May, 2013--New month, new thread, new books to talk about

Gotta do something about my TBR pile, including THE TELEPORTATION ACCIDENT by Ned Beauman, which looks like a great read.

Our local library having its annual book sale today--starts in half an hour. Off I go...

Not much reading today as I'm digging myself out of the DAMN SNOW!

Had some a few days ago--you're welcome to it.

Giving Memoirs of Hadrian a try.

Traveller of the Century by Andres Neumann, tr Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia...

Finished The Flying Creatures of Fra Angelico by Antonio Tarbucci -- a collection of strange, mystical, and funny micro-stories.

Still plugging away at Our Lady of the Flowers, perhaps the most perfect novel ever conceived. (Also, I may be biased in that regard.)

Careful, Karl, Genet will make a degenerate out of you.

Er, make that more of a--

Never mind.

7: Well, Genet is a better class of criminal than those currently occupying political, corporate, and ecclesiastical positions of power. And as a prose stylist, he has few equals. Genet is a Gutter-Proust But I still haven't read The Screens or Sartre's doorstopper Saint Genet I do want to read Cobra by Severo Sarduy, another radical literary experiment involving a drag queen.

Genet's PRISONER OF LOVE might be of interest as well.

9: Read it. Quite good.

kswolff: Have you read The Thief's Journal? That's the only one I've got.

11: Yep. A while back I went on a Genet and Bataille binge and read a lot of books by both of them.

And read part of a chapter of Das Kapital, Volume 3. Ugh, math.

Will You Always Love Me? has picked up considerably. For some reason, all of the relationship dramas were stuck at the beginning in a bland lump of sameness. It's diversifying more as it goes along. "The Undesirable Table" shows she has a sense of humour - the last thing in the world I associate with Oates. It's a good collection. Glad I picked it up.

Currently reading Sealab and, er, Sons and Lovers.

14: What's with the "er?" Lawrence is good! I'm planning to read Women in Love later this year.

Ian's embarrassed to be caught reading high class smut. Highlighting the naughty bits for re-reading later on...

It was the juxtaposition of the two - a book about US Navy divers and underwater habitats, and a novel by DH Lawrence.

I'm still making my way through The Name of the Rose, one of those books that's a little too erudite for me to really connect with it. I like it, but I get the feeling it's too smart for me.

Also, I'm reading The Orphan Master's Son, which I picked up cheap on Kindle after it won the Pulitzer for fiction. So far it's pretty good, but I've got to wonder - given that the novel is set in North Korea for the most part - how much of this is research and how much is just the writer's imagination.

Started and put aside a couple of books already this month--dunno what the problem is. But now I'm halfway through THE BOX (UNCANNY STORIES) by one of my literary heroes, Richard Matheson. A lovely looking book, a movie tie-in (the film "The Button", starring Frank Langella, was adapted from one of the tales in THE BOX). The stories all quite old and I have many of them in other collections but I spotted the book for cheap and couldn't resist.

18: I saw a panel with Adam Johnson, and he did go to N. Korea for research. I gather that he was, as you would expect, highly circumscribed during his time there. He also spoke about the near-complete absence of writing from inside DPRK that has gotten out, also noting that the relatively few who have escaped have not written about their experiences there.

Did I hear North Korea mentioned? The focus of this month's issue of Word without Borders is North Korea!

Ta dah!

http://wordswithoutborders.org/

The opening words of the intro read: "The mere use of everyday language is a subversive act in the North Korean literary context."

Reading The Man From Mars: Ray Palmer's Amazing Pulp Journey by Fred Nadis -- a fascinating and fun bio of the lowbrow publisher who began the sci fi and flying saucer crazes.

Finished Sealab. Fascinating topic, though the writing was competent at best. Now reading Seoul Survivors, which I have to review for Interzone. Beginning not too auspicious...

Started The Creative Fire by Brenda Cooper So far, meh. Just doesn't grip me.

Finished SPIKE MILLIGAN: A CELEBRATION. Laughed out loud numerous times--a master of the absurd.

Just finished Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human and starting Tailchaser's Song but it's bordering on twee. Despite a periodic need for light, mindless reading I don't know if I can stick with it. Snagged it from my son's room. I remember that it was recommended by someone, but I can't recall by whom or why.

Finished Sons and Lovers, still reading Seoul Survivors. I love Lawrence's descriptive prose, and he's a local boy for me, but his characterisation does these days seem a little overwrought.

Four stories away from finishing Will You Always Love Me? and have finally had the time to settle in with Mountolive. Halfway through it, a refreshing change of tone and a bit of a relief to get away from Darley and his Justine obsession. Deliciously woven plot.

Reading Debtors' Prison by Robert Kuttner. Capsule review: Austerity is bad, mmmkay. Seriously, it's not good, least of all in a recovering economy. An excellent blend of economics, history, and reportage. And great for those wanting to cite chapter and verse to Objectivist balloon-heads and their Khmer Rouge-esque fellow travelers, sycophants, and ideological apes. Kuttner is a hardcore Keynesian, but Keynesian stimulus of economies in the throes of depressions actually, ya know, work.

The Creative Fire by Brenda Moore is bland and inert. Might be good for the Hunger Games crowd, but I'm finding the prose as unexciting as a North Korean crop report.

Done with Memoirs of Hadrian. Giving a try to The Leopard by Lampedusa.

Finished off Will You Always Love Me?. Reviewed it if any Oates fans want the full rundown:

http://pseudointellectualreviews.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/will-you-always-love-m...

My blog has been up and running for a full year now. Figure I've earned the right for some shameless self-promotion....

31: I think we have a thread for self-promotion. ("Personal Message Board" or some such title.) Still, congrats are in order. On a similar self-promotional note, I just passed the milestone of 200 followers for my humble blog. Makes me feel I'm not yowling alone into the cyber-void.

Finished off Strangers in Paradise by Terry Moore -- epic, intimate, and narratively complex. Also nice to see a comic populated with realistic looking human females.

Almost finished the new Philip Kerr novel A MAN WITHOUT BREATH. The latest "Bernie Gunther" mystery and it's superb. I know Ian is a fellow fan so no spoilers (Ian, you'll love it)...

#31 & 32 Keep those blogs going, we need all the diversity and discussion we can get; I read somewhere the average life span for a blog is two years. Feh! to that.

32, 34: Thank you both for the confidence boost. It definitely helps to keep me motivated. Next time I will post to the personal board to better keep on topic.

And now back to reading...

I bought a book which is a pair of novellas by our own Cliff Burns, a few weeks ago. I just finished Novella #1. I left the book at home so can't remember all the names. Anyhow, I highly recommend it, really, not just because it's Cliff. It had quite a few homeless people as characters and I thought they were realistically drawn and that the story was compelling. On to the next one.

The next one's a tough one, Anna. I mean tough-er (the first novella, "Living With the Foleys", had its moments, eh?).

If you can get past the first twenty pages of "Kept", you're home free. But it does demand a hefty toll...

Finished Debtors' Prison by Robert Kuttner -- a nice primer on why austerity programs don't work during "recessions" (aka depressions, since only an idiot thinks a recession would last for 5 years).

37: If you can get past the first twenty pages of "Kept", you're home free. But it does demand a hefty toll...

By hefty toll, how does reading your book compare to pulling a double-shift at an Indian ship-breaking yard? I want to make sure my reading experience is a Sisyphusean slog.

I loved "Living with the Foleys." It was just a really fun read and not a slog at all. Cliff, I didn't even think it was all that "noir" - I was thinking you'd be crueller to your characters than you were.

38, if you need something sisiphean and you like books about debt you should try getting through the Graeber book I am trying to finish, which I have mentioned on here many times before. I find it intensely interesting and I am very glad I am reading it, but boy is it not easy for me. I guess economic anthropology is not really my field.

#39--Thanks. Confidentially, I think that book is one of Sherron's favorites. And that's really surprising because she is the most genteel, sweet-natured person imaginable.

Er, like I said. "Kept" is a much tougher work. But hang in there, it's worth it in the end. Still think it would make a chiller of a movie...

40: The debt one wasn't too bad actually. Granted, the talk of debt-to-GDP rations was, well, dry at times, but Kuttner wrote with anger, intelligence, and the occasional bon mot. It was like one long Ayn Rand corpse violation. Beautifully delicious! Libertarians are such inept short-sighted useless dingbats.

As far as hard work reading goes, nothing was worse than The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein. Blecch. Like getting a root canal on a bumpy road. When reading becomes "work," then the author has failed. Reading should be a challenge and pleasure and enjoyment. Not everything has to be an austere, spartan, hellacious slog. Even that happy fellow Samuel Beckett told the occasional joke, even while tap dancing on the precipice of the existential abyss. Ironically, I find the populist pap our society guzzles up -- Dan Brown, etc. -- to be incredibly slow-going and laborious. Even Ulysses was kinda fun to read, especially the smutty pornographic sections at the end. Even Stephen Fry, no intellectual slouch, called the book "joyous."

> 38 -- You sound like that guy in Catch 22 -- I think his name was Dunbar. He wanted to live as long as possible. Every breath was precious to him. So he did everything he could think of to cultivate boredom. Other guys chased girls and got drunk and went to movies. Dunbar sat around watching paint dry because boredom makes the time pass slowly and in doing so made Dunbar feel he was living longer.

Just started Space Station Friendship, which reads like some weird YA novel about a trip to space in some alternate universe in which NASA had a fully-functional space station in LEO by 1998 and a fleet of Space Shuttles to service it.

Oh Cliff, that second story was great! It was like a cross between Clive Barker and Katherine Dunn. Well done!

(Sigh of relief)

Thank Christ. Y'see, I've had people I know very well, who normally like my work, shy away from "Kept".

"Nope, couldn't make it through that one, sorry..."

I understand, the subject matter is tough, your loyalties as a reader (and human being) wrenched this way and that, the whole setting is so completely bizarre...

Thanks for hanging in there. That book (RIGHTEOUS BLOOD) was a monster to complete, harrowing--after it was done, I went on a trip through cowboy country in Montana with my father-in-law to unwind. Took weeks to commence new work.

Too much prattle. But I'm really, really pleased you enjoyed the book and your comparisons are perfectly apt. GEEK LOVE is one of my all-time favorites so I'm delighted to be included in Ms. Dunn's company.

If David Cronenberg ever goes back to making macabre films, hope he'll give me a call.

43: Close, but not quite. My models for my aesthetics are Jean Des Esseintes from Against Nature and the eponymous Maldoror. In this godawful era of belt-tightening, austerity, and the sacred masochistic impulse to be a good obedient citizen, the most revolutionary thing one can be is decadent. I've already read the literary equivalent of paint drying, Atlas Shrugged. Except that's insulting to drying paint, since paint serves a purpose in society. Rand doesn't.

But I'm a book reviewer, so I read what they can give me ... and what interests me. Let's just say I have a personal stake in investigating the causes and naming the malefactors associated with the Lesser Depression/Great Recession.

> 47 -- I review a couple of books every month myself. I don't write professionally because anybody who ever paid me to write more or less told me what they wanted me to write -- no offense to you intended -- that's just the way I've found journalism to be. I don't write for money because this way I get to read what I please and write what I please about what I read. I do take a review copy if a review copy is offered, if it's something that I think I might like to read and if it's understood that the giver may not like what I write. So I don't get many offers -- but I don't solicit review copies, so that's all right with me. The only reason I write is to keep my nails trimmed anyway. I'm retired and don't need the money.

> 47 -- "Let's just say I have a personal stake in investigating the causes and naming the malefactors associated with the Lesser Depression/Great Recession."

Have you seen any of Richard Belzer's stuff yet? Just curious to know your opinion if you've got one.

48: Thus far, I'm doing it for free. So I'm untainted by filthy lucre. That said, I think I write pretty above average reviews. As the Joker said in that one Batman movie, "If you're good at anything, never do it for free." So ... yeah.

I've seen Belzer do Comedy Central Roasts, but nothing thus far on the Recession/Depression.

> 50 -- I don't know if we're thinking of the same guy. The only Richard Belzer I know of writes books on journalism and history. He seems to be a "debunker" sort. I just sent for his book on the JFK assassination. It's supposed to be very good. I've never read any of his stuff before and I was just wondering if you had any experience of him.

No?

I guess I'll have to read the book then. 8-)

51: He'll always be John Munch to me:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Munch

Then again, Peter Weller got his PhD in art history. Robocop does the Renaissance:

http://www.theflorentine.net/articles/article-view.asp?issuetocId=2576

Finished The Creative Fire by Brenda Cooper -- meh. Then again, I'm not the ideal audience for this (probably tween girls into the Hunger Games). They might like the book. I found the prose rather flat, but the story had potential.

> 52 -- I almost never watch TV, so I never saw Belzer in any of his roles. The photo of Belzer, however appears to be the author I asked you about.

Doesn't Peter Weller do narrations for History Channel documentaries? I think I saw him once on "Engineering an Empire."

I found "The Hunger Games" "rather flat" for being entirely predictable. But I don't want to argue and we're off-topic here. So I'm out. Nice to talk to you.

Bye

51: I teach Peter Weller's nephew. . . .

> 54 -- "I teach Peter Weller's nephew. . . ."

Solomon sez: I'd rather teach Peter Weller's niece.

Francis Weller is an odd kind of genius--mention any kind of animal, and he can tell you its habitat, what it eats, how much it weighs, its gestation period, etc., etc. He volunteers at the zoo and is absolutely obsessed with big cats.

Finished the awful Space Station Friendship and bunged up a review here.

Now reading the SF Masterwork edition of Arslan. Introduction by Adam Roberts and I think he's kinder to the book than I would have been.

Done with The Leopard. It seemed very careful and very safe, and then the last 1/4ish redeemed it for me. It was just brilliant.

I've just picked up a digital copy (only way it's available) of Vasyl Shkliar's novel Raven.

It's one of the books recommended by Andrei Kurkov on Finnegan's List (http://www.seua.org/finnegans-list/) in 2011.

I'm excited to see this in English translation.

Gave Catch 22 another chance and got 100 pages in this time before I got terminally bored and annoyed. I simply don't get it with that book. I found it to be "funny," not actually funny--it felt like a vaudeville routine that simply would not end. And through those hundred pages, there is no plot; that's not something that normally bothers me, but plot might at least have given me a reason to continue in a book where I didn't care about anything else. What am I missing?

There are good books that I find at the wrong time. Put them down, come back six months or year later and I'm ready for them or they resonate better with me.

Not saying that's the case with Heller--maybe his style just doesn't appeal to you. I haven't read CATCH 22 in many moons but I do have fond memories of it.

> 60 -- Heller was one of "the greatest generation" who marched off to destroy fascism in Europe and ended up bringing it home for the rest of us to enjoy. But his generation, and the next and the next all fought wars overseas (Korea & Vietnam). If you personally have never been in the service, I expect that's what you're missing in Catch 22. I was in the Marines and I can tell you: every character in Catch 22 was in the Marines with me. Four years in the military, you meet every one of those people. Heller does a beautiful job in describing them, both individually and as types.

The reason I (and others like me) met so many of Heller's characters is that the military manufactures people like them. They start out as ordinary people but then they're warped by military training and the military mindset and the opportunities for corruption and dissipation that military life throws at them with shovels.

So if you want to understand Catch 22, sign up for a hitch (I personally joined but we all mostly got drafted) in the service and volunteer for the the next war. Four years later you can write your own book if you want to, and I bet it'll be every bit as hilarious as Catch 22. I'll never forget that book and "Thank you, Joseph Heller, for Dunbar and Hungry Joe and Major Major Major Major and Milo Minderbinder and chocolate-covered cotton."

> 60 et seq.: Many years ago I was working in a furniture factory office with two other blokes, one of whom was former Army. One night, the film version of Catch-22 was on (and in those days, there were only three tv stations in the UK and no video recorders, so whatever was put on would get watched). The film is about as non-linear as the book. The conversation the next day went rather like this:

"Did you see that film last night?"
"Yeah, really weird. I couldn't understand it."
"Me neither."
(Pause)
"Did you see the bit where the bloke's talking about a business deal, and the bomber crashes right behind him and he doesn't notice?"
"That was good. (Pause) What about that briefing where no-one can take their eyes off the general's driver?"
"Yes, that was funny. And there was that bloke all in plaster, and the nurses just switch his bottles over...."
(Then one of the shop floor managers came in from the factory.)
"Did you see that film last night?"
"We were just talking about it."
"Couldn't understand it."
"Yes, me neither. But did you see the bit where...."

...and so on for the rest of the day. People would come into the office on some errand or other, say they'd watched it but didn't get it, and then talk about nothing else but. By the end of the day, everyone agreed that it might have been a bit strange, but they'd actually really enjoyed it!

60: I found it to be "funny," not actually funny--it felt like a vaudeville routine that simply would not end. That's how I saw the George W. Bush administration handle the War on Terror and the Iraq Quagmire.

On a lighter note, On the Noodle Road by Jen Lin-Liu is fun reading. A trek along the Silk Road from Beijing to Rome, seeing the different permutations of the noodle.

> 63 -- I read Catch 22 when I was 16 because it was supposed to be "dirty." I read it again when I was 25, after being discharged from the Marines. I found it hilarious both times, but moreso after I finished my hitch.

The film came out while I was still in the Marines. I never saw it because I knew -- even at that age -- that they couldn't film Catch 22. I don't remember which book I was first conscious that Hollywood had butchered, but by the time they released Catch 22 on film, I was already conscious that Hollywood wrecks good books. To this day I have never seen the film because I cherish my memories of the book.

Just sayin' my say. No offense intended.

The movie doesn't begin to match the depth and complexity of the book...but there are wonderful scenes and vignettes and Alan Arkin as Yossarian is pretty darn fine.

I liked both the book and the movie. They are different beasts. Mike Nichols is no Chris Columbus, that auteur who directed a faithful adaptation of the first Harry Potter movie. "Butcher" is a bit harsh. But I'd also rather not see directors turned into glorified stenographers either. Remember Gus Van Sant's shot-by-shot remake of Psycho? Me neither.

One fine example of a truly fine novel that Hollywood destroyed is Gustav Hasford's "The Short Timers." One ruination: Stanley Kubric filmed "Full Metal Jacket" on the cheap. Hasford's novel was set in Vietnam and Kubric shot the film in London. The major ruination is that Kubric didn't have the nerve to actually film the book. Joker's experience of Cowboy's death is greatly diminished in the film and the full impact/import of what happened in the book therefore never strikes the protagonist (or the audience) in the film.

Hasford's book is tragedy in the grand tradition. Kubric's movie is anti-war schlock.

I'm a little ahead of schedule in my reviewing duties, so I treated myself to Thomas Pynchon's doorstopper, Against the Day, a book that has been on my TBR list since forever. While I am a total Pynchon fanboy, I have to say it is quite fun. The Chums of Chance are something right out of a dime novel and Scarsdale Vibe is a classic Pynchon villain. "Tesla developing a means for free global energy? That must be stopped!" Anarchists, aeronauts, explorers, unionizing and strikebreaking. Wacky comedic farce slammed against passages that are incredibly poetic and insightful.

Reading Controlled Hallucinations by John Sibley Williams -- taut, phantasmorgic poems that approach surrealism.

Finished Wheatyard by Paul Anderson, about a business grad student from U of Illinois-Champaign befriending a cantankerous reclusive writer who lives in a run-down home in Illinois farm country who writes epic convoluted pop culture riddled novels that no mainstream publisher will touch. (It's set in 1993, before the Internet explosion of self-published writing and online fan-fiction communities.) Short, sweet, and funny as hell, especially to those curious about the publishing industry.

I'm not really feeling this Baron in the Tree by Calvino. I like the premise but it just doesn't click. We'll see....
I've also been nibbling on The Best of Wodehouse and In September the Light Changes by Andrew Holleran.

Started Independent People by Haldor Laxness--liking it quite a bit through the first hundred pages.

Reading Across the land and water, selected poems from W G Sebald. The style will be familiar to anyone who has read After Nature.

I note in a handful of the later poems that Herbeck's influence appears to be evident. A pleasing development.

I finished and reviewed an early reviewer book, Neighbors At War! The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association. It was entertaining, but not really my cup of tea.

I also reviewed Cliff's book, Righteous Blood. You should read it. It is good.

My thanks.

Finished Mountolive. Again, I am completely drained and emotionally wrung out from the experience. An epic of disillusionment, a mostly unpleasant story told in the most romantic language possible. It doesn't lost any points for that, of course. I consider emotional impact to be the most important element of art despite being the most subjective. If it breaks my heart, it's a good book - cathartically speaking, anyway.

Also bounced through a dumber-than-usual 70s gothic called The Terror Trap. The villains needed a front for their evil scheme and what did they decide on? A. Boarding. House. Small wonder they got caught.

Mountolive was my favorite of the quartet. Yes, I agree, it was very sad.

re 71)

Yay! I adored Independent People. I want to read more by Laxness.

2/3 of the way through Independent People and still liking it very much.

Bought another Bernhard today: Correction. Also bought Something Is Out There by Richard Bausch. (I go to Sewanee in July and get to pick a person to have a workshop with; I think it's going to be Bausch.)

Also enjoying the hell out of Moods by Rachel Glaser. She wrote one of my favorite books of short stories, Pee On Water. (The touchstone for that second one was a lot easier to find than the first one. . . .)

Started Clea right away. I've got the bit in my teeth to finish the set and move on to other novels - I've got some Wodehouse I'm eyeing for a refresher. A rather different take on the follies of love.

Independent people = yes, I need to read that.

The Alexandria Quartet = yes, you've convinced me that I need to reread at some stage.

I'm ploughing through all and sundry that I come across on the enneagram at present. To lighten the load, I have these two lined up on my kindle app:

The once and future king, T H White

Eagle of the ninth, Rosemary Sutcliffe.

I second those, Zeno....

Have made the decision to bail on Infinite Jest for now. Not the right time for me and that book. I'm not plugged in to the modern world and most of his postmodern tactics (and all the bloody acronyms) do not resonate with me. They feel like clutter. My new plan is to swing round to the pioneers (Gaddis, Vonnegut, Pynchon, et al) and proceed from there. Wallace doesn't work in a vacuum.

Good, honest response. You'll come back to DFW some day. He's not like Kerouac--you'll never outgrow him.

Independent People: one of my new all-time favorites, five stars.

Halfway through a very ordinary collection of stories by Richard Bausch, Something Is Out There.

83: One easily outgrows Kerouac, one doesn't outgrow William S. Burroughs

Against the Day continues its strange journey.

John Adams has picked up a bit, the key players finally out of the paperwork and into the action. McCullough's narrative does stultify on occasion, bogs down in a few too many details. Also, I sense he's not cynical and I do not entirely trust historians who don't show a good sense of cynicism about the workings of history. Even so, the pace has at least picked up now.

Clea is going quite well - Darley seems to have wised up a bit and a cleansing pragmatism seems to distinguish this final volume. Should be done in no time and then it's on to Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit.

These are the books I tackled this month (usual weird mix):

THE BOX: UNCANNY STORIES (Richard Matheson)
SPIKE MILLIGAN: A CELEBRATION
A MAN WITHOUT BREATH (Philip Kerr)
YESTERDAY'S TOMORROWS: PAST VISIONS OF THE AMERICAN FUTURE
SANDHILLS BOY (Elmer Kelton)
THE NOISE REVEALED (Ian Wales)
NOSTALGIA FOR THE ABSOLUTE (George Steiner)
THE WORLD OF JEEVES (P.G. Wodehouse)