May, 2016--readings & recommendations

I closed off April and started May with Daniil Kharms' TODAY I WROTE NOTHING.

A strange, marginal literary figure, died of starvation (basically) in a psyche ward during the siege of Stalingrad. A true character, used to dress up like Sherlock Holmes and act the dandy (in revolutionary Russia, that took guts). An enlightened lunatic, like Nerval.

Definitely worth seeking out.

Read Elizabeth is Missing, which I enjoyed, although it read a little like a Creative Writing novel, and the narrator, an 80-year-old with dementia, read like an old person written by a young person... Now reading Vernon God Little and not very impressed so far...

>2 iansales: Dreadful Book (Vernon God Little) didn't finish it.

Didn't it win the Booker?

Still plowing through Murrow - I watched "Good Night and Good Luck" yesterday while donating platelets at the Red Cross, could not hear it very well, have to watch it again.

Chris just got me Vol. VI of the 15 volume Cosimo press reissue of Burton's 1001 Nights (obviously that's a bad link). I'm still reading Vol. I so I asked him to slow down, but he is afraid if he does not grab them as they go on sale at Amazon, they might go out of print before he is finished getting them all. :)

>4 CliffBurns: Yup. I thought the Life of Pi was crap (2002) and then the next year they gave the award to an even bigger pile. They restored my estimation of their taste in the next two years with The Line of Beauty and The Sea.

>6 justifiedsinner: I wasn't impressed with Life of Pi either.

>3 justifiedsinner: I'm going to struggle through to the end, but I'm not going to give it more than one star.

>4 CliffBurns: Yes, Booker Prize winner, and on that 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list. Baffling.

>4 CliffBurns: & >8 iansales:: Perhaps you make it last on the list so as to make you pleased to welcome the Grim Reaper...

Finished The Stand a couple of nights ago. Started My Struggle: Book Two: A Man in Love by Knausgard today.

The Stand was entertaining. Much to my surprise I was not exhausted by the end of the book. I do have to say I wanted more blood and violence. The Road actually scared me more. There is one particular image that still haunts me.

I enjoyed the first book of My Struggle. Really looking forward to this one.

Just completed Bruce Holbert's THE HOUR OF LEAD.

A family saga, encompassing decades, set (initially) in pre-WWI Washington State.

Tough, frontier people, and the writing is rich and descriptive; Cormac McCarthy fans should seek out some Holbert.

A solid read, gripping and moving.

Now reading Women in Love. You can't go wrong with a bit of David Herbert. A local author for me, too.

Finished Black Swan Green, impressive vocabulary and literary style for a thirteen year old.

Read THE BIG SHORT by Michael Lewis, source of the film I praised on a different thread.

Gave me a renewed appreciation for the movie's ability to distill complicated jargon into plain English.

The book more serious than the movie and, natch, far more detailed and hard to follow. I got lost a few times but, again, seeing the film helped.

Finished HOW I BECAME ONE OF THE INVISIBLE by David Rattray.

A strange compendium--the first part of the book is a kind of memoir, where Rattray discusses his Beatnik days as a marijuana grower and small time criminal.

Later, there are very smart essays on cult writers like Rene Crevel and Roger Gilbert-Leconte.

Good, literate reading but an odd mix.

Published by the legendary Semiotext(e) Press.

Finished two books, both felt like real accomplishments! Murrow: His Life and Times by A. M. Speeder, and The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco.

Currently reading Jailbird. Reading World War Z with Chris.

>16 anna_in_pdx:, nice, I have Island by Eco on the TBR pile. Heard it isn't one of his better ones, but I've already read all of his "better ones" and I won't mind indulging.

Reading The Dream of My Return by Horacio Castellanos Moya. Translated by Katherine Silver, as was his best known book, Senselessness.

Reading The Accidental, really quite fun in a I'm-going-to-put-on-my-bovver-boots-and-kick-you-in-the-teeth kind of way.

Finished THE END OF PROTEST by Micah White.

White was one of the organizers of the Occupy movement (affiliated with Adjusters magazine)--his tracing of the history of dissent is interesting but the book is too self-referential, almost self-congratulatory. Plus White quotes or alludes to Marianne Williamson numerous times which, to me, is like citing Carlos Casteneda or Uri Geller as an inspiration.

Everybody's Fool Richard Russo

If you like Russo's fiction, if you loved Nobody's Fool, you will love Everybody's Fool. I was very worried about a sequel, but it only took a few pages to bring me back home to North Bath. You have to read this one, even if you haven't read Nobody's Fool.

Any new Russo is great news. We have a circle of folks in our small Saskatchewan city who will LOVE to hear about the release of EVERYBODY'S FOOL.

Finished The Accidental which was very good. Onto The Sea, The Sea.

Just finished He Wants by Alison Moore, a short & intricate novel that makes it look easy.

Finished Terry Gilliam's memoir GILLIAMESQUE.

Beautifully designed, lavishly illustrated but the stories were awfully familiar and the volume ($50 hardcover) more than a tad over-priced.

Glad I got it from the library instead.

>25 CliffBurns:, loved the punchline, lol

Wrapped up Richard Russo's EVERYBODY'S FOOL in about a day and a half.

As message #21 indicated, it's another entertaining, funny page-turner from one of my favourite American authors. The ending is a bit too pat and definitely a crowd-pleaser but the tapestry of characters and over-lapping dramas made the book near-impossible to put down.

Finished THE MEURSAULT INVESTIGATION (Kamel Daoud), a retelling of Camus' THE STRANGER, from the point of view of the murdered man's brother.

Daoud takes Camus to task for never NAMING the Arab victim in the story and there's an implicit charge of racism...but I find that narrow-minded and parochial. Daoud forgets that THE STRANGER was also, besides a novel, a work written by a philosopher. Meursault, when he meets his victim on the beach, is in the midst of an existential funk and I don't think it would have mattered whether it was an Arab, a Canadian, an Argentinian, whatever--their lives would have been in danger that day, at the moment of confrontation. Meursault's world/universe/paradigm was at a tipping point and it was only a matter of time before he either killed himself or someone else.

Anyone have any thoughts?

It didn't stand out to me that it was at a tipping point, maybe I didn't read closely enough. But I'd agree the race and name of the man Meursault killed was of no relevance to him.

Re: tipping point--that incident on the beach, the sun in Meursault's eyes, the sand stretching all around, a sense of hallucinogenic clarity--at that moment the victim is like Schrodinger's cat, both alive and dead, an instant fraught with possibility.

>29 Cecrow:

But I'd agree the race and name of the man Meursault killed was of no relevance to him.

No--his victim's race and name may not have been of importance to Meursault, but that the victim was an Arab definitely has relevance. Meursault is alienated because he doesn't belong; consciously or not--it doesn't matter--he strikes out at that which makes him not belong, that which defines his foreignness. That he kills a local Arab and not another Frenchman or tourist or a cat, is absolutely not an accident.

Most to the (Daoud's) point, it's not an accident to the victim's side, to Arabs, to Daoud, who are treated to the spectacle of themselves being disposed of like ants for the benefit of white man's--the white man who colonised them, segregated them, and exploits them in the name of his superior right--"existential" crises and two-bit "philosophy" (sorry, thinking of Camus as a "philosopher" makes me laugh. That sentimental twaddler and navel-gazer, a philosopher!)

It's obscene.

Though I like Camus, I agree with Lola on the victim's ethnicity being relevant. Absolutely the fact that he is of the colonized race and an "other" is part of the plot.

#31 Your sentiments toward Camus' status as "philosopher" parallel Sartre's--the pair had a rather famous falling out.

I think my feelings toward the alleged racism in THE STRANGER was nicely summarized by Patrick West in this short piece from last year:

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/letranger-absurdist-not-racist/1727...

And here are some comments from Camus' daughter worth noting:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/23/albert-camus-outsider-catherine-ca...

I think my feelings toward the alleged racism in THE STRANGER was nicely summarized by Patrick West in this short piece from last year

Nicely, huh? OK.

>32 anna_in_pdx:

It's chilling actually how many negative reviews go "He missed the point!"--um, yes, points are being missed, but not by Daoud. :)

Currently reading The Robber Bride. Enjoying it more than some of Atwood's other novels.

Finished Anthony Marra's novel of the Chechen war, A CONSTELLATION OF VITAL PHENOMENA.

Well-researched and chilling, but not especially moving. Literate, but too cool for my taste.

Finished My Struggle: Book Two: A Man in Love. This one is about Knausgard's domestic life. (Meh). Didn't have the emotional pull of the first one. There are flashes of that lucid gaze that made the first book so attractive. Some very interesting philosophical and literary discussions. Some brilliant insights into the psychology of the artist. There is also more self pity and narcissism than the first one. Some discussions about the literary world that come across as petty score settling. Not as impressive as the first one, but a good book nevertheless.