The Dynamite Club is far too clinical for the smoky asides of that other genre.

Which Foot Leads

2012-01-19T17:32:00.002-05:00

This should feel like the year of Javier Marias, except it doesn't. Without a doubt, I found the first volume of Your Face Tomorrow magnificent, an authorial arc which pressed me personally. That said, little lingered aside from those initial reactions.

I elected to detour and read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne, which I enjoyed, though I felt it lacked the philosophical edge of H.G. Wells. Distractions abounded concerning the oeuvre of Eric Ambler. Time passed, it didn't really snow. I've caught up on sleep and suddenly I am back with Marias, Dance and Dream, the second volume has unfolded and I do love it. Maybe my lapels presently refuse grabs.

Moonstruck

2012-01-13T18:58:00.003-05:00

"Books speak in the middle of the night just as the river speaks, quietly and reluctantly, or perhaps the reluctance stems from our own weariness or own somnambulism and our own dreams, even though we are or believe ourselves to be wide awake." -- Javier Marias

The above quote occurred midstream in my effort to stay awake the other night. My wife was out and I wanted to hear her should she call. There isn't much to add to the exhilaration describing someone excitation established by someone occupied with an idea or question and leafing through books through the wee, small hours to resolve such. If the reader is occupied concurrently with just such a process, the benefits are palpable.

Since the last post, I enjoyed H.G. Wells' Time Machine. It is an intriguing treatise on the attitudes not only to history but towards science. If we can create a conveyance, it must be progressive. No one bother with consequences. We'll leave that for the radicals and the eggheads.

Read in 2011

2012-01-05T22:06:00.002-05:00

I don't know how not to be afraid. - Shostakovich speaking to Stravinksy, possibly only about conducting.

Most of what I find these days is mediocre, if only by definition. Meh is okay, what would be the alternative? Pledges were made last January to read 15 Polish books whereas I only read four. I did top 100 books in 2011 for whatever that is worth. Was there disappointment? Certainly. I would fathom the following as

1Q84 Haruki Murakami
The Pale King David Foster Wallace
Reamde Neal Stephenson
Next James Hynes

This quartet share something obviously. One should be quick to consider that the Pale King was in no way nascent novel form.

The Shostakovich quote is from Wendy Lesser's Music For Silenced Voices, a study of the 15 quartets. This volume remains slim in itself, depending on padding and it becomes more a biography of the Beethoven Quartet which premiered most of the works by Shostakovich. I do thank Joel for the gift; if for nothing else, I listened again to all the quartets over a long holiday weekend.

Tihana bought me the new Houellebecq which I noted on the previous posting. This was wretched beauty which found ways to touch and move, even my blase ass in the depths of winter. This was a shrieking success.

A January Plan

2011-12-29T22:59:00.002-05:00

The first month of 2012 will be devoted to those who confronted Stalin whether in aggregate or through abstraction. The month will involve texts by or about Shostakovich, Trotsky and Babel.

Serendipities

2011-12-28T18:53:00.003-05:00

Such is not only the amazing shortish book by Umberto Eco that was finished this morning, it is also an apt description of the mountain of books which arrived here for the holidays thanks to the thought of those I love.

A Very Houellebecq Christmas

2011-12-25T12:11:00.002-05:00

Tihana mailed us the new novel The Map and the Territory and it was quite the surprise. Noting that she was already reading such the other day I picked up Public Enemies, his exchanges with BHL, while shopping at Half Price and began plowing through such. This isn't the day for H's professed Depressionism but I would like it noted that yesterday I also completed The Victim by Saul Bellow and Roberto Bolano's By Night in Chile. These are two amazing works by authors discovering their prowess; you can sense both men calibrating their reach and imagining the pounds per inch of their respective impacts. These are pristine examples of the novelist as pugilist.

I hope all enjoy this festive season.

The Grim Shakes

2011-12-24T13:33:00.002-05:00

I have privately hazarded a theory that many of the great literary plots became void upon the arrival of air conditioning in the modern world. Saul Bellows' early novel The Victim is another example. If Levanthal had central air, he would likely have slept better and with an improved nervous disposition he would have been better disposed to encounter Allbee, his antagonist.

I feel no spirit this year. I am looking forward to being with my wife the next few days.

I am leaning towards a reading goal for 2012. I have wrestled with the idea of trying to complete 40 biographies. The pull for such remains inexplicable.

Missing Hitch

2011-12-21T18:39:00.002-05:00

The novel I was reading Friday was Fateless by Imre Kertész. It must have been waiting near here by the computer. I was stepping into the shower when my wife told me that Christopher Hitchens had passed. I completed the novel that day. It appears appropriate for myriad metrics.

My choice to then later read The Successor by Kadare was influenced, if not dictated, by the passing of the Dear Leader. Somewhere lurking within was my recollection that Hitchens once smirked that the loony totalitarian North Korean state would implode by the publication of an essay he penned 6 years ago. That wasn't to be, but the Albanian master sparkled in his political novel about the mysterious death of Mehmet Shehu in 1980.

Each passing day sheds more of this oblong pain which I find so awkward about someone I never met. I read two novels by David Lodge (Small World and Home Truths) and a collection of stories by Ian McEwan, (Between The Sheets) perhaps to staunch some related wound.

Tabs

2011-12-14T16:11:00.000-05:00

Life offers an odor of being hectic, though it isn't, not really. The weather has been remarkably stable and work unfolds without any throat punches, so, that's a plus. I have completed a number of books since my last posting. There was The History of Love by Nicole Kraus. I found that oddly affecting while still fuelled by that youthful desire link the stars in a fitting celestial tapestry. I finished Cold Comfort Farm which I enjoyed, though largely for Gibbons' imagination about a near future when private aircraft would be as ubiquitous as Fords. Her wit was biting throughout and it reminded me of Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies.

Following a wonderful weekend I swept through J.M. Coetzee's Life and Times of Michael K, which I consider profound. Coupled with his Waiting For The Barbarians, Coetzee's vision is penetrating and poetic. I simply wish he would write his lesser novels which simply frustrate in contrast. That remains my problem, not his.

I am nearly finished with another pair of novels: The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz and Next by James Hynes. I selected the latter as I found it for a dollar and The Believer raved over it. It is a recycled Mrs. Dalloway, substituting a smarmy, blase protagonist for the insights of Woolf's characters. I devoured 200 pages of it last night and I found myself shaking my head, incredulous. I often think these days that the Nobel Committee was correct in their assessment of Contemporay American Literature.

I am to embark upon my reread endeavor starting tomorrow and then likely some history for samizdat over the holidays.

To Mourn

2011-12-06T09:57:00.002-05:00

While waiting in line last week at the MOTH Radio hour, my wife told me that Svetlana Stalin had passed away in Wisconsin. This affected me unexpectedly. Knowledge that she lived a few states away always intrigued me. Perhaps I harbored thoughts of visiting her, creating a portal for her to disclose that most extraordinary of childhoods.

I belatedly discovered just now that Christa Wolf has also passed away. I regard her novel Accident as powerful meditation on what it means to be modern.

Shaking Off The Dust

2011-12-06T09:00:00.002-05:00

Nearing completion in a pair of books, I have drifted into a mode for rereading. My thoughts appear anchored on a short stack for the next few weeks:

Too Loud A Solitude - Hrabal
Amsterdam - McEwan
Norwegian Wood - Murakami

This remains morning speculation, nothing more.

Twinnings

2011-12-04T19:23:00.003-05:00

Often when I think about John Gardner, my thoughts sort of hyperlink to Iris Murdoch. I'm not sure about the causes for such.

I completed Babel Tower, which was a messy shit of a book; an unfortunate detour form the narrative of Virgin In The Garden and Still Life. I then read Aiding and Abetting by Muriel Spark, which amused me but felt as if it were an exercise. I also think of Severed Head by Iris Murdoch when I think of Muriel Spark. I have only read a pair of her lesser efforts but both betray the the interior mechanisms of Severed Head: that isn't a compliment.

I did pick up Books Burn Badly and am nearly through such. head ways have also been made in The Doll and Cold Comfort Farm.

Where Did The Good Go?

2011-11-22T18:09:00.000-05:00

At present time I am disheartened by the populace which rushes by under my windows in pursuit of the fatted calf. And they say that intelligence is to be found in the street! -Flaubert

Thanksgiving week has historically proved to be a powder keg at my work. This post doesn't concern my work only my own volatile afternoon. My friend Tim sent me an email. I love the man but he has been looking for straw men to contradict ever since his beloved proclaimed mission accomplished. Anchored in the email was the news that Egypt is going to hell in a hand basket. Somehow, this must be Obama's fault! I shrugged and didn't write back; no such notes appeared citing Lenin and eggs. I make my way home and watch United play horrible defense against Benifica in the Champions League.

Sigh. I have completed Still Life by A.S. Byatt and have chewed through 450 pages in Babel Tower, its successor in the Frederica tales. I have nodded as samizdat has tumbled off into what may prove the Big Sleep. Joel is finishing his basement with help imported from Scandinavia. Yeah, I know, it is a holiday week

The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women

2011-11-17T17:02:00.002-05:00

I read the "memoir" by James Ellroy Tuesday night in one blurred, scratching, sitting. It bothered me. I recognize it could be a stunt, it could be hyperbole. I don't care, it bothered me.

Feeling Better

2011-11-15T16:34:00.002-05:00

Large slabs of lucidity, albeit in slow motion, was available today. I recalled an interview I viewed with Martin Amis surrounding the publication of The Pregnant Widow. Gazing in the mirror and perhaps sensing the Reaper is now afoot, Amis described this theory of his where writers should stop before say 70 as what occurs subsequent will be senile shit and embarrassing for the legacy as it were.

I should pause to draw attention to Amis' other theories for instance that all Muslims should be stopped and questioned daily so as to "clean their own house."

Well, anyway, Marty, your theory is shit and you know it. I only need cite The Prague Cemetery. There, feel that wrath? I know you do. I still love you.

Busy Then Sick

2011-11-14T11:39:00.000-05:00

Umberto Eco concludes his masterful Infinity of Lists with a verse from Apollinaire: Pity for us who always battle on the frontiers of the boundless and the future. Following our return from Chicago I concluded Eco's survey and reveled in selections from Burton, Rabelais, Huysmans and Pynchon. This is certainly a book to be savored.

The first week back at work proved engaging, though I managed to complete Murakami's 1Q84 with a measure below satisfaction. Since then I have considered that the use of Aomame's vocation and personal devotion to intense stretching is an apt portal into the book. Maestro Murakami expects the reader to endure the ritual and the repetition for the sake of a nimble enlightenment. I can’s consider myself as converted.

The Prague Cemetery by Eco became available at the library and I swooped into this pastiche where apparently most of the dialogue is actual from available records, which is astounding. One must measure the recoil when we encounter towards the novel’s conclusion that The Protocols of Zion must include a platform from the Jewish/Freemason Conspiracy that history should be minimized in public education as no one need concern themselves with centuries of tragedy and deception, but focus on a brightened future of possibility. Such cynicism is a shorthand for almost every political movement in history. Eco has certainly triumphed with this one.

My wife’s sister Tihana mailed me a copy of The Loudest Sound and Nothing by Claire Wigfall which I pounced upon and read in a pair of evenings before my present head cold throttled me. I enjoyed the collection with mixed responses as I am so disposed. There are images from within such I can’t manage to elude which I suppose is an endorsement of sorts

Heft

2011-11-03T15:22:00.002-04:00

My copy of 1Q84 arrived last Friday, just before we headed north to Chicago. Despite my being on holiday as such. There haven't proved to be enormous slabs of time for reading. I have skipped about with my murakami in tow and managed 20-30 pages stretches. This has culminated in my being around p.400.

My observations have perched around the idea that is may be the darkest work yet from the Nipponese author. It is reckless to suggest, but I felt initially that this was some measure of a response to 2666. Many of the Murakami leitmotifs are present in abundance; the alienation, the awkward encounters with younger women, the brushing with edges of something sinister. Apart form that, this is more visceral than I've grown to expect.

Swerving Out of Fear

2011-10-26T10:03:00.001-04:00

My life has maintained a just flow as of late. The Manchester Derby arrived and my side took a bruising. Recoiling form such I sought out Hrabal’s Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age. What a strumming delight that proved. The pain from Old Trafford subsided, albeit briefly, I was both captivated and tenderly embraced by the human asides of hilarity, boredom and tragedy.

My wife meanwhile was reading The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. I had actually checked it out form the library two days before it won the Booker Prize. Yesterday we swapped books and I devoured the tale of mnemonics and ethics in a single evening. It was a delight afterwards and this morning to discuss and compare the cryptic ending from this gem of a novel.

Who Drove The Ambulance?

2011-10-22T11:04:00.002-04:00

It is a golden day here in the backwater. Despite the banging of the lid on the computer desk, I remain charmed, listening to Purcell, and reading to fruition The Elegance of the Hedgehog, a novel which divisive in the larger scheme of things, or at least among the Druids of Goodreads. I must rush to admit that I am smitten with the novel. My wife finished Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy last night and we revelled, my own intuition, there is considerable overlap thematically and such is embraced and esteemed.

On Reamde

2011-10-18T11:49:00.001-04:00

"There are times when you wonder if Reamde is the smartest dumb novel you have ever read or the dumbest smart novel." - Tom Bissell, The New York Times Book Review

1000 Page Stinkers

2011-10-18T11:19:00.002-04:00

Reamde was put to bed yesterday. Should I say bin? It was completed and then my wife and I walked the two miles to the library and I returned it for the next hopeful soul willing to endure its heft for some transcendence or insight. There isn't any. Neal Stephenson has constructed a hyper-macho world of nerdy descriptions of swordplay and firearms. Thankfully this was wed with an alluring illumination into scientific curiosity. The product was largely exciting literature, even if one wanted to skim the action scenes. This enterprise ran aground early in Reamde. I kept plugging away. I was tempted to return the book at p. 700 but it was a Sunday and who wants to be depressed?

Reamde

2011-10-12T11:26:00.002-04:00

Such is my hefty task at the present. Likewise Bram Stoker's Dracula, which I've wanted to read in October for a while now.

I read a novel titled The Canal a few weeks back. It belongs to the self-proclaimed Off-Beat Generation. It was a pleasant experiment.

Problematic

2011-10-02T16:52:00.002-04:00

We had never learnt to dance, and, for some reason, we had supposed it to be a thing which everybody could do quite easily and naturally. I think Linda realized there and then what it took me years to learn, that the behavior of civilized man really has nothing to do with nature, that all is artificiality and art more or less perfected. -- Nancy Mitford

This past week began with my enjoying Excellent Women by Barbara Pym; it is such an austere book, one streaked with regret. The persisting wit within is such delight, if only in relief. I followed that with The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford, from which the above was cited.

Samizdat has selected White Savage by Fintan O'Toole as its next read, that appears promising, as does Chris Wickham's The Inheritance of Rome.

A Philosopher Watching The Tides

2011-09-25T10:01:00.004-04:00

Having fallen there unwittingly, I gathered a bit of moss, a harmless, bewildered stone. Vincent took it on himself to make me more aware of what was around me, at least at that level; he told me the histories of the sects and the lives of the individuals, the alliances and feuds, the realignments and splits, he filled me in on a host of different points of view, on systems colliding, theories breaking up, arguments bubbling over, and proliferating isms, budding and fissiparous, like minute vibrations. When I had mastered all these details I realized that it had not really got me anywhere at all. - Queneau

I completed Odile by Queneau a week ago and found satisfaction in its inchoate stance. Nothing of an absolute sort has been divined by me personally. It is an ongoing sifting and strolling. I read somewhere that Julian Barnes is our Montaigne. Puzzled initially, I grew fond of that description. I finished his collection Pulse two weeks ago and found it uneven. Maybe it was me. I read the following three years ago.

In 2006, at the Kiev zoo, a man lowered himself by rope into the island compound where the lions and tigers are kept. As he descended, he shouted across to the gawping crowds. One witness quoted him as saying, "Who believes in God will be unharmed by lions"; another, the more challenging, "God will save me, if He exists." The metaphysical provocateur reached the ground, took off his shoes, and walked towards the animals, whereupon an irritated lioness knocked him down, and bit through his carotid artery. - Julian Barnes

During that autumn of 2008 I read the above aloud to my friends Lloyd Wimp and Roger Baylor, both whom practically howled with laughter. Lloyd has since past. Roger and I don't speak as we were once accustomed. Perhaps that is the point of both passages.

Anniversary

2011-09-21T12:27:00.002-04:00

My wife and I are reading Bel-Ami by Maupassant in tandem and will most likely both complete the text today, our Ninth wedding anniversary. While the rakish tale might not be most people's epitome of nuptial value, it is an amazing novel and the titular character is a delightful scoundrel.

My wife has expressed a desire that we read Perec in tandem next, a goal to which I look forward.

Lonesome Dove

2011-09-14T19:21:00.003-04:00

Thanks to antibiotic insomnia and a sprawling day fielding repairmen, I finished Larry McMurtry's epic this afternoon. It was no coincidence that I used a publicity card from John Sayles' Moment In The Sun as a bookmark; both go to explicit ends to delineate the sum of toil necessary to tame this land and thus allow our present suburban ennui. Consider me grateful.

I liked the novel, though I had a problem with Jake's character, especially his shooting of the young girl's husband. The episode appeared forced and acted as authorial evidence that it was okay that his friends hung him. That synopsis doesn't extend justice to the tempo of the text, the static detail which captures and inspires. McMurty also has a dilemma with the emotionally detached characters (just about everyone save Gus and Clara) being placed in gruesome, challenging situations and the reader has little to do but gasp.

A Fist of Threads

2011-09-14T09:22:00.002-04:00

There was a minor coincidence in my reference to Cloud Atlas in that last posting concerning Wesley Stace. My wife read that film adaptation is underway, utilizing multiple directors and the premise sounds interesting. My own interests have been floundered somewhat, as the sinus straits of autumn have again left me in the shoals. I have slept a great deal and absorbed antibiotics chasing of fever with alternating doses of Armadale and Lonesome Dove.

Wesley Stace

2011-09-11T22:53:00.002-04:00

I finished his newest novel today. Despite its awkward title, I found Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer a delightful romp into the heady realm of classical composition and performance. There were strains of David Mitchell initially, though I suspect I was recalling the Frobisher episode from Cloud Atlas.

The novel is overflowing with pithy puns and references to music and culture in the London of just before the Great War. There are also tremors of an unreliable narrator but the novel shifts gears before a Pale Fire parody and instead trots into graceful albeit predictable conclusion.

I have been antagonized today with sinus upheavals and this may temper some ambitions for the week.

My Cache of Shame Has Been Pinched

2011-09-10T15:01:00.003-04:00

The title is a nod to my best friend Joel. The events depicted within are sadly only my own.

I know a guy from the Public House. his name is Bill. We call him Bookstore Bill as there are a host of Bills in circulation. If you hadn't guessed, he works in a bookstore. He has for thirty years now. He worked for Hawley-Cooke for a number of years. It was an institution in Louisville. Economic trends began change and they sold out to Borders. Borders is closing. He was in the pub a few months ago, understandably morose. He was describing his future plans and we all nodded. Bill left and Roger said, the worst thing about the situation is that Bill has to stay and quietly sell off their stock at reduced prices. I then said, I would be happy to help them along. Roger said that this was bad. Roger likes to moralize. Roger likes to moralize about other people and their actions. I am being nice now.

I did not go to Bill's store but i went to the store at the mall. Yeah, the mall. It had been conveyed to me that books were now 80 percent off. That wasn't quite true, but fiction was deuced by such a figure. I bought two novels: Solar by Ian McEwan and Charles Jessold, Considered As A Murderer by Wesley Stace. i am quite comfortable with my decision. Did I poach? Is it people like me that allowed a big box to tumble and collapse? I have always loathed those stores. I wasn't their customer previously, only in emergencies.

Most of the books I buy are used. This is true by a wide margin. I am quite fine with that as well. I listened to Hayden's cello concerto last night while reading Stace's gothic novel about a composer. I bought the Jaqueline du Pre cd at Half Price. It cost me a dollar and I find considerable pleasure in listening to it. The potlatches and privations are beyond my means of odes and citations.

Our Mutual Friend

2011-09-08T11:42:00.002-04:00

One of my heroes George Orwell devoted a considerable amount of effort and writing to the world of Charles Dickens.

"He happens to be one of those 'great authors' who are ladled down everyone's throat in childhood. At the time this causes rebellion and vomiting, but it may have different after-effects in later life."

My own experiences have proved much more intermittent. I completed Our Mutual Friend yesterday after nibbling on such since February. I found the emotional volte-face of many of the characters to be rather jarring; when the ruses are revealed, it felt improbable. Such amateur agents don't strike me as convincing. I am glad I read such.

It Is A Shame

2011-09-04T20:37:00.002-04:00

Iris Chang was not an acute writer. Perhaps I should quickly qualify by stating I have only read 50 pages of the Rape of Nanking. This is the second time i have read those fifty pages. Such harrowing material deserves a deft hand, one which maintains a posture of poise. It didn't receive such.

I was led to Nanking after finishing Hermit of Peking by Hugh Trevor-Roper earlier today. I found his investigation to be marvelous. I sit here now, full from a flowing table of grilled meats and peppers and am thankful for such repose.

My Modest Goals

2011-09-04T00:20:00.002-04:00

Maintaining a troika of books to finish: Our Mutual Friend, Lonesome Dove and The Hermit of Peking by Hugh Trevor-Roper - it is an apt to time reflect on the what's next. By the end of this newborn month I hope to have enjoyed Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby, another of the Parker novels by Richard Stark and Hugo's famed ruminations of Notre Dame de Paris. This isn't the grandest of plans, but one which warms me presently.

Progress Towards The Holiday

2011-09-04T00:06:00.002-04:00

Shortly after that last post I read Imre Kertesz's Kaddish For An Unborn Child which is a screed for the philosophical implications of the Shoah. Thomas Bernhard is cited within the novella and Kertesz has translated the Austrian into Hungarian. The postulate does take the form of Bernhard's Concrete or The Loser with the ongoing interrogation and moral inventory.

I have since quit samizdat as such. I will read all the books selected by Joel and Pint and will certainly continue to comment upon such there. Otherwise I won't contribute to the quotidian buoyancy and continuity. I won't be the sham friend for a marketing strategy. That is all likely petty. I do stand behind such.

Queer Luck

2011-08-29T19:46:00.002-04:00

My friend Ed wrote to me Saturday morning and asked the opaque melody of dreams. I pondered that later as I drove to a book sale at Locist Grove, enjoying the frenetic activity on River Road, dozens of triathelets training on the penultimate day ahead of the Iron Man, a high school cross country tournament at the river's edge and a group of South Asians playing cricket. Hindsight informs me that I shouldn't have been watching the cricketeers and , instead, the cyclists running that fool's gauntlet of the wealthy from the East End. I made it to the sale and began my haul. I noticed that my memory now contains certain shoals which are rather alien. I can still recall most of the books I bought before, but often, as of late, I don't necessarily compute our additions. It is fair to mention as well, that I can't really recall the location and circumstances of many of the books acquired over the years. The sale had a surfeit of Iris Murdoch Penguins and I scooped up a stack. Related as such was the biography of Iris by Peter J. Conradi which I bought as well.

the rest of the weekend saw me complete The Life of Thomas More which I fear was undermined by the brilliance of Wolf Hall. Ackroyd was left in a vacuum by comparison, a dispassionate, nearly autistic, listing of More's deeds, crimes and writings. I did say crimes though discussions and ambiguity abound.

Poor Mister More

2011-08-26T20:31:00.002-04:00

The Life of Thomas More has unfolded midway as of this evening. I've reached midpoint and I find it curious that Peter Ackroyd devoted as much effort and space as he did to More's childhood and early service in London's municipal government. It is a testament to the late Fifteenth Century, but other than meager scarps of cross-reference More led an undocumented life until his ascendancy into the Star Chamber and the confidences of Wolsey and Henry VIII. The exception to this is, of course, his friendship with Erasmus. I read Stefan Zweig's biography of Erasmus a few years ago and I recall both More and Luther appearing to be straw men, as such. Wasn't Zweig working from memory at the time, maybe in Brazil? I don't know. Maybe I'm confusing him with Auerbach and Mimesis?

Remaining Engaged

2011-08-26T10:41:00.002-04:00

There have been no 100 page evenings this week. I am scratching away at both Lonesome Dove and The Life of Thomas More. I was told about another Western this week, Butcher's Crossing by John Williams, the author of Stoner. I will explore that one.

Malaise

2011-08-21T18:14:00.002-04:00

Not even developments in Tripoli can shake me from a minor funk. The origins of this remain clouded. Since my last post I completed Against Nature by J.K. Huysmans and then The Fall by Albert Camus. Both are very French explorations of defining the character of a just life. The mechanics of each are rather distinct and don't afford much overlap.

Another disparate pair has ascended into view since then. I picked up Peter Ackroyd's biography of Thomas More on Friday and then found myself drifting into the orbit of Lonesome Dove yesterday. Yeah, I know. That second one is a bizarre development.

Unhanding the Exotic

2011-08-17T13:12:00.002-04:00

Morning found me pondering The Finkler Question. I had also dreamt of David Gilmour but I think such extraneous.

I have completed Lights Out for the Territory, Bartleby and Co. by Enrique Vila-Matas and Geroges Perec's collected nonfiction Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. The latter pair were birthday gifts to myself.

An Excavation

2011-08-14T13:14:00.003-04:00

During a former life, Rick Kennedy often urged me to the "will to coherence," as I age a little less than gracefully, I sense a being bereft. Writing is a trial for me now. I lack the bile to riff and spit. I will forever be exiled from Jamesean sentences, that will always be an awareness.

Yesterday I completed Light Out For The Territory and I must admit to being overripe per Mr. Sinclair. 1000 pages in a few weeks will sate most curiosity. The recent unrest underscored a number of his pithy observations. It would only be gauche to elaborate. A few hefty challenges remain in my inbox. I have suffered a few problems with Our Mutual Friend, namely the obvious nod to being paid by the line. Having familiars address each other with full names fifteen times in a conversation is a personal issue for me. No, I don't tweet nor have i sent more than a half dozen text messages in my life.

Vollmann's Argall represents a different challenge. The page itself can hardly contain the erudition which erupts. It is unfair to compare, but John Sayles' A Moment In The Sun, for all its breadth, was essentially a rather linear tale with structured emotional overlap. Vollmann, conversely, interrogates the reader, the Western historical tradition and the foundations of narrative ethos. His postmodernism (horror, horror) doesn't strike one as continental, instead, it recalls Pynchon, in the sense of while challenging/questioning the Imagined Communities of the Homeric Project, one should always seek out a pint for one's trouble.

Being 41

2011-08-10T17:00:00.002-04:00

Having weathered the birthday gauntlet, I am still engrossed with the hefty efforts; Vollmann's Argall, Dickens' Friends Sinclair Out In The Territory have proved laborious. Engaging, without a doubt, but still an effort is required. I am thus apprehensive as the Premiere League is supposed to begin this weekend and my reading will no doubt suffer over the weekends for the 10 months.

The Strength To Give

2011-08-06T10:23:00.001-04:00

Having spent last weekend with Iain Sinclair, I feel comforted by his presence in the world. Rumination is a dying art. While walking with my wife Thursday night, I proffered the obvious, walking in London is quite distinct from walking in Southern Indiana. That is understood. The tidal collective remains the association, the pollination. the seepage as concepts are engendered and coupled via our own experiences. That is why Lee. J. Cobb and Jean-Baptiste Lully remain important to me. Going to Meijer or Target destroys that. There can't be a tradition there. Why would you NEED to buy more shit you don't need?

Sinclair is a human cross-reference. The fact that he's good friend with Peter Ackroyd reduces everything to a maximum of two levels of association. Cull any cluster of pages in his books and stare at the citations of Aki Kurismaki, Geroges Perec, Peter Fleming and James Ellroy. Such is a true blessing to that nerd, myself.

Pest House

2011-07-31T19:43:00.005-04:00

Though once a keen reader herself, particularly when she was younger, she always thought of library books as grubby and with a potential for infection - not intellectual infection either. Lurking among the municipally owned pages might be the germs of TB or scarlet fever, so one must never be seen to peer at a library book too closely or lick your finger before turning over still less read such a book in bed.

-- Alan Bennett in the LRB discussing his mother and public libraries

My friend Ed sent me this link yesterday. All of these disparate matters congeal however briefly in the people we become.

I finished two books by Iain Sinclair today.

From The Guardian

2011-07-31T11:31:00.002-04:00

"The convoluted, time-shifting plot of Andrey Kurkov's novel The President's Last Love includes a president of Ukraine being poisoned by his political enemies. In 2004, a few years after the book was written, the Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko was actually poisoned in just one of the bizarre twists that accompanied the Orange revolution in that country. After the revolution Kurkov was invited to a Kiev restaurant by two secret service generals. "They gave me coffee and cognac and asked if I thought my book could have been used by the plotters. I said people who poison presidents don't read books like mine."

Weighing Matters

2011-07-30T19:02:00.002-04:00

Default is an operating term at the moment. I consider my own stand-by status, my faults and fancies. I was at a wake last weekend and I found myself isolated, but by choice, and lost myself in the pages of Nooteboom, especially his ruminations on the sprawl of history. One extension of this leaves one with a sense of spastic irrelevance. That was me.

It was a great fortune to have discovered Iain Sinclair. I first encountered him years ago in The Guardian. There was a certain crackle in his reviews and interviews. It was my return last year to the stacks at IUS which allowed this to germinate. This weekend revealed another near-miss of mortal sense. No, not to me, personally. The distinction is slight. Mr. Sinclair has yielded considerable purpose to me today. I remain grateful.

Upon A Knoll

2011-07-30T16:27:00.002-04:00

With all the smarmy revelations about News Corporation, I found jean echenoz's novel Lightning of peculiar interest. It is a brisk biographical novel about Nikola Tesla, though he's referred to as Gregor throughout. His encounters with Edison, Westinghouse and J.P. Morgan all brought Mr. Murdoch to mind. I can attest that dark smiles proliferated.

I also read The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells and found it horrible.

One of the Sinclair books arrived.

So and Then That

2011-07-27T22:31:00.002-04:00

Roads To Santiago was completed as was Invisible Man by H.G. Wells while I grumbled over the tardy service from Half-Price. There is no ready explanation given the price of shipping.

New Course Ahead

2011-07-25T16:36:00.003-04:00

I have just about completed Nooteboom's Road To Santiago and will be shifting gears to run with Iain Sinclair for a spell. Half Price has an online store, along the lines of abebooks and I found a number of desired texts from Mr. Sinclair, each with the requisite $3.99 S & H, of course.

Disparate Outcomes

2011-07-21T11:12:00.003-04:00

I completed The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks last weekend after another Holy Shit moment at the library book sale. as I noted elsewhere, a different Iain, but just as Macabre. This first novel is a piece of Grisly Perfection.

That was followed with my reading of Frederic Morton's Nervous Splendor which surveys of the Hapsburg Crown Prince Rudolf and the fate of Vienna and many of its noted artists and intellectuals. This reminded me of Solomon Volkov's cultural history of St. Petersburg, which is not a compliment. The opening chapters scour the diaries of Mahler, Freud and others while peeking back at Rudolf, likely already doomed in his own mind, but such is speculation. That's my point, the entire book is flimsy biography gelled with speculation

Sticky Rice

2011-07-14T17:12:00.003-04:00

He seemed like a walking blasphemy, a blend of the angel and the ape. -- G.K. Chesterton

This last week has allowed four books to be completed. Beginning with The Rifles By W.T. Vollmann, a tragic comedy of manners coupled with Vollmann's ickish exploit with Intuit women and then camping above the Arctic Circle. It was this last bit which I found compelling. Saturday I picked up a copy of Facing The Congo by Jeffrey Tayler, a book I had noticed before. it was only a dollar and I thought it would mark an odd counterpart to the polar adventure noted by Vollmann. I was wrong, it was shit book about Yank emulating a canoe trip undertaken by Stanley down the Congo river. It reeks of incessant whining and the mission and all intellectual poise are eschewed early in the horrible exercise in journalism.

You may be asking about the inclusion of the dichotomy cited by GKC above. Well, my reading then took a fortunate turn as I finished the stretch with Cees Nooteboom's stunning Nomad's Hotel and Chesterton's seminal The Man Who Was Thursday. I didn't read Kingsley Amis' introduction to Thursday until after i completed the fanciful jaunt. The language establishes its terms

"Over the whole landscape lay a luminous and unnatural discoloration, as of that
disastrous twilight which Milton spoke of as shed by the sun in eclipse; so that
Syme fell easily into his first thought, that he was actually on some other and
emptier planet, which circled round some sadder star. But the more he felt this
glittering desolation in the moonlit land, the more his own chivalric folly
glowed in the night like a great fire."

Without question these terms are explicated in the novel's subtitle: A Nightmare.
Notteboom by extension approaches the horrible and the inexplicable with the most sober eye imaginable. His descriptions and extrapolations are impeccable and the images linger, scratch and whisper.

"An elderly priest in a green chausible blesses his parishioners and is about to
say something. The church is full; it looks like a living room where the guests
have kept their coats on. They are among friends, they know one another, it is
as though they are aware that there has been praying on the spot for 1500 years,
as though they themselves have stood at the deathbed of the Roman gods, just as
they have also heard, from beyond, the peculiar uproar of the Reformation and
the French Revolution, the screams coming form the Sportpalast and the clanking
of the Iron Curtain. Here, in the meantime, nothing had changed. Somebody who,
later on, in Turin, embraced a carthorse had apparently claimed that God was
dead, but they had still continued to address him in the same words they had
always used, and now the old man shuffled up to the alter of St. Anthony and
held aloft a holy relic; a bone or a bit of monk's habit behind glass, I could
not see which."

A Moment in The Sun

2011-07-06T19:37:00.002-04:00

There was an element of Papa's dictum in my reading of John Sayles' doorstop qua cinder block of a narrative, it sat gradually until suddenly I devoured its 1000 pages. My cheekiest nod to the novel is that its as if the Chums of Chance (Pynchon's creations in Against The Day) chose to chronicle American Race and Imperium. That said, Sayles never appears overwrought nor resigned to types or constructs in establishing his dramatic web.

As many may know, I once considered African-American history to be a desired career path. The plausibility of that now strikes me as either ancient or a thumbnail sketch I was considering for a screenplay. My focus and affairs drifted quite far afield and I was thus caught unawares by how the description of the purge of Wilmington affected me. Not that I find evens removed from any other pogrom, far from it, but as domestic political discourse appears as of late to be saturated with racial codes, I do wonder.

Shanghai'd

2011-06-30T18:30:00.002-04:00

Despite my ostensible opposition to literary trends, I find myself uncomfortably often following in their wake. McSweeney's released a massive novel by John Sayles, an auteur I was introduced to about 15 years ago and who I've followed ever since. The subject hovers about race and labor relations around the US from 1897 to 1902 (I believe), the Spanish-American war, and the subsequent Filipino insurrection against the Yankee "liberators." The NYTBR charged it was guilty of having equal inspiration in both Pynchon (there is a great deal of singing in the novel) and the sentimentality of Harriet Beecher Stowe. I am just under half way through, there can be no judgement, just yet, but I find the novel cares but refuses to simplify or distort, whatever the consequences.

Longer Form

2011-06-26T14:46:00.002-04:00

Of the 41 books completed, a few thoughts:

8 were library books, only one from IUS (Polish Complex). The others I owned, though very few were purchased new.

13 were translated, French and Hebrew tied for most popular language of origin, with a sparse three selections each.

Iris Murdoch and Honore de Balzac are the sole authors of whom I have read multiple books. That will certainly change, soon.

41 Books

2011-06-25T18:24:00.002-04:00

That's my tally of texts finished for the year as we near the sweaty middle. The latest was The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson. Far from comprehensive and appears scripted for its presentation as a documentary film. Plenty of tag lines and pockets of opaque theory. Oh, well.

There are ambitious plans in order for the holiday weekend and the month of July in general.

Thanks, Pint

2011-06-22T06:53:00.003-04:00

My friend Richard Crispin has been heralding Hopeful Monsters by Nicholas Mosley for years now. There was an ongoing reluctance on my part, one common to many historical novels: I grow concerned when every few pages, someone will say, hello Albert Einstein, aren't these uncertain times? That said, the novel is rife with interior rhythms and the characters are exceptionally developed. I am only a third of the way through, but am grateful for the opportunity.

I.M. Legend

2011-06-15T13:37:00.002-04:00

Since Sunday I have breezed through two novels by Iris Murdoch, Under The Net, which I enjoyed, and The Severed Head, which I did not. The latter was an elaborate farce which was effective initially until the partner swapping and permutations of incestuous possibility had been near exhausted.

Under The Net, Murdoch's first novel, was rather enjoyable, especially for its flaws; its protagonist, a struggling translator and philosopher, makes serially incorrect assessments of situations and thus the narratives bobs and weaves. Culpable of such errors myself, I was pleased with the tumult.

A New Reality

2011-06-11T09:06:00.002-04:00

Three books have been completed since my last posting: The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson, Maile Meloy's Both Ways Is The Way I Want It and Anita Konkka's Fool's Paradise. New hours at work and being abducted by criminal humidity levels has fomented this productive recipe.

I found the Finkler rather dark and more akin to the masculine rivalry of Martin Amis than what may have been expected. It is no shame to admit that I discovered Maile through her brother Colin. My wife picked up the slim Finnish novella last weekend, I was unfamiliar with it, but the skinny tale of a marginalized life incorporating more than a hint of mental illness made an evocative exploration.

Favorite Things

2011-06-07T11:51:00.003-04:00

My wife and I had a chance to go to a book sale together this past weekend. My, that was a nice. There is a personal idiom and palette o nods and winks which contain the Infinite and communicate our shared history in reading. we bought a box of books: some Richard Stark, Some Tana French, the collected stories of Elizabeth Bowen (which I have coveted for a year now) and a host of others, including The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson. I'm reading that now. I finished Rogue Male by Geoffery Houseman on Sunday and found it a grisly charm.

David Albahari's Leeches

2011-06-05T13:08:00.003-04:00

If filing books under themes or more specific categories were a personal crusade, then this novel may cause some hesitation. My friend Roger, who finished the novel two weeks ago, was quick to establish that he thought this was firmly a Serbian novel, one centered upon the dark days of the 1990s. Conversely, I found the novel's themes to be more mystic in origin, particularly of a Jewish orientation and only Balkan in that culturally specific collision of the eschatological and the Absurdist.

The End of May

2011-06-01T09:26:00.003-04:00

I concluded the month with a marathon read of World War Z. Yes, I did confess to completing an apocalyptic book about a zombie epidemic. It is important to note that this constituted consecutive books concerning a future return for Mother Rus to a medieval theocracy, that said, I'll take the prose of Vladimir Sorokin any day over that of Max Brooks. What Brooks does succeed with, is a sociological approach problem solving and what the effects of extensive depopulation would create for our world.

Otherwise I'm half way through David Albahari's Leeches and have struck into Sorokin's Ice Trilogy with very mixed reactions so far. The last two mornings have also witnessed some duly plugging away into Our mutual Friend.

Bridges and the FSB

2011-05-30T10:51:00.002-04:00

The holiday weekend has proved fecund. I completed The Invisible Bridge as well as Day of the Oprichnik by Vladimir Sorokin. Julie Orringer's epic proved quite uneven, growing sentimental during the war and losing its grace and tempo. My expectations were rudely injured during the final 150 pages.

Sorokin Week was thus inaugurated, I enjoyed the novel, finding its neo-medieval future plausible and, rather terrifying, as the House of Ruric is restored in Mother Rus and walls are established to protect against contamination from a dying Europe, overrun with Muslims, it appears.

Crossing That (Invisble) Bridge

2011-05-25T16:56:00.002-04:00

Forty percent of the way in, Julie Orringer's transportive novel has met but not exceeded my expectations. There is a grim charm in constructing a romance just before the world goes to Hell. This is handled with appropriate pace and so far, at least, only minimal coincidences.

I had hoped that this would be Sorokin Week, but that will need to wait until June.

Friends of the Library Book Sale

2011-05-23T16:55:00.003-04:00

I drag myself to these affairs frequently, likely attending eighty percent in a year. It is a quaint experience of acute claustrophobia punctuated with the bliss of discovering a desired book. It is a familiar group which attends these matters, most are visually familiar with one another. My friends Roger and Frank are often visible. It cab be nice but it often appears to be a controlled explosion. Such were the circumstances Saturday when I edged in, exchanged smiles with Roger and then turning ninety degrees saw upon a lower shelf, a paperback copy of Julie Orringer's The invisible Bridge. As I stepped towards the book , another man, a smallish fellow always polite, stepped forward as well, eying something on the shelf above. My lust for acquisition nearly revealed itself in a body check. owing instead to unexpected grace, I contorted myself and cleared the line like Nemanja Vidic. Yes, with book in hand.

Walking To Hollywood

2011-05-22T13:42:00.002-04:00

Friday evening, it was thought, however erroneously, that a viewing of Sofia Coppola's film Somewhere would be of benefit as I was completing Will Self's fictional memoir. Despite the centrality of the Chateau Marmont to both narratives, Coppola's effort appeared by the numbers, numbing and a waste of time for everyone involved. Nothing could be more removed from the gripping prowess of Self's triptych.

Leaning On The Sill

2011-05-18T16:44:00.002-04:00

It was largely a gray day, not undermining as such. The news crackles like some absurd insect I have given up swatting to keep my focus. Suketu Mehta in his biography of Mumbai, Maximum City, used an interview with Vikram Chandra to an unexpected and debatable conclusions. That concern has adorned my brow today. I shouldn't say I am slogging but find my progress there slight in comparison to the gallop through Self's Walking To Hollywood.

Samizdat is scratching its head presently, though I suspect some Zizek may be on the horizon. It may prove an encouraging time for some theory.

Freedarko Is Kaput

2011-05-16T20:41:00.001-04:00

Honestly, I hadn't followed it regularly for years. I need to find an EPL blog of sorts. That entails work, of course.

Divide and Encircle

2011-05-16T16:48:00.002-04:00

The last week wasn't as conducive for reading. One could blame the NBA Playoffs and the winding down of the Premiere League. The weather also improved which led to enjoyable time outside.

The weather is cold again. I am slightly rattled by life and I have begun three books in earnest. Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games is spinning with aplomb: I am into the mid 200s, a quarter of the way through that brick. Will Self's Walking To Hollywood was an unexpected surprise at the library. I feasted on 60 of its pages yesterday. What remains is the Ice Trilogy from Sorokin. It must be admitted that I am bracing for impact with that one.

Treading With Tigers

2011-05-10T17:18:00.003-04:00

Last weekend I finally completed London Fields and then turned around promptly on Sunday and read White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. It is the protagonist's claim that he is once a generation, whereas Amis created Keith Talent, who is in my opinion one for the ages, he is certainly a contemporary Bloom, innit? Both novel find raw power in fluid language, a harsh language forged from necessity.

I have since moved to Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra, which I initially addressed back in 2008. The present appears well disposed for such.

Acquisitions

2011-05-04T16:39:00.002-04:00

Aside from the already-read Balzac, during my recent trip to Chicago I picked up Dhalgren by Samuel Delany, The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein by Peter Ackroyd and Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov. All of these hover and drone for my attention.

I have to admit I admire Levi Stahl's recent submersion into political biography. My reading has become increasingly nocturnal and likewise novel-based. I would like to halt that trend and am looking forward to a possible development this summer.

Basics

2011-05-03T16:39:00.002-04:00

After the delightful Balzac detour I spent the remainder of our time in Chicago with London Fields. It has been a welcome companion upon returning to work, though global events have been pushing Steve Coll's Ghost Wars in my direction. I also picked a copy of Mark Kurlansky's book about the events of 1968, it cost me a quarter. We shall see.

Today is election day in our hamlet and while Soyinka reminds us that post-election fatalities constitute "the Nigerian way of death," it is but apathy which laps upon our own shores. There was a fellow working the polls this morning with a handsome tome resting on the table. i craned my neck to see the specifics but was unable to ascertain. I wish my friends running for office the best of luck today.

More Balzac

2011-04-30T17:26:00.002-04:00

Sitting in Chicago pondering the return drive tomorrow and the lapse of my latest holiday. I picked up The Girl With Golden Eyes the other day and completed it this afternoon, while I supervised a yard of meandering children and earned a sunburn in the process.

I have read a great deal of London Fields since I've been here, though the allure of Dhalgren has surfaced since its acquisition.

Jamestown by Matthew Sharpe

2011-04-25T14:13:00.002-04:00

It has required an effort to remain grounded during this weather. I bounced about a bit yesterday, which is normal when I complete a book on a Sunday. I elected last night to pursue Jamestown. A plan had been formulated a month ago to pursue a series of apocalyptic novels and call it my Calamity Song Detour. After the tsunami, that didn't sound very clever. Last night, though, i decided to to go ahead sans any acclaim. I completed half of the book before bed and the concluding sections today before lunch. I appreciated the riffs on colonist journals. The pun on the Velvet Underground was especially well-received. That said, I have only hopes for Mr. Sharpe. He will outgrow these antics.

I was then all set to read Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe. I breezed outside as, imagine this, the sun was actually visible. I saw that Pym by Mat Johnson had been returned to the new fiction section along with the latest by Jonathan Coe. I grabbed both and returned home.

The Pale King

2011-04-24T19:21:00.002-04:00

A series of events have dominated my Easter. I slept through, at least, the morning rain. Arsenal lost, which overjoyed me, I completed David Foster Wallace's unfinished novel and, oh yeah, it started raining again. The penumbra of the Pale King darkened the rest of my day. I keep plotting the trajectories of the characters that DFW proffered us inchoately. This then engendered considerable thought about the nature of memories. For instance, I submit that there was an occasion last week when I mused that i read Brief Interviews With Hideous Men at Midway Airport. No, not the entire collection, mind you, but that I had read such there, between flights. That can't be true as I was last there in October, 1998, a solid year before the book was published. The memory, though, is weirdly distinct. Upon further effort, I believe I was reading a story by Rick Moody in the Paris Review, the copy I had bought a few days earlier at John King Books in Detroit.

Reading Mr. Wallace.

2011-04-23T15:52:00.002-04:00

It has now rained for 24 hours. This condition has left me depressed. I have found solace in Manchester United and the queasy joy of The Pale King. Contrary to my usual bliss with the Latest Hot Novel (see Vollmann, Bolano, Enard etc) I have read within limits daily. I will likely complete the novel this weekend, maybe this evening but i find myself thwarted by its scattered approach. As much as there is to savor, I can't stop my interior voice from muttering, it isn't finished.

Going to Chicago soon, I am struggling whether to take along Our Mutual Friend and tackle its final 500 pages or, perhaps, Mary Barton.

Persuasion

2011-04-16T13:20:00.002-04:00

Odd weather and untimely work currents again curtailed my week's reading. I just completed Austen's Persuasion and I was left under impressed. By now well aware of contrivances and paltry of plot devices, I have to admit I was expecting more, even if that measure remains undefined. Entering contests has never held any fascination for me. It was thus surprising that I spun the wheel this week on goodreads to win a reader's copy of The Pale King. It has to be admitted that I was then somewhat disappointed to discover yesterday that I didn't win. The within minutes I discovered that the Jeffersonville library was processing a copy, I called and the nice lady in the reference department said she would complete the process if I was on the way. I was and I told her she made me day. It is odd but I can't remember actually acquiring Infinite Jest.It was the summer of 1998 and I had actually taken Moby Dick with me on a work trip. I returned home that evening , suddenly, inexplicably, I was reading David Foster Wallace. Yesterday's venture doesn't strike me today as glamorous, my spirits have been dampened by Man U's departure from the FA Cup, but I hope that the reversal of fortune will linger.

Shirley Hazzard

2011-04-11T16:54:00.002-04:00

I picked up a pristine copy of The Great Fire last week at a charity shop. Levi Stahl had previously asserted that Ms. Hazzard requires patience and heeding such I spent the week stretching into its expansive world of lush possibility and metal-cold privation. I read a review early on, which included the following passage:

Imagine if Jane Austen had returned to travel the world in the mid-20th century and to read novelists like Henry James, E.M. Forster and Graham Greene. What might she have written? Something like Shirley Hazzard's ''The Great Fire''?

Crushing Corners

2011-04-07T18:31:00.003-04:00

If Georgie Best is to (Sir) Bobby Charlton as Flann O'Brien is to Anthony Powell then the universe is maintaining, if only to mock and distend. It is rather late this week and I haven't finished a book. The placidity of last week was an unlikely collision of holiday, somewhat cold weather and a dearth of league matches. I have spun about for 100 pages in Alexander Waugh's family tracings but it is the spectre of Jacques Roubaud which has indicated my present course. No more Oulipo, mind you, not for the moment but rather Roubaud's penchant for the gloomy insularity of British women; I am extending his trope to the Commonwealth, which he was quick to as well. Shirley Hazzard's The Great Fire simply works for me.

Make It Five

2011-04-03T18:53:00.002-04:00

I completed The Great Fire of London yesterday by Jacques Roubaud yesterday. The musings on walking and reading implored by own solitary strolls in the sun stretched afternoon. The consensus was that a general thrust of the "project" was missed by me, without doubt. Roubaud's work proved to be a synarchic triumph, references to Defoe's Plague Journal appeared to even engender an account of Rooney's weekend hat trick, if possible. I have since been involved with Alexander Waugh's Fathers and Sons, a survey of his own family and their accountable Tory greatness. The politics have bothered me without a doubt. I was then misdirected by a friend and bought book i didn't need to. This afternoon, I truly value Martin Amis and William Faulkner. I hoped to read Absalom, Absalom in the next few months.

As Diz said of Pops

2011-04-02T16:05:00.002-04:00

Joel Vessels once said that without a Kipling, there would be no Orwell. I heave a sigh and ponder The Light That Failed, the fourth book I completed this now waning week of holiday. Kipling plunks the strings of myopia which reverberate throughout Literature, not only the legacy of Homer and Borges, the fates of Joyce and Huxley, but the fear of darkness which haunts novelists in certain manifestations like Saramago's celebrated novel of an epidemic and Nabokov's often overlooked (no pun intended) Laughter In The Dark. The fate of Kipling's protagonist may appear contrived, especially given how the novel is largely a survey of light and color. The alchemy of Art, writ proper, is the axis and alas all ambitions can be wiped away with turpentine. I have since occupied myself with Jacques Roubaud's grand project. I will likely finish The Great Fire of London this weekend but may steer away from Oulipo for the time being.

As Holidays Go

2011-03-31T11:50:00.002-04:00

It has been a sublime week, my wife and I have read a great deal and finished a couple books each. The weather has retracted to the point where only brisk walks outside are advisable. No worries there.

My only complaint remains that my pilfered photo of Tito and Elizabeth Taylor was ripped down. I hope it was a question of propriety and not Roger Baylor's crusade against street spam and yard signs.

I finished David Grossman's See Under:LOVE and Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene and found both intriguing successes despite flaws of overwriting and coincidence, respectively. The first section of the Grossman is an amazing 80 page view of Israel in the late 50s from a nine year old child's point of view. The Shoah hovers ubiquitously and children invariably confuse intentions. This section is then followed with the authorial fancy of imagining of what if Bruno Schulz wasn't shot in the streets of Poland by the SS? What if he made his way to Danzig and dove into the sea becoming a salmon of sorts and what if the repellant codes which mark humanity were thus extended to marine life? This isn't a horrible concept but it is inexplicably extended for a hundred pages! That section is then collapsed upon by a now worn convention of a lengthy dialogue between the "author's" grand uncle, who appears muted in the first section as a deportee in a death camp; he has been proved literaly and miraculously unable to die and thus the commandant arranges a nightly ritual where this former author of children's novels will regale him with further stories. These Arabian Nights purist in predictable discussions of morality and the reader is finally saved by the final section which lists concepts for a proposed children's encyclopedia of the holocaust, each entry bearing the fates of the requisite characters. This proved most compelling.

This blunt force trauma of war is meditated upon in Greene's entertainment as well. A typical spy thriller is adjusted to the reality of the Blitz and it largely works aside from cringing coincidences which reveal and reproach equally. I must admit that I was joyed to approach this one as the film adaptation was to be on TCM last night. I have nothing disparaging to say about Fritz Lang or Ray Milland but the script was ridiculous and the film barely viewable.

Changelings

2011-03-29T12:45:00.006-04:00

"Each human life possesses certain sensitivities, dove-pecked injuries, that are never noted by the casual observer, like invisible cracks in amber."
--Gyula Krudy

I finished Sunflower by Krudy over the weekend. Awash in its intense imagery, there was a shudder. A fear. I have a grave concern that slowly, the inscription of all this reading is being effaced by a galactic wind. There is an understood inevitability here. I can groan and point to T.S. Eliot about the return to the point of origin. Sure.

So, Today. . .

2011-03-24T17:22:00.002-04:00

I was at a book shop, rather excited to have found a copy of Ignácio de Loyola Brandao's The Good-Bye Angel for four dollars. Some robust yet rather odd fellow was chatting with clerk, the less described, the better. The hearty fellow in the fishing vest had apparently finished a five minute description of a fantasy novel he had just finished reading. He then asked the clerk, well, what do you like? The twenty-something puffed a bit and said, I'm mostly into sci-fi, though I prefer the Russians, you know, like Stanislaw Lem? I should add that it has been a challenging week work wise, but i paused and deliberated whether i should say something, but thought better of the novel in my hands and quietly paid.

I think I may retreact my retractive adjustment from last night. I read more of Sunflower today and I find it intoxicating.

No, It Won't Be NYRB Classics Week

2011-03-23T19:39:00.002-04:00

I had finished the Dud Avocado and had dug some 52 pages into Gyula Krudy's remarkable novel Sunflower. Yeah, I know, going from avocado to sunflower -- sounds like a promotion at Whole Foods.

As to the former, I preferred its second half. Elaine Dundy charged her protagonist with a measure of self-awareness and its frenetic observations culminated with this philosophy.

Jim picked me up at my old hotel the next morning. I'd slept hardly
at all that night and was reeling under the blow of a bad hangover. Jim looked
exactly the same as he always did and this shocked and annoyed me. How
could he be so callous after all I'd been through?

No doubt, all of my friends can appreciate the sanguine logic above.

I have no qualms with Krudy's epic, extolling all sorts of Magyar tropes into a devilish brew. The issue became the sudden availability of The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson. I've had my eye on such for a while now.

I'm on holiday again next week and i hope to embrace both Krudy as well as Patrick Hamilton, whom I've neglected for too long now.

A Thread

2011-03-21T16:38:00.002-04:00

Displaced by a necessary family encounter and an amazing day, I sought the comfort of an extended read and picked up War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. The Humiliation game isn't worth my personal pillory, I readily acknowledge far-too-many blind spots and blank areas. Despite all the adaptations this remains a riveting novel and I found my self comparing the outlook of the protagonist with that of Ballard's Concrete Island. I was comfortable imagining that being stranded in our excess was an apt fate for a survivor.

Three hours later, I had finished and felt transported, if a bit tired. Shifting gears, I am now engrossed in Elaine Dundy's The Dud Avocado, though I admit "engross" doesn't quite capture my approach.

Interview w/ Arnon Grunberg

2011-03-20T09:52:00.002-04:00

Last week constituted a hat trick of misanthropy with my completion of Darconville' Cat on Sunday, the blitz through The Jewish Messiah by Thursday and Friday's marvelous reading of J.G. Ballard's Concrete Island. Ballard's work was stellar, though the novel's dynamic was altered with the addition of other characters in the concluding half.

(disclaimer, there is no actual interview w/ Mr. Grunberg, though his blurb indicates he is in NYC)

here's what what I would ask Arnon Grunberg if he was sitting on my porch.

Q: Does excess communicate the inchoate idea of Jewishness in a historical context?

Q:Perhaps Compunction is your thematic, do we then need self-loathing characters involved with self-mutilation, serial humiliation and protracted scenes of torture to perhaps complete the reader's own quotient for debasement? Is that it?

As of this morning, I can't specify my next direction. I have been plugging away with Our Mutual Friend and I did heft Laura Warholic but found it inconvenient for the present, the similarity w/ Darconville's Cat was also off-putting.

New Day

2011-03-12T11:44:00.003-05:00

Humbled by disaster abroad, my own concerns about life and WORK locally appear trite by comparison. I awoke rested and travelled across the river for the book sale at Locust Grove. I have often thought derisively about folks who arrive early at book sales, all the while aware of my inclusion in the subject. I seldom encounter the fascinating but simply the bored. Perhaps one could sprinkle some emphasis upon the simple in the previous sentence.

Anyway, I encountered a number of gleaming books including Yaakov Shabtal's Past Continuous, which Joshua Cohen deemed the Israeli Ulysses, The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy and Vladimir Bartol's Alamut. The latter pair I have coveted for the last few years since spying them on the shelves in Chicago and failing to purchase them.

I have spent a few late evenings with Alexander Theroux this past week and I find Darconville's cat to be astonishing, albeit in sore need of editing. That said, I bought his Laura Warholic as well as The Jewish Messiah by Arnon Grunberg this week and will move into such about completion of Theroux's Cat.

My Friend Ian

2011-03-08T18:54:00.001-05:00

Asked whether he lowered his aesthetic standards, Mr. McEwan replied,

I occasionally watch a football match on television, but I cannot bear the commercials. I watch The Wire but I suppose that is considered high culture. I can never knuckle down to reading all the way through The Sun, as Martin can. That for me would be such an effort.

I conversely watch a NUMBER of matches. I avoid local news and papers, but, damn, isn't life grand?

Teju Cole

2011-03-06T17:16:00.000-05:00

Earlier in this still toddling year, there was a poll on Goodreads about the most pretentious book to be seen carrying . The leaders in the straw poll were Ulysses and the Arcades Project. I happened to be reading and finishing Ulysses then and I pondered the implications of such. The realization then swept over me how queer, in both senses, it is to carry a book in Southern Indiana. I am not sure those way from here can conceive of this properly, the suspicion cast upon bound pages not Biblical in utility.

I finished Open City by Teju Cole earlier today. There isn't sufficient hyperbole for the towering achievement. As to the press, certainly the NYTBR (which brought it to my attention) has found a common spirit with that W.G. Sebald, I also see Mathias Enard's Zone as a cousin to this urban peripatetic resolving our troubled times as its only agenda.

Recovering Estate

2011-03-02T17:31:00.002-05:00

There were allusions made to the different levels I ascribe to reading times during the week versus the weekend. The heightened measures of concentration away from the hectic nature of modern life cannot be underestimated. That said, I continue with both Dickens and Pynchon. A new noble beast has also entered the stable: Alexander Theroux and his wicked novel Darconville's Cat. Theroux, an older brother of Paul, appears to be word addict and a misanthrope. I read 160 pages of the novel yesterday.

Ears Stoneward

2011-02-28T17:00:00.002-05:00

Pynchon continues to boggle. Yes, it has been 15 years since I last read V. but aspects of the novel have completely eluded my memory. The overture to Melville's Confidence Man is stellar in the Stencil sections and the community of sewer rats being spiritually advised by a human priest is remarkable sortie, especially when considering that Lawrence Norfolk reworked the material in The Pope's Rhinoceros.

A Somewhat Funk

2011-02-23T16:52:00.003-05:00

My reading has derailed a few times since the weekend. It would be proper to attribute aspects of this to gulping wrongheaded hype about contemporary books. No, The Passage by Justin Cronin isn't high literature and , likewise, Skippy Dies by Paul Murray isn't akin to Infinite Jest. I hesitate to dismiss them both as shit books, but i feel robbed somehow by the market forces of darkness, robbed of my time, especially on quiet evening when I should've been worried about Dickens.

Years ago I bought Vs by Pearl Jam for my cousin Amber for Christmas and later I bought an album from Poe, though the thought of actually buying her House of Leaves never entered the equation. The news has arranged serial mule kicks and I bluff for composure, reeling as it were, I have sought out Pynchon, yes, I'm rereading V.

Stoner by John Williams

2011-02-21T17:27:00.002-05:00

I noted earlier on samizdat about my fetish for piebald literature, messy novels overripe with wastrels, tyros and counterfeiters are my bag, man. That said, the last two novels I've finished by David Mitchell and John Williams respectively run rather the contrary. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and Stoner offer achievements in precision, not gambits of excess. Remarkably, I loved both of them.

Williams steels his narrative with a dichotomy of brilliant but elemental forces, light, heat, stoic trees and featureless fields exhausted in use and barren in promise. Opposing this backdrop is a character forever out of focus, the voices around him lack clarity, most are lost as mumbles, his own agency appears equally indefinite until he actualizes his passion for literature. This affords him purpose but the entanglements of human baggage bring him low. There is still a triumph in this literal account of failure. I felt moved by its accomplishment.

My Legs Are Queer

2011-02-20T10:29:00.002-05:00

The rolling tide of Our Mutual Friend carried me along a few times yesterday. There is a great deal to be said for such. The pacing is remarkable and I've managed, I think, to keep tabs on the legion of characters.

It was a book sale Saturday and I travelled down early with a certain reluctance. This appears to be an arid stretch for such and I braved the claustrophobia and the dozens of souls evidently raised in barns. I was nearly through my circuit when I saw a pristine copy of Stoner by John Williams, a book I have been interested in for a few years now. This was certainly a moment requiring me to catch my breath. Now, for the third time in the last twelve months, I have managed upon an elusive text, as Stoner joins Quest For Corvo and The Wandering Scholars.

Given that antibiotics tend to squeeze any initial drowsiness, I managed 175 pages before I retired. The title character is an academic in the English Department at the University of Missouri in the first half of the 20th Century. The narrative arc is rather linear accounting for his agrarian upbringing, the ecstasy that literature delivers, his plagued marriage and his encounters with university politics. There is an austere peace to this sibilant journey. I will likely adhere to the Dickens today.