Your current reading for the 2nd Quarter , 2009 ?

Here's a thread for the Second Quarter of 2009 ! I'm kicking it off with The Alchemist .

Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

The Black Doll by Edward Gorey (thanx Early Reviewers) ... I'll finish it pretty soon. It's really short.

Sleepwalking Through History by Haynes Johson

And The Cantos by Pound and "Rising Up and Rising Down" by William Vollmann Both, multi-year, mega-reading projects.

In the past week completed:

RIMBAUD: THE DOUBLE LIFE OF A REBEL (Edmund White)

Very good intro to Rimbaud's life and work--concise and smart.

SUPERNATURAL (Graham Hancock)

What does one call this? Para-archaeology? There are some good bits and provocative, unsettling questions asked. But the "science" seems wonky and the speculations entirely, well, speculative. Entertaining, though.

IN MILTON LUMKY TERRITORY is early Phil Dick and mainstream. Posthumously published and while not terrible, just seemed...inconsequential?

I'm making an effort to read more, just to keep up with some of the folks in this group who are able to devour a phenomenal amount of books.

Must...not...look...stoopid...

"True pornography is given us by vastly patient professionals." -- Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

Reading voluminous amounts shouldn't be the ideal. While I read a lot of books at one time, some books also take a long, long time to read, like "The Cantos" and "Rising Up and Rising Down." RURD has been a multi-year endeavor.

My challenge is reviewing something soon after I've read it -- especially if I've been given the book for free -- to not look like a slag.

I'm taking my time with Henry James. He's not someone you breeze through in a weekend. Savoring literary morsels is a good thing.

I'm two-thirds of the way through The Levant Trilogy by Olivia Manning. And it makes me want to watch the telly adaptation "Fortunes of War" again because I'm convinced it missed loads out. I also polished off Alice Adventure's in Wonderland but I'm clearly some sort of grumpy bastard since I find it annoyingly patronising rather than charming.

About halfway through A Handful of Dust by Evenly Waugh—love it.

I recently reread ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND and it frankly bored the crap out of me.

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS is better.

Sacrilege?

HANDFUL OF DUST is lovely. Enjoy!

Scoop by Waugh, Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, Poet in New York by Frederico Garcia Lorca

8: How are you enjoying the Blind Assassin? I read it a few years ago and was underwhelmed.

Edited to add: Scoop is the only E. Waugh I've read and I thought it was hysterically funny. Gotta read more one of these years.

#9 Re: Blind Assassin. So far, "underwhelmed" would describe my opinion, but I'm only about 140 or so pages or so into it. This is only my second Atwood. I read Alias Grace and enjoyed it well enough. I've never read The Handmaid's Tale. I probably should, but every time I read what it's about, I think, "Oh, must I?"

Just finished Lowboy by John Wray and American Rust, by Philipp Meyer. Both very good. Now, while waiting for holds to come in at the library, I'm rereading Angels by Denis Johnson, one of my favorite novels.

11: Scratch, I've never read Johnson. Why do you like Angels so much?

I seem to recall quite enjoying The Blind Assassin, although it was the first - and only, to date - Atwood I'd read. I have The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake in the TBR box....

I always have too many on the go at one time. Portfolio theory, I suppose. Still, for what it's worth, my current clutch is:

Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes

The Rest Is Noise

The Changing Faces of Jesus

Nietzsche: A Very Short Introduction

The Portable Nietzsche

The Tribes of Britain

The Bible: Authorized King James Version - very, very slowly

Europe: A History (again)

Johnson is a fine writer--check out his short story collection JESUS' SON (made into a terrific movie).

10 & 13: I'd recommend Atwood's sci fi rather than her normal fiction. Not that the latter is bad - I enjoyed Cat's Eye and The Robber Bride, and Alias Grace wasn't bad - but The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake are her best. I suggest you try at least one of those.

Not sure what i'll be reading this month. I'm rereading The Handmaid's Tale and I might pick up Dead Air by Iain M. Banks afterwards, then a classic for a change of pace. Based on previous posts, Evelyn Waugh looks like a good option. Any suggestions?

15: Hi, Cliff. What makes Jesus' Son so good?

#16 Wasn't overly fond of Dead Air. One of Banks's weaker ones, I thought.

What makes Johnson's JESUS SON' so good? The depth of characterization with a relatively lean style. I have to say his last book, TREE OF SMOKE (winner of the Pullitzer?) seemed overlong and bloated by comparison. And make sure you see the movie because it features a fearless performance by Billy Crudup...

I agree with Cliff that Tree of Smoke was bloated. As for Jesus' Son, I was and continue to be baffled as to why that was made into a movie and not Angels. Angels sort of shares a milieu with JS--the 1970s, bus stations, no-questions-asked neighborhoods, emergency rooms, bare-lightbulb hotels, hippie flophouses. Lost drifters and alcoholics and drug addicts. But in a way this is damning with faint praise--makes him sound like Bukowski, who isn't fit to pour Johnson a drink. Johnson first published poetry, and it shows. He uses words to break your heart (and he would never wield a cliche like I just did). He writes about people who make poor decisions, or who let the decisions make themselves. His dialogue is spectacular. It's got a kind of off-center sound, but it's always perfectly plausible as real speech.

I'm not doing a good job of explaining this. Let me just note that Angels and Jesus' Son are two of a kind, whereas Johnson's other novels range far in setting. Tree of Smoke in Southeast Asia, Resuscitation of a Hanged Man in Cape Cod, Already Dead in northern California, The Stars at Noon in Central America. Equally wide range of characters, too.

18: That's a pity. I'll probably check it out anyway though, as I've enjoyed his sci fi and have been meaning to read some of his other fiction. Dead Air is the only one I have. I read Canal Dreams, but I wasn't impressed.

The Crow Road and Whit are excellent.

Oh, ffs. Stupid touchstones have the author of these two books as "Ian Banks". What eejits can't even enter the name of an author off the cover of a book? And why don't they sort out the damn LT database and sort out all the bogus spellings?

>22 iansales: I think that's what the "Combiners" group is all about.

Leave bloat to the Tolkien knock-offs and Robert Jordan twonks.

Also, Handful of Dust is amazing. First Waugh I read and was wonderfully surprised. Check out "Bright Young Things," directed by Stephen Fry, it is based on Waugh's Vile Bodies

Apparently there is a movie version of Handful of Dust with Alec Guinness in it. I remember seeing the end of it as a wee child on PBS or something.

This morning I finished Frederic Raphael's EYES WIDE OPEN (A Memoir of Stanley Kubrick). Raphael is an astute writer who spent months working on drafts of Kubrick's last film "Eyes Wide Open". That said, he is alternatively charmed, annoyed and baffled by Stan K., who remains his strange, enigmatic self to the end.

Fascinatin' stuff.

Cliff and Scratch, Thanks! And thanks for steering me away from Tree of Smoke. And the dogging of Bukowski is seconded here. 50 years from now the only one of those cats who will be read is Bowles.

Yeah, my stock line on Bukowski is that he's a great storyteller but only a mediocre writer at best. And a one-trick pony for sure.

Like Orson Scott Card, George Lucas, and JRR Tolkien

While Bukowski was a middling writer, the movie "Barfly" was pretty good. Had my first experience with cheap scotch (J&B) with that movie.

Have you seen the movie Sheltering Sky? It's directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and stars John Malkovich. A beautiful, sensuous, dreamlike movie.

I have to speak up in favor of Tree of Smoke; I thought it was absolutely brilliant. Same with Bolano's 2666.

TREE OF SMOKE wasn't terrible (not possible with Johnson) but it lacked focus and needed cutting. Some good sections but the book required more cohesion and narrative drive.

Count me out as far as Bukowski goes. Some of his poetry was good but his fiction was undisciplined, sloppy and amateurish.

Then he should have wrote those Dune prequels or the bloated Robert Jordan finale ;)

Bukowski was a character not a writer. Allen Ginsberg was a character AND a writer. (your rules may not apply!)

Kerouac was a character and a typist.

bukowski was welter-weight; ginsberg a middle-weight; and frost (my edition), a light-heavyweight. let's at least call the first mentioned, a writer.

And Denis Johnson's the Evander Holyfield of poets-turned-fiction-writers.

Visited my local retail bookstore to use my Border Bucks today and counted 17 volumes of Bukowski on the shelf and not one of Robert Browning. Jesus.

i doubt that even he could help.

Depressing...

I'm about a third of the way through Richard Yates' REVOLUTIONARY ROAD and think it very fine. Unfortunately, I have the movie tie-in edition so I have to flip past Leonardo diCaprio's mug on the cover (a fatal bit of miscasting, in my view)...

I read Rev. Road a couple of months ago. I liked it, but probably wouldn't rank it in my top 10 or 20 favorites. I will admit, though, that it had its moments of brilliance.

Still need to see the movie. Don't care one way or another about DiCaprio, but, if anything, Winslet can make any movie good.

I too don't understand the Leo mania. He's a perennial kid. That said, I found the movie interesting but (naturally) disappointing. Yates wouldn't have liked it either. (Stop the presses!)

RR the book is one of my all-time favorites. Come to think of it, everything by Yates is one of my all-time favorites.

The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad by Minister Faust - so far it's been a lot of fun.

Finished REVOLUTIONARY ROAD. Amazing. Yates is one of the few authors I know of who make me talk out loud to his books., One of his characters will do something (invariably stupid or, at least, ill-advised) and I find myself muttering: "You fool, you bloody, bloody FOOL..."

Cliff, I felt the same way about Revolutionary Road. The movie's trailers make me think Mendes and Haythe blew it, nevertheless, I probably will watch it eventually.

I'll probably watch The Reader since Kate Winslet declares her War on Clothes in the movie ;)

Will NOT be watching the movie adaptation of REVOLUTIONARY ROAD. The book is what I want to remember, the Frank Wheeler of my mind, not that pie-faced asshole, DiCaprio...

DiCaprio ruined the Gangs of New York movie. Why is Scorsese so infatuated with him? Reminds me of when Francis Ford Coppola cast Keanu Reeves in Dracula, because Reeves was "young." And could also emote like wood. Keanu Reeves is the John Kerry of actors.

Finished The Levant Trilogy. I was right: the TV adaptation missed a lot out. The book is far, far better. Now reading The Tar Aiym Krang by Alan Dean Foster for my reading challenge. I shall blog about it. Not too impressed at present....

Alan Dean Foster...David Gerrold...

Weren't those guys the Kevin J. Andersons of the 70's and 80's?

The literature equivalent of the Pinto?

Badly immolated prose, screaming to be put out of its misery...

Whereas Graham Greene is the Jaguar XJ of literature. And Pynchon is a rocket-powered Streamline trailer crammed with the works of the Illuminati, the Gnostics, the Kabbalists, and dog-eared copies of old Hardy Boys mysteries ... all the while careening across Route 66 with the driver on a combination of LSD, Canadian whiskey, and mescal.

... that is, if we really want to take this metaphor to its illogical conclusion.

...and I think you have.

Well said.

Isn't the Hardy Boys plus the Kabbala the plot of Against the Day?

Currently I'm reading my wife's Master's paper (in the field of Arts Education) and feeling as dumb as a post.

No wonder I never thrived in academia...

>52 kswolff: I can't tell if you're praising or condemning.

Still reading Portrait of a Lady It's going faster than expected. It will still take a while.

The Black Doll by Edward Gorey rawked! Consistently great stuff!

I'm also reading about gang and political violence in Haiti in "Rising Up and Rising Down" by William Vollmann

After Henry James, I'm planning to read An Adultery by Alexander Theroux.

57: We are all expecting updates on Theroux's out-of-the-way facts, astonishing details, and original thoughts.

Or you could just read his book ;)

Finished The Tar-Aiym Krang by Alan Dean Foster and wrote this about it. Now reading On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. I went off McEwan after Saturday, but this one is shaping up quite well.

Quite a restrained review for you, Sales-y, but I think the quality of mercy in a critic is a good thing, don't you?

I'm curious about ON CHESIL BEACH--like you, I've found the last couple of McEwan books on the dry side. His early novels were dark and macabre and I quite liked them. But I'm willing to give CHESIL BEACH a chance...er, that is, until I read your review (be sure to post it)...

Yes, there's a lot I could have said about The Tar-Aiym Krang But I'm starting to wonder what the point is. In the sf group they're currently trying to come up with a list of sf novels to recommend to someone new to the genre... and the same old shit is being trotted out. Asimov, Heinlein, even EE Doc Smith... Sigh.

Gravity's Rainbow
The Crying of Lot 49
A Scanner Darkly
Neuromancer
Cryptonomicon
Imajica

Those are my suggestions for genre newbies.

Imajica? That book is the definition of padding.

OK ... Books of Blood Anything to get the genre newbie hooked on "good horror" by Barker.

Sadly, after Books of Blood it was all downhill for Barker. I like Weaveworld and Sacrament isn't bad, but the others are all ten times longer than they needed to be.

Weaveworld was OK, but I'm a fan of Imajica Granted, it's been ages since I last read Barker.

I thought fiction "being ten times longer than they need to be" is a prerequisite for speculative fiction. Didn't you get the memo? ;) Brian Sanderson wrote it and it was 4000 pages long.

I think On Chesil Beach is very good, but soooo inhibited and English - set in the days when those words were synonymous.

As opposed to today, when QE 2 and Co. are swinging from the chandeliers like orangutans on angel dust ;) Or your typical Scottish soccer hooligan at the pub.

Bah. Better than Saturday but not as good as his earlier novels. It's all getting a bit samey: leisurely stroll up to turning point, protagonist makes wrong - and often dumb - decision, quick montage showing how their life went as a result of that decision...

Next up, Cloud Atlas. Hopefully, its well-written prose will calm me down so I don't go postal on the next person who tries to claim Asimov was a good writer...

"In the SF group they're currently trying to come up with a list of SF novels to recommend to someone new to the genre... and the same old shit is being trotted out. Asimov, Heinlein, even EE Doc Smith... Sigh."

It baffles me but I do see the old shit gradually being displaced, becoming dated, embarrassingly reactionary. I can't imagine a kid picking up Asimov or Smith today and going "Ooo, fucking hell, this is great stuff, why don't people write like this any more". The clunkiness and ineptitude wear thin after awhile and kids like faster reads these days. Old SF is slllloooowwwwww compared to the visually/action-oriented, cinematically influenced SF today.

The famous titles might have longer shelf life--the FOUNDATION series, STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND--but the vast majority of "classic" SF stuff is (rightfully) doomed to extinction.

Case in point:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/first-lensman-1950-by-ee-doc-smith,25040/

The "Box of Paperbacks" is a fun series. It's interesting to find out many of these famous writers were prolific hacks.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/box-of-paperbacks-the-man-from-planet-x-1-the-she...

Ok. I'm happy. A book snob group. Note my name. Of course, now I have to spend the day reading all the threads. But before I do that, I'm in here with my current reading, or current enough.

Looking above me, I see mention of one of the worst scifi books ever written (if you remove anything ever scribbled by L. Ron Hubbard): Stranger in a Strange Land. As a lad, that one made me rip pages.

But back to the good stuff. I'm rereading Graham Greene because I have to. Brighton Rock comes first. I've just finished The Secret Magdalene by Ki Longfellow. So much drek out there now, my hair quivered finding a good one. Longfellow was better than good. Plus, I love that last name. Not a Pynchon man. Does that bar me from the group? I note he seems a favorite here. Read V so long ago, can't actually remember why I loathed it. And yet I picked up Gravity's Rainbow. Was I nuts? Back to the good stuff again. Nabokov Nabokov Nabokov. Anything. Everything. Then Flann O'Brien. Reread The Third Policeman a month ago. Watching "Lost" (can't help myself), as soon as I saw the book on the beach, knew what the show was about. I found Flann (Myles, whoever) 30 years ago and still swoon over his books.

Be back when I've read the threads.

Glad to make your acquaintance, Booksnob. It's OK to not be a Pynchonite. He's an acquired taste and people have different tastes.

I also read Stranger in a Strange Land -- my girlfriend is a big Heinlein fan -- and I wasn't all that impressed. Granted, Jubal has some funny monologues railing against organized religion, but it's pretty weak beer compared to a real anti-clerical monster like DAF Sade I'm curious about how people can so misread a text like that and see it as a blueprint for a hippy religion. Are people really that obtuse? It's not like Heinlein went on an Ayn Rand-ish rant against organized religion that went on for pages and pages. Oh wait, he did!

Heinlein almost singlehandedly created the science fiction genre, but I wouldn't dare call him a literary stylist ... at least not before gut-laughing.

Wraeththu by Storm Constantine, on the other hand, is beautifully decadent postapocalyptic sci fi / fantasy written like a crazy combination of Edgar Allan Poe, Joris-Karl Huysmans, and Gustave Flaubert.

Never read any Flann, but I found The Third Policeman the other day and plan to read it sometime. But first, finish Henry James and read Alexander Theroux

Never mind Pynchon. (I do, but that's by the by. Couldn't cope with Gravity's Rainbow though.)

What's your position on the mollycule theory?

Apropos to nothing, William Gass and his 20,000 book library. Lucky bastard ;)

http://tunneling.squarespace.com/images/the-gass-library-fall-2007/

To me, Stranger in a Strange Land was a way to make a lot of money from a lot of happy hippies. They had no idea what they were reading, thought it was about them. It was about Heinlein's bank balance. Remember "Grok"? Help me.

I now go find Storm Constantine. Little suspicious of the name, but hey, there've been worse. And DAF SADE which I've been meaning to get to.

#75. My position on the mollycule theory is this: O'Brien is right. I'm a large part couch, a bit of bed, a nice sized horse, and as much of my girlfriend as she'll allow.

Fuck Pynchon and his puffery. And this from someone who made it all the way through Finnegan's Wake. Here's another I can't abide. The Catcher in the Rye. And hey, it's a guy thing. But not this guy. Poetry, scifi, philosophy, great ideas well put in a great read...I'm your man.

77: Yes, but what do you think about Lawrence Durrell???

The Alexandria Quarter is brilliant. I just finished rereading it. Mountolive was my favorite of the four.

Fucking hell. I am, today, an idiot. DAF SADE. The Maquis De Sade. I stand in corner. I can't even imagine what I thought I was saying. I saw and loved Quills.

Lawrence Durrell. Now there's a name out of the past. Remember reading all of the The Alexandria Quartet and liking it. I wonder if I would today? I wonder if I'd still be a Miller, Henry fan? Must find out.

Oh, Ian...

Two more Durrell fans for you. Now you guys have almost enough worldwide, living members for a round of bridge!

Yay. The Maquis de Sade. The world's most decadent resistance movement.

I don't see no International Cliff Burns Society, but there's an ILDS...

Karl, RAH didn't create sf "almost singlehandedly " or otherwise. Wash your mouth out.

Hold on there, not exactly a fan of Durrell's. I liked his books back when. And if I were, someone would have to teach me how to play bridge. I am, though, a dancy handicapper.

Another book comes to mind I read a few months back and I ought to add: Legs by William Kennedy. Absolute gem. As well as the rest of his Albany novels. (Why can't I bracket it? What the hells wrong with this place, no Legs.

With the mention of Legs, I have to speak up. Loved this book. Legs Diamond, as brought to life by Kennedy, was a man I could love. Not survive, perhaps, but love. I loved Ironweed too. We do have a few fine living American novelists. And the odd thing is I too read The Secret Magdalene and adored it. Having a conversation elsewhere trying to talk about it. Damned difficult since it's so seemingly easy yet so layered.

As for Margaret Atwood, she's very hit and miss. The Handmaid's Tale is well deserving of praise. Alias Grace is a nice piece of real crime recreation. But something like The Robber Bride shows her weakness. Can't handle the contemporary. Did someone say here she ought to stick with scifi? They're right.

Right now I read Flaubert's Salambo.

Sigh. Guess I'm going to have to give in and read The Handmaid's Tale. It just sounds so didactic. Count me in as a William Kennedy fan, though.

HANDMAID'S TALE is probably Atwood at her most readable.

The book was all right but cold, the characters rather stiff and flat, the prose not exactly stimulating. Which sums up much of Atwood's body of work, to my mind.

If you're looking for something that deals with a futuristic sexual dictatorship, why not check out "Planet Earth":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md5UkyyRJBs&feature=related

P.S. Sales, I'll get you for that little swipe you took. You know that, don't you?.

If you want good feminist sci-fi, I really enjoyed Sheri Tepper's Gibbon's Decline and Fall. I didn't like her Gate to Women's Country, nor did I like The Handmaid's Tale by Atwood, because they were too heavy handed or something. I don't think they were supposed to be didactic but they came across that way.

Sometimes I just feel under-appreciated. #82. Maquis de Sade? No?

Ah well.

Regarding Handmaid's Tale, yes the writing was flat, cold, and non-action-intensive. (As opposed to the endless speechifying and committee meetings in Moon is a Harsh Mistress) But doesn't flat and cold and stiff characters perfectly characterize the Christianity forced on humanity in the book? I see the book as highly introspective and meditative, with the main character forced to entertain herself without the luxury of books, since the Republic of Gilead practiced gender apartheid with the efficiency of the Taliban and Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign.

And I didn't say RAH invented SF, but he did come up with many of SF's tropes There's a difference. I concede not singlehandedly, but one among many who cemented the genre and bears responsibility for the genre's ossified status. Funny how modern SF masters are only noteworthy for going against these well-worn tropes.

#87 "If you're looking for something that deals with a futuristic sexual dictatorship," Ah. Maybe that's the problem. I'm not.

As to Planet Earth, what a hoot. Glad to see Roddenberry gave Ted Cassidy some work.

I couldn't get past page 10 of The Handmaid's Tale. Wooden describes it unfairly, petrified works best for me.

RE: Handmaid, I'm with Wolff all the way. Nicely summed up! And I think Atwood's realistic novels are unfairly maligned (I'm looking at you, Shaggy!) I enjoyed Robber Bride, but I think her best non-SF is Cat's Eye, an excellent, excellent depiction of how cruel little girls can be to one another.

A cage match: Ted Cassidy and Andre the Giant.

I'll take Ted. Interesting fella:

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

Back to Scratch. When I was a wee small lass, I picked up Alias Grace and read it. I'd never heard of Atwood and her now classic Handmaid. The characterization of Grace (what did she do? did she do it at all? what the hell is going on?) kept me going throughout. And with pleasure. Hello, Lizzie Borden. I thought to myself, aha! I have found a modern writer to love. So I read Handmaid. And then I thought, as kswolff says above, it was perfectly correct for the Handmaid to speak in her cold flat tones. Even if she felt differently, in her Biblical world nothing but flat would be acceptable. Handmaid is a high class The Stepford Wives. But then, I picked up The Robber Bride and it was chic lit all the way. A trifle tonier, I admit, but no more than that. And there's a certain mean streak that runs throughout, a subtle but very nasty tone. Atwood, who are you? To write of woman as object in one book, as woman as user in another, and woman as possibly guilty possibly not in yet another.

Whenever I become discouraged with the new, I retreat to the old. After Flaubert, I think it's Raymond Chandler time. Just to get the juices flowing again. No one writes like Chandler and everyone used to want to.

Chandler's sentences *pop*.

He's far superior to Hammett.

Have you read any James Crumley? To me, he's the best crime writer EVER.

Agree agree about Hammett, the lazy sod. Right in the middle of The Thin Man there's that long story about a cannibal. A filler for a thin book or what? And that reminds me, if you want to become a whaler, skip most of Moby Dick and read the huge chunk of instructions.

I love James M. Caine who could not write like Chandler (who could?), but who could spin a great yarn...but James Crumley? Who who? Tell me more.

Chandler over Hammett? I'll agree, though both are good to go back to. Never read Crumley (how do I miss writers like him?), but a quick look online tells me I'd like him. Thanks for mention, Cliff.

Cain! Forgot all about him. He's another good one to read again. I'd start with The Postman Always Ring Twice.

Never read either Chandler or Hammett, but I have read the Burke Novels of Andrew Vachss Good stuff, especially in the contemporary mystery thriller genre, where most of the stuff is crap.

Also, I've only read one book of Atwood, so my views are limited.

FYI Public Broadcasting's "American Masters" series will tackle Chandler in 2010. From the website:

Raymond Chandler: The Simple Art of Murder
90-minutes
A master of language and observation, the name Raymond Chandler is synonymous with that most American of literary forms – crime fiction. With such seminal works as The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye and Farewell My Lovely, Chandler and his first-person alter ego Philip Marlowe transformed pulp, establishing and ever influencing a new genre of the written word. On the big screen, his Double Indemnity marked the advent of Film Noir and was followed by movie adaptations of most of his major works. A loner and an alcoholic who didn’t publish his first book until age 51, his personal life often equaled the mysterious twists of his unique, Los Angeles based, fiction. Best told in readings from his brilliant, acerbic letters and by the artist’s who drew from his life – among them Walter Mosley, James Ellroy, Joan Didion and Robert Towne – Chandler’s story unfolds.

got tired of minister faust - should've been cut by 200 pages. But, while taking my sick bath last night, read Scalzi's Old Man's War which was v. enjoyable military sf, w/ some thinking behind it.

Classic crime fiction:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/classic-crime-fiction,26387/

Shaggy:

I've talked up Crumley so much on LT, I feel like I'm starting to sound like a scratched record/CD (depending on your demographic).

Here's his obit from the NY TIMES.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/20/books/20crumley.html

He's one of my top five literary heroes and if anyone says I was heavily influenced by LAST GOOD KISS, MEXICAN TREE DUCK and his other novels when I tackled my noir supernatural thrillers...they're absolutely right.

He was/is amazing...

Shaggy said, Atwood, who are you? To write of woman as object in one book, as woman as user in another, and woman as possibly guilty possibly not in yet another.

That's talent. Margie's writing about women as, y'know, people. Of all kinds.

(Whereas someone like, say, Judith Rossner seems to think ovaries = masochism. Or one of the Barthelmes, I forget which, wrote a novel in which every character's dialogue had exactly the same tone.)

Women as people? Surely you jest. Next you're going to tell me that they can vote and get free contraceptive advice from pharmacists.

Just got Sade Fourier Loyola yesterday. I plan to read it sometime soon, since I want to expand my knowledge of "Sadeian studies." I've read enough Sade to become familiar with his work. Now I want to know what critics have to say of him. I also have The Sadeian Woman by Angela Carter and a few other works that explore this much vilified writer of extreme fiction.

NEVER READ CHANDLER!!! And you're a literary snob? I am appalled. Also jealous. You're coming at him for the first time. Lucky fucking you.

As for Atwood, yes, talent. I give her the talent. What I refer to is heart. A writer, in one great book (Cervantes), or over the course of a long body of work (Nabokov), recreates the world out of their own being. I was merely wondering about Atwood's center. It does not, as Yeats would say (shiver when you write that name), hold.

Checked with libraries on worldcat. I can give Crumley a try by walking two blocks. I only ask this: why why that last name? I were named Crumley and I wanted to write or act or paint or dance or date, I'd change that name. Was it his mommy, do you think? James! Think of the family. You can't deny your heritage!

Finished Salambo. Funny old Flaubert. Wrote that book like painters used to paint the Magdalene. Under the guise of art, they got a little, um, of the good stuff in.

Can't make up my mind. The Postman Always Rings Twice or The Big Sleep. Both, I think.

Never read Chandler, Hammett, Cain, etc. I've never read a lot. A snob wants to read a lot, even if he somehow can't. Only a true believer has all the answers and only a doofus would think "snob" means "read everything."

I eventually want to read Chandler, Hammett, Cain, etc.

Even esteemed media critics have their blind spots:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/better-late-than-never-rabbit-run-by-john-updike,...

I is not one who thinks "snob" means "read everything." I is one who thinks snob means reading pretty much the best and pulping the worst back into good growing compost. I am a snob in so many ways, I can get into a pickle. A whole jar. If I have hurt your feelings, I apologize. You will read Chandler and Cain and when you do, I cannot imagine your life not becoming all the better for it. If you have an LA in your mind, Chandler's will replace it. His LA only exists in his pages and his pages can be read and read again. As someone said, Shirley Jackson never wrote a bad sentence. The same is true for Raymond.

Have you seen Bladerunner? They chose some LA locations frequently used by Chandler, like the abandoned apartment complex.

I have a weirdly amorphous LA in my mind, parts made up from the aforementioned Bladerunner, Six Feet Under, Mike Davis, and Joss Whedon's Angel. What I like about LA -- the idea, I've never been there ... yet -- is that it can't be contained or summarized. It's too big, too varied, equal parts plastic and menace. It's also nice to know Benedikt Taschen, the awesome book publisher, has his headquarters there and not in NYC.

I agree with your concept of snobbery. Read the best, pulp the rest.

a snob is maybe one who can hear the "drowsy tinklings" with Logan Piersall Smith. or maybe even one who can read most anything with pleasure. the Racing Form?

Finished Nadeem Aslam's the wasted vigil over the last two evenings and am somewhat at a loss as to how to describe it fairly. First: i liked everything about the book: the gently sinister tone of loving/kindness hope and pervasive loss; The opening sentence "Her mind was a haunted house;" the complexity of relations interpersonal / international/ faith and unbelief; and the unremitting sense that "nobody's right when everybody's wrong." Even if some end up doing wrong inadvertently and only within the context of the book's setting.

An elderly English widower MD/perfumer lives in a once artistically graced home celebrating Allah and his works (albeit ironically). The Taliban have cutoff one of his hands and murdered his Afgani MD wife whose religion he adopted, with more faith than his wife, when they married decades earlier. During the Russian debacle his daughter Zameen was taken to a Russian prison camp. She may have escaped, she may have had a child. In the interim 9/11 happened.

His villa/hospital/hospice is not unknown. Over a few days strangers and old friends appear and reappear. Lara, a Russian widow, searching for evidence of her conscripted son's fate; David - a long term Afghani hand - an American gem dealer and former(?) CIA operative; Dumia - a young woman who's had the temerity to attempt to restart an elementary school; Christopher - US special forces dropped into the region to fk with "the bad guys" and, as interestingly as any, more so than most, Casa - a young, injured Jihadi who, for the first time comes into contact with (some) people who share some of his beliefs but, confusingly, can't take them to the same conclusions he's learnt in the Madrassa and Jihadist camps.

Marcus (the MD) seeks refuge in protecting art - both his wife's and a great head of the Buddha which was discovered in the building of the small perfume factory; and in providing , what he hopes, is a true safe house.

This is a story about faith, ideology and action; but far more it's a story about love and it's inadvertent failures and betrayals. I don't know the author's religion, though growing up in Pakistan he was immersed in Islam, but I'm very much reminded of Graham Greene's later "spy" novels where the Catholic faith of the protagonists is every bit as important as the actions that might be made into a movie. More than anything else it makes me want to read his earlier books.

Odd statements, ie "Duke Ellington played in Kabul in 1963" placed w/out fanfare reinforce the sense of displacement and surreality that post 9/11 and before that, the Taliban and Russian occupation incurred.

hmm. 2:50 after a couple of glasses of sherry. against literacy.

I've got two stacks about 10 books high that I'm trying to get through.... and always adding more to, sad to say. It does not help that I live very near to a used bookstore.

GREAT review, Bob, very well-handled.

I just picked up a copy of THE RIGHT MADNESS by one of my five favorite authors, James Crumley. Found it in a sales bin for $2.00, along with another fave, Nicholas Christopher's A TRIP TO THE STARS. Didn't have either book, though I'd read them both. What a thrill to see them just sitting there, a bit scuffed, sales stickers all over them.

Yahoo!

I'm half way through The Buddha of Suburbia. It's pretty entertaining but feels really similar to The Ground Beneath her Feet by Salmon Rushdie. Same era, almost, same scurrilous tone. I think.

After that it's Death and the Penguin by a guy called Andre Kurkov. It seems really good from what I've heard of it.

I'm having a post reading-binge downer at the moment. It makes me feel slightly nauseous even picking one up.

I know what you mean. I walk past about six really really good used book shops on my way to and from work. I am spending all my wages on books. They always put the nice ones in the window and they stay in the back of my mind.

117, 115: I have one of the greatest bookstores in the world in my hometown (though since they went on line they don't have as many used treasures and their prices have gone up) - Powell's - and I have to stay out of it when my finances get shaky because I really, truly find it impossible to go in there and come out with empty hands. If I came into money I think I'd quickly spend it on books so maybe it's just as well I probably never will.

113: I have heard good things about Nadeem Aslam and now want to read this. Onto my list it goes.

Anna:

Your comment reminded me of a quote attributed to Desiderius Erasmus:

"When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes."

Yup...

Finished little brother by Cory Doctorow last night. Usually i find him too self important, but, maybe because this was meant as a YA book, he sticks to his characters and story very nicely. A good, cautionary tale about "the war on terror" from the POV of a smartass but not unlikeable high school geek in San Fransisco. Basically a manifesto in favor of public privacy - ie privacy, of any sort, is a right, not a privilege. The first of his books that i've finished.

Finished Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. I expected to like this more than I did. The sf was horribly clumsy, almost a text-book case of "mainstream writer reinventing ancient sf trope", and the tenuous link between the six embedded stories didn't actually add up to a plot. For all its cleverness, it was an unsophisticated book.

Now it's time to read a space book, so it's Rocketman by Nancy Conrad, a biography of astronaut Pete Conrad.

Still on Portrait of a Lady. Midway through Room mates vol. 2 by Ivan Guevara I don't plan on rushing Henry James, but I also have review copies piling up. Oh well, at least I don't have to worry about twaddle like who will be voted off "Dancing with the Stars" or whatever.

Whoooo, Ian, snarking on Mitchell...

Gonna have to politely disagree on that one. "Unsophisticated", compared to the usual SF shite out there? Eep.

I'll leave you to the tenuous mercy of the other brutes in this group. I'm putting on a rain slicker and boots, just so I can sit back and watch.

I didn't say it was unsophisticated compared to sf works. I said it was unsophisticated for all its cleverness. The comet birthmark came across as forced, especially since the narratives were directly linked. And yet, despite those overt links, the various stories didn't really come together as a metanarrative.

What about the actual WRITING? And I liked and admired the way the book was structured. But...different strokes and all that.

The writing was good, the structure was interesting. But it wasn't enough. The sf was too clumsy -- post-apocalypse sf in debased English is one of my pet hates; and the language of "Orison of Sonmi~451" was too consciously written to have been a transcript.

And, for all the stories, the book didn't actually add up to any great insight.

Have you read Ridley Walker or The Book of Dave? Both follow the post-apocalyptic debased English trope. Or does time accrue to legitimacy to these works like literary barnacles?

Their literary worthiness is irrelevant to my pet hate.

I feel the same way about the entire High Fantasy and Urban Fantasy genres. The first comes across as fascist and antidemocratic -- no wonder Saddam Hussein collected art associated with it. And the second is just radioactively lame.

Only a few writers can pull themselves out of the Tolkienistic muck and create something extraordinary. The rest is worthless slurry. At least Warhammer 40K has the decency and the foresight to expand their universe every once in a while, so it isn't The Five Races try and find a Magical Thingee to restore some Absolute Monarchy of White European-types.

Yesterday I got a third of the way through Gershom Scholem's Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship. It's a fascinating account of German Jewish intellectual life between WW1 and the Nazis.

"Their literary worthiness is irrelevant to my pet hate."

Sales, yer a pip.

It's truly a pleasure to know you.

I thoroughly enjoyed Riddley Walker, although that was years ago. The recalcitrant and rebarbative Mr. Sales makes me want to read it again, just to see if he's really right.

Or you could read the "translated" version by Kevin J. Anderson's Hackbot 3000.

#122: Right. 'Cause a nuanced exploration of enslavement, the relationship of the powerful to the powerless, the subtle shifting of those categories, the writing of history by the victors, etc, etc, told with style and grace, and illustrated across time and space through an interesting narrative structure that enhances this exploration, tying together the themes and demonstrating their universality... Well, that's not enough. Let's just complain about the comet birthmark instead.

You're a hard man to please, Mr. Sales.

*facepalm* Cloud Atlas was about slavery? Damn. How did I miss that? Except perhaps the whole didn't equal the sum of the parts. And the sf was bloody clumsily done. Come on, no one talks like Sonmi did in her "orison".

Just finished Philip Kerr's latest Bernie Gunther detective novel, A QUIET FLAME. Terrific mystery with a fascinating historical backdrop (Nazis hiding in Argentina in 1950).

Ian, you liked this one too, as I recall. You had a head start on me--this one was only released in North America this month.

Were comet scars involved? ;)

Cliff, I have A Quiet Flame altho I've not read it yet. But I've read all of Kerr's other novels.

A QUIET FLAME is terrific, better than THE ONE FROM THE OTHER and right up there with the novels that comprise the "Berlin noir" trilogy.

Read it in about two sittings.

what's w/ comet scars? they're showing up in Nancy Huston's novel fault lines - as will (later on - the book goes backwards in time) nazis. If i decide to finish - it IS kind of heavy handed, at least in translation.

#136: Well, I thought that the whole added up to more than the sum of its parts, but that's just me. Unfortunately my copy is out on what seems to be permanent loan, so I can't look at the Sonmi-451 section to argue with you. I do remember that it had your fairly typical slightly-evolved (future) / euphemistic dystopian-setting language, so obviously no one in "our time" would speak like Sonmi.

But don't let me get all Fe Fi FOE Comes on you--"it's his own future version of English" is not usually a good defense. ;)

Anyone here read CHILD 44 by Tom Rob Smith?

It gets some interesting blurbs and deals with a crime in Stalinist Russia--mystery and history, two of my passions.

Almost picked it up the other day and then held back. Thought I might get the library to bring it in for me.

Anyone?

I mentioned John Fante's ASK THE DUST on the "lost classics" thread and low and behold that very book arrived at our local library this afternoon. I had ordered it as an inter-library loan months and months ago--the copy I received was from the University of Calgary and, get this, it's a first edition. 1939, great shape. Cripes, if I was less honest a fella I'd keep the bloody thing. It's beautiful.

I picked up the book and glanced at the first page...and looked up an hour later. I've now read 3/4 of it and it's STUNNING. Like a combination of Knut Hamsun's HUNGER and Nathanial West's nasty/sharp depictions of 1930's L.A.

If you can lay your hands on a copy of this one, by all means do so.

"If you can lay your hands on a copy of this one, by all means do so."

I think I'll lovingly run my hands over my scarce 50s Bantam paperback reissue:

http://www.librarything.com/work/53696/book/8473491

That cover's a beauty, Harry. Definitely going to pick up my own personal copy of ASK THE DUST, which I finished about half an hour ago. I have a feeling I'll have to settle for an edition that's far less attractive than yours.

Thanks for showing that to me...

About finished with a marvelous re-read of The Picture of Dorian Gray and am about to start Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh.

#143

I listened to the audio of Child 44 last year and was hooked from start to finish. Smith captured very well that enemy-of-the-state mentality that permeated every aspect of Stalinist Russia. The mystery of the book keeps you enthralled until near the end, when the answer seems pretty far-fetched. As odd as the end was it is still a great read. I think this book is also supposed to be the first in a series for this author. The second book comes out soon.

Have you tried City of Thieves by David Benioff? Set during WWII in Russia, two accused criminals set out to do a favor for a colonel in order to save themselves. Great read.

Started the "Throne" cantos today. The penultimate collection of cantos in Pound's epic poem. What a long, strange trip it's been.

Also about 50 pages from Volume 2 of Portrait of a Lady

And I can't find my two collections of Swinburne poetry. It's driving me bananas. I'm jonesing for some English Decadent poetry.

Thanks for the CITY OF THIEVES tip.

Added to my request-from-library list.

And I picked up CHILD 44 from the library yesterday as well. New arrival, just sitting there on the shelf. Just in time too as it seems I'm coming down with a bit o' the flu and might be out of action for awhile.

How about this snippet from John Fante's ASK THE DUST. Los Angeles, as viewed through a late afternoon haze:

"Over the city spread a white murkiness like fog. But it was not the fog: it was the desert heat, the great blasts from the Mojave and Santa Ana, the pale white fingers of the wasteland, ever reaching out to claim its captured child."

I just started The Politics of Friendship and will begin Chaos and Night soon.

149: Pound, eh? I admire your perseverance. I think I'd find the temptation to flick irrestible. On the other hand, I remember my sense of achievement on getting through the Wallace Stevens Collected, but I think Pound is a whole different level of difficulty.

Just posted my review of Rocketman, a biography of astronaut Pete Conrad. Not a very good book, unfortunately.

Liked your review and though I haven't read the book, it sounds like you've identified major flaws with your usual ruthless acumen.

I did read MOONDUST and Pete Conrad comes off as everyone's favorite astronaut in that book, more likable and human than the others. And this was the guy who, famously, nearly got drummed out of the space program for his jokes and refusal to take the whole thing TOO seriously.

finished Dan Simmon's DROOD, 800 pages. starting Margaret Atwood's PAYBACK, CBC Massey Lectures.

finally read timbuktu by Paul Auster which was terribly sweet (in a non-icky way). Started the book of illusions and realized i'd actually read it several yrs ago. In the middle of a gift of rain - historical novel set in Malaya circa WWII.

I like Auster a lot too. Have you read IN THE COUNTRY OF LAST THINGS?

I'm about a third of the way through RAW SHARK TEXTS and so far I'm quite impressed. Original notion, well-executed. It's helping keep this flu-thing bearable...

as far as i know (memory being slack) the only other book by Auster i've read was the adaptation of city of glass into a really neat graphic novel. I was taken aback every time i looked at the dust jackets of the two i checked out from the library and kept on thinking..that's lou reed..wtf?

I was also tickled to find that he'd written the screenplay for "Smoke" - one of my (many) favorite movies. Had totally forgotten that, if i'd ever known it.

flu is the pits - once it's on to you there's not a lot for it. i've been home the last couple of days w/ mycoplasmosis..aka walking pneumonia, which isn't anywhere as debilitating.

Hey, Ian, Sherron brought me back a copy of one of your favorites for me, bought it when she was down in the States:

CELESTIS by Paul Park

Do you have a review (as long as there's no spoilers)? Had a tough time finding this one. No libraries had it and the bookstores I checked out in person had no Paul Park PERIOD.

P.S. If this book sucks, you owe me fifteen bucks.

I added my review to the LT page... and was much amused to see that the other three reviews are negative. Philistines.

And $15? For a paperback. Bloody hell. That's not cheap.

Reading Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison - collection of 3 novellas. Still reeling from shock of recognition - first novella, Revenge, is the basis of the 1990 Kevin Costner/Tony Scott film.

Celestis is quite wonderful. pshaw. It doesn't suck - tightly - no precisely written - tale of colonialism and its discontents.

being home sick does have its consolations. Finished:
1. restraint of beasts by Magnus Mill. Sortof a rural and inadvertent variation on trainspotting. Quite funny in a droll, workerbee way, as a small team of Scots fencers (farm fencers their trade/fatal accidents their game) led by a naive English kid try to do their job, get to know the local talent, and generally fk up. 3/5

2. The Resurrectionist - Jack O'Connell. Attempts much - gets it all about half right. The Resurrectionist is a very simple story of a dad's quest for love and forgiveness vis a vis his son. But the story is told an a most baroque and gothic format. Sweeney, a pharmacist, has lost his son to a long term coma; his wife has killed herself - guilt/stress. He's told the best treatment possible is in a private clinic in a Lovecraftian small new England town where the best and most innovative approaches to reawakenings are practiced. But then the stories begin: 1. the tale of sweeney in the gothic hospital of hope and horror, working as the clinic pharmacy, and his attempts to understand the bizarre social/behavioral structure within. A "classic" mad? doctor is at the top - seeks to understand the nature of consciousness via his coma patients (lovely daughter doctor - natch) 2: his dealings with a nomadic biker gang whose persistent patriarch and sexy matriarch try to draw him into THEIR incomprehensible life style based on weird drugs and an normal concert of extended family; 3: the comic book world of Limbo in which his son had been heavily invested @ the time of his accident and whose story of a harrowing pilgrimage by a group of outcast circus freaks, again to the castle of the mad Dr. Flies who might, yet, cure them provides the framing story. The writing itself is often excellent and drew me in. But the attempt to conjoin the various stories was sometimes clunky - relied on some heavy/obvious symbolism and lacked the subtlety the novel demanded. All the same, O'Connell attempted a lot, accomplished a fair bit. 3.5/5 and worth reading if one likes gothic fantasies.

3. Due preparations for the Plague - very good contemporary novel by Janette Hospital. A terrorist plane hijacking in 1987 leaves untold amounts of psychic trauma among both the small group of kids who were spared 13 yrs ago and among family members who weren't on the flight. More late. 4.5/5. Up there w/ Le Carre.
flag abuse

"Revenge" (the movie) is one of my guilty pleasures. Very nasty...but, then, I'm a big believer in vengeance.

There's a line from a Crumley novel that goes something like "people who don't believe in revenge have never lost anything important". Yup.

Loved LEGENDS OF THE FALL and just about anything else by Jim Harrison I've read.

Bob, I agree THE RESURRECTIONIST wasn't perfect but I do like Jack O'Connell very much. Have you read his other stuff? BOX NINE and, especially, WORD MADE FLESH, which is very good.
I like the guy because he's not very prolific and likes to bend genre fiction to his own nefarious purposes.

That's fifteen bucks for a nice, big trade paperback, Sales. And I might charge you for the waste of time if the book sucks like a lamprey.

I'll have a peek at your CELESTIS review ASAP. No spoilers?

Oh I certainly liked the Resurrectionist enough to both want to read it again soon, recommend it to people who "like THAT kind of stuff" and to read some of O'Connell's other books. He gets a lot of credit with me for willingness to be "brave" in his writing. Not all of the (perhaps too many) balls are kept up in the air, but he tries like hell to keep them up there. And the writing, on its own, is generally first rate. Plotting/structure need to be really tight if you're gonna try to be so tricky and that was the weakest part. The reuse of tropes in each of the stories was neat!

Okay, read the reviews--you're right, you're definitely the exception. One of your fellow critics gave up halfway through the novel and one referred to it as "depressing".

Good God.

I note there are two different spellings of the title: COELESTIS and CELESTIS--huh?

Here's an interview with Mr. Park, from back in 2002, unfortunately:

http://www.sfsite.com/10b/pp138.htm

It's not a spoiler-y sort of book, so you're safe to read the review.

A trade paperback? I didn't know it had been published in that format. There was a hardback from Tor in 1995 (two years after the UK publication), but I thought it went straight to massmarket after that. Clearly not.

Coelestis is the original UK title. Celestis is the US title. I suppose it's like "foetus" (UK) and "fetus" (US), and, er, "manoeuvre" (UK) and "maneuver" (US).

"Even the best novels, Moby Dick, say, or Remembrance of Things Past, or War and Peace, are famous for their boring passages almost as much as for their brilliance, and I wonder if a new generation of readers is going to have the patience to persevere.

Like everyone else I think literature in general will find itself increasingly squeezed by other more exciting media, and sf as a subset of literature will find itself squeezed as well. So my guess is the community will shrink but not disappear. The future, and imaginary worlds, will always provide subject matter. I myself think SF is getting better and better, and it is both discouraging and fascinating to think of the readership shrinking inexorably -- better and better novels, fewer and fewer readers, finally novels of unimaginable brilliance for readerships of one or even zero. It will be like the ending of Kafka's "The Hunger Artist," always one of my favorite stories."

-from the interview with Paul Park.

Smart fella...

Nice bloke too. I met him at the 2005 Worldcon in Glasgow, and got him to sign my copy of Coelestis.

"What distinguishes good SF above all is the originality of its locations, the sense that we are being taken to someplace we never could have imagined on our own. When we can get to the middle of a book and breathe deep, open our eyes, notice details that even the writer has not quite supplied, then we know we are in good hands. This should be the most basic accomplishment of writers in our genre, but unfortunately it's rather rare; too often we stagger through books as if blind, and hearing nothing except the sound of the author's voice as if over a loudspeaker, describing to us the things we can't see for ourselves. It's disappointing, because SF readers tend to be clever and creative, and can do a lot with just a little. "

-concluding words of Paul Park interview

Finished reading CHILD 44 this morning.

A great sense of the soul-destroying atmosphere of Soviet life under Stalin. Well-drawn characters and swift, unadorned writing. BUT...I found the ending too far-fetched--don't want to give away any spoilers but there's a connection between two characters that I just didn't buy.

Entertaining but not essential.

Give it *** 1/2 (out of five)

172: "...notice details that even the writer has not quite supplied..."

What the hell does that mean? I dont think it's possible.

If Park had replaced 'notice' with 'imagine' I wouldnt be commenting. Because it seems he wants his readers to read with imagination, and he is bemoaning that they dont.

open our eyes? was it an audio book? if we notice details the writer didn't supply, we write our own book, no? if i read the second sentence rightly: we seem to be in our own hands?! is it me?

I think I know what he (Paul Park) means--merely that it's not up to the author to load the reader down with detail (needlessly slowing down the narrative); the reader's imagination is also prevailed upon to add colour, miscellaneous fixtures and props to a scene, filling in the blanks, collaborating on the illusion.

174: Just to expound a little on what Cliff said, I think when you are reading really good SF about a universe that really clicks with your imagination, your imagined detail *feels* like you just noticing things - it's so seamless and natural.

if we benighted couldn't have imagined it on our own, how could we notice unsupplied detail? i still don't understand whose hands we are in. it's easy to kick around old Assimov, at least he wrote clearly.

To 'notice' something that isnt specifically described in an SF book, like how the trees look, sounds a little loopy.

Of course it's very common for a person's imagination to put things into the book that arent there: sometimes when those things arent very convincing we simply call it mis-interpretation, other times when the reading is a truly creative act of genius we follow Bloom and call it a "strong misreading".

Detail is the important word, here. a writer's detail will often contain clues about the 'meaning' of chapter, etc. we shouldn't be supplying too much detail on our own, should we?

I should think that if the author merely wrote that someone went onto the grassy lawn in front of the house, I would be wrong to include lawn gnomes, a coiled hose and notice that the lawn needed watering.

181: I'm guilty of this (well, I've never filled in lawn gnomes though) - the other day I was complaining to my son that the movie version of Hermione from the Harry Potter series was too pretty and didn't have glasses, and he pointed out that neither did she have glasses in the books. I had imagined them onto her. He was right.

172: "...notice details that even the writer has not quite supplied..."

What the hell does that mean? I dont think it's possible.


This group is literary snobs, not literal snobs...

(we're also very particular about apostrophes)

Hi, Ian.

One goal of writing is to say what you mean. Using the wrong word obscures and confuses the writer's meaning. Park used 'notice' in a way that didnt make sense in relation to the world we both (Park and I) live in. What is more, I dont know how to make sense of the 'not quite' in that sentence, either.

After reading McCarthy I really dont see a need for apostrophes in contractions that easily make sense without them, like dont, wont, didnt, havent, etc. Those apostrophes arent at the contracted joint of the words, but merely elide the o in not.

I still use apostrophes in contractions where the first letter of the second word is elided, I think it's confusing if I dont. Thus, I'm instead of Im, She's instead of Shes; it seems to me that there is a temptation to use the short vowel sound which would stop the flow when reading. And I still use apostrophes to indicate possessive cases (Ian's) and use them in Strunk's suggestion for possessives ending in s (Sales's).

Moreover, I agree with McCarthy that dialogue doesnt need quotation marks; but when do I write dialogue?

I've always liked punctuation marks . They're in existence for a reason . It makes reading much easier .

it's fiction, science or otherwise. we can't notice details "not quite supplied"--where do these details live. well maybe if the scene is set in the Main Library in Detroit, or the Detroit Institute of Arts, right across the street. We could notice all the things the author fails to notice about the Diego Rivera mural. That would be helpful. we might notice poor old Edsel Ford, and maybe blame him for all the problems of the embattled auto industry.

To me Park's comment is clearly a reference to the act of imagination and the need for prose which evokes rather than merely describes. Which means ambiguity is to some extent built in - it requires interpretation by the reader. It is also reader-extensible (to coin a phrase), inasmuch as the reader can imagine, see or notice details which the author has not actually supplied.

You could also argue that this is metaphor. When Lawrence Durrell wrote in Tunc, "In that clear hard enamel air the human voice carried so far", it can't be taken literally. But the phrase evokes the scene so vividly and - given the scene's location, the Acropolis - the reader can extend the description in their mind's eye.

If you want prose in which the an author says exactly what they mean, then read Asimov and the like.

Oh, and the apostrophe thing... writing fiction is communication, and while the prose itself need not be crystal clear, the presentation should be. So dialogue belongs within quotes, because that clearly identifies it as dialogue. Not using quotes is an affectation. As is not using apostrophes in certain contractions. Affectations should never be followed.

>184 semckibbin: - Surely 'I'm' instead of 'Im', 'She's' instead of 'Shes'. You're mentioning these phrases and not using them. Or have you given up on this distinction too?

Certainly "won't" and "wont" are two different words. Which could lead to confusion. Not to mention "can't" and "cant". Like I said, it's an affection.

even though while both typing and speaking i often get my contractions misplaced - i KNOW i've erred after the fact and don't see why there's any problem w/ keeping the apostrophes alive. If nothing else, one often pronounces words differently..I'd say "eye-d" as opposed to "Id" or "eye-m" as opposed to "ih-m" (sorry for not bothering w/ pasting diacritical marks for short and long vowels).

I think Park's comment could be seen as the essence of much (not all) but much of the best writing.

187: Ian, your defense that Park is using metaphor is not convincing. In the context of that sentence Park was using 'notice' and 'not quite' in the non-controversial, everyday sense of the words. You get an E for Effort and a T for Nice Try.

Yes, it makes sense that he was talking about imagination. His sentence didnt help me achieve that sense.

188: Word meaning changes, orthography changes, capitalization changes, punctuation changes, typography changes. What are initially idiosyncratic 'affectations' catch on and become the rules rigorously taught in elementary schools. To insist that punctuation, etc., shouldnt change is an affectation that is not supported by history.

189: Hi, David. Was that sarcasm? You know to be clear there should be sarcasm punctuation marks like sarcasm /sarcasm Ha Ha! Touchstones shows that as a book by some gal named Kahn. She's pleased, I'm sure.

First, that was my reading of the sentence and I said as much. You have no idea what Park actually meant by that sentence, you can only offer your reading of it. And I happen to think you're being too literal. Park has made a career of writing literary genre novels and stories.

Most punctuation and orthographic changes have been imposed by fiat, either by Caxton, grammarians, or dictionaries (e.g., Noah Webster). There have been few orthographic changes to English since printing was invented. Arbitrary mis-use of apostrophes remains an affectation - or rather, a stylistic choice by a particular author. I see no reason to ape it.

i'm sorry, parks second sentence made no sense to me. i still am not sure whose hands we are in?
while reading Joyce's ULYSSES i can picture Leopold Bloom as Milo O'Shea who played Bloom in the old movie. this helps. but Joyce would not be pleased with me if i rearranged the furniture in the pub, or moved the seashells around on the strand, he was most particular about this. as he should be. i guess that t-t-that B-b-blooms (Harold's) t-t-transumptive (as strong as the desire for sex) reading is b-b-beyond some of us.

Pickwickian sense. When Mr.Pickwick was called a "humbug" by a fellow club member, and resented this as a vile calumny bloodshed appeared imminent, but was happily avoided by the decision that the remarks of both sides were taken in the "Pickwickian sense." Laboring to make this difficult conception clear in as simple terms as possible, Webster calls it a sense that is "esoteric, constructive, recondite, or parliamentary," to which the OED adds "conveniently idiosyncratic." On the other hand, the scholarly Brewer describes it as "a whitewashed insult," for it developed that each party to the quarrel had the highest regard and esteem for the other.

Tweedledum & Tweedledee simply retired to their respective feedbags.

If all these language issues evolve over time and resolve themselves why is the contractual form of "ai not" not accepted yet, after all these years? There just ain't a good reason not too.

Pfft. That's American English. It doesn't count...

194: There have been very few orthographic changes in English since printing was invented.

Nice.

Just a quick look at Shakespeare's first sonnet. His spelling on the left, modernized spelling on the right.

heire = heir
owne = own
selfe = self
substantiall = substantial
fewell = fuel
cruell = cruel
herauld = herald
chorle = churl
wast = waste
eate = eat

Yes, just a few....in this one poem.

That's spelling. Orthography is more than just spelling. I specifically mentioned punctuation in my original post. Don't move the goalposts.

Ian, I think some authors who play with punctuation or use nonstandard punctuation are doing a bit more than just being affected. e.e. cummings' poetry for example? Though I have not read the McCarthy book being discussed, I seem to remember he left out the apostrophes in No Country, and it took about 5 minutes to get used to it and once it was obvious that he didn't use them, it wasn't very hard to figure out.

Also, I think he did use dashes for the dialogue, which is an alternative to quotation marks used in many other languages (e.g. French) and which I've also seen in other English language novels - it's not utterly unheard of. I may be misremembering this, though.

GBS was openminded about punctuation. Joyce turned against quotation marks.

184 - As a matter of curiosity, would you accept a paper from a high school student who had decided to forego writing out words that he could abbreviate (i.e. b/c; w/out; ppl., govmnt)? Language changes for sure; I just don't think that this is the way it changes.

202 - GBS was also a spelling freak. Remember GHOTI?

200:This is fun!

A quick google turns up the following:

www.thefreedictionary.com/orthography
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/orthography
encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861635543/orthography.html
grammar.about.com/od/mo/g/orthogterm.htm
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/orthography
http://dictionary.die.net/orthography

These all say orthography is spelling.

But enough.

203: If I was a high school teacher, I suppose I would be a part of some sort of teacherly authoritarian tradition, and I would be expected by other coercive authority figures to specify some Manual of Usage for the submitted papers; however if a student said beforehand that she wanted to follow the example of the greatest living American writer---which is what I am doing---or James Joyce or Quine or Wittgenstein, I think I would be swayed to allow it; if she wanted it to look like her dad's grocery list, probably not.

By the way, I highly recommend Wallace's Authority and American Usage found in his collection of essays Consider the Lobster.

Afterthought: Just finished re-reading Wallace's essay. He is pragmatic, intelligent and marvelous. And the essay is chock full of abbreviations. If our hypothetical student wanted to use him for a model, I would be perfectly fine with it.

Wallace has a summary of Wittgenstein's 'There is no such thing as a private language' argument which I should want to recommend to Ian.

Afterthought #2: Model herself after Wallace's writing style, that is; not his decision to go off his meds and hang himself.

#204 from Wikipedia: "While "orthography" colloquially is often used synonymously with spelling, spelling is only part of orthography".

Websters Unabridged: "The art or practice of writing words with the proper letters; the part of grammar which treats of the letters, and of the art of spelling words correctly."

Random House: "a system of such symbols: Missionaries provided the first orthography for the language. "

American Heritage: "A method of representing a language or the sounds of language by written symbols"

Whatever. You're being silly. We don't score points in this group.

McCarthy chooses not to use apostrophes, and that's his stylistic choice. I can't see why it's not an affectation (an "effort to attract notice by pretense, assumption, or any assumed peculiarity", Random House Dictionary), nor do I understand why anyone else should want to do it. Just because he does it is not reason enough to my mind.

The lack of quotation marks is a common enough style - Roddy Doyle also does not use them, for example. Given that it often creates confusion between dialogue and dialogue tags, it seems to me that it is a step backwards in presenting dialogue in fiction.

Dragging this thread back on topic...

Finished Last and First Men, Olaf Stapledon, for LT SF Group Read. Bits of it were quite good, but much of it seemed very much a book of its time. There was a lot more sex in it than I'd expected.

Then read Starfall, Stephen Baxter, a new Xeelee novella from PS Publishing. Not one of his better ones, I'm afraid.

Now reading The Memoirs of a Survivor, Doris Lessing.

Hello snobs,
I just realized I never made an introduction post- only troll posts.

Just finished Kundera's Book of Laughter and Forgetting which was yet another one of his long, semi-erotic yarns wrapped in some slightly philosophical drivel.

Moving on to Foucault's Pendulum

Glad this group isn't invitation only, although it would have helped the snob factor to have kept out a plebe like me.

I've got two Stapleton books on my "To Read" list but can never find anything by the man in libraries, new or used bookstores. Don't want to put a lot of time, effort or money into finding his stuff but he's not one of those guys whose work you tend to "stumble across"...

Both Last and First Men and Starmaker* were reissued this century in the UK in the SF Masterworks series.

(* wtf: the touchstone for this initially returns Me and Jeshua by Eleanor Spence; which is apparently an Australian Christian children's book, and has nothing to do with Stapledon or his book whatsoever. Sigh. They really need to sort the touchstones out.)

208: Plebe? Maybe you're right, I've noticed the plebes are reading Foucault's Pendulum and all the snobs are reading A Theory of Semiotics instead.

SIRIUS by Olaf Stapledon held my interest 30 years ago or so. maybe it's time to look at it again.

>205 semckibbin:, All innovators in language that I've heard talk about their innovations, and all of the professors who've addressed language innovators with me, preface all remarks by saying you cannot intelligently break the rules unless you understand the rules inside and out. So, unless a teacher has a particularly gifted student who demonstrably knows and understands the rules, high school is not the place to let that kind of creativity flourish. No, an authoritarian hand is needed at that stage of language development.

I'm a quarter of the way through Henry de Motherlant's Chaos and Night, and it is hilarious. Hats off to NYRB Classics for printing such wonderful books.

Started reading Tattoo Machine by Jeff Johnson. Good stuff. If you like Hunter S. Thompson and Anthony Bourdain -- badasses who actually write -- you'll love this book.

Sample sentence: "The atmosphere" ... of the tattoo shop ... "crashes in, a singular vibe refined by generations, part carnival midway and part hypermodern clinic, with the splash of a foreign bar from a fragment of a dream, all wrapped in a fragrant melange of soap, solvents, and pheromones." (From "Introduction")

213: Hi, geneg. It was just a meaningless hypothetical. In a real situation there would be a lot of factors to consider that were non-existent in the hypothetical question---the student's history, and the principal, superintendent and School Board's policy to name two supremely relevant ones---so who knows what is a pragmatic decision here.

...you cannot intelligently break the rules unless you understand the rules inside and out.

That is an interesting statement. My immediate objection is I dont think anyone knows everything about a language, or even Standard Written English, and the rules are hardly settled matters. Reading Wallace's essay underscores that belief. So I think your professors were setting the bar at an unreasonable height.

Wouldnt it suffice to understand that you are faced with a rule that is needless or good at one point in time but not anymore (like placing an apostrophe for the elided o in dont) and simply be ready to justify your action to others?

>211 semckibbin:
I'll have to pick that up.
>213 geneg:, 215, etc
Are we calling these rules or stylistic choices? I think clarification of this in high school would eliminate the need for the deprogramming that is usually done at university.

I don't see rules and style being mutually exclusive. Every art movement and decorative style has had its own rules. Every style is based on the amount of discipline and freedom allowed by the Tree House Club. Even the Surrealists -- especially Breton -- could be schoolmarmish dicks to those who didn't dance the dance. Look at Salvador Dali, he was a supporter of Francisco Franco, not necessarily the best cache when it came to the weasel word "freedom."

Thomas Pynchon follows his own esoteric rules when he writes, although there have been many imitators.

In high school the fundamental concepts of grammar and storytelling need to be pounded into bored, sleepy, texting skulls. If someone can recognize what Pynchon is doing with character, plot, setting, etc., they're on the right track.

Luckily I've never had to endure a grad level English literature class. For me, literature is inextricably linked with history and biography. Every piece of art is a reaction to the larger world, personal history, and individual kinks and quirks. I'm highly suspicious of this Death of the Author business.

Better the author than the text.

I think only english classes that are specifically teaching creative writing should be relaxing grammer rules . Regular english lit classes have no reason for students to be ignoring grammer rules in their own term papers . Just because they're reading authors that use unusual grammer doesn't mean students should be imitating them . Besides , shouldn't you be able to fully understand the rules before breaking them ?

Indeed, some writers' cant cant be understood, although their wont wont be ignored.

221: That's excellent, Ian! Very, very good!

220: Please see 216 and read below the italics. I'm interested in your reply.

Text messaging, emoticons, abbreviations and garbled contractions...all aid and abet the death of intelligent discourse. If I can't make my intent or meaning clear without adding a smiley face on the end of a sentence, I'm not much of a communicator (or the recipient of my missive is a literal-minded moron).

Pseudonyms, hiding behind anonymous identities to make a pest and fool of yourself, uttering inanities and insults in pidgin troll-ese. Thanks to the internet, bullies and fuckwits now have an international forum where they can strut their stuff.

E-mails: shortform snippets and "twitters" instead of long, exploratory letters. Blogs instead of searching, revelatory journal entries.

College students writing papers with grade school errors, spelling and grammar that indicate little exposure to reading and books.

I like strong opinions, intelligent discussion--but I also like to see people express themselves articulately, with more than a rudimentary understanding of grammar and syntax. HOW someone phrases an argument or point of view is often a good indication of the quality and depth of their thoughts.

IMHO...

Cliff, you forgot the /sarcasm tag :)

Ya got me...never miss anything, do ya, kid?

223: ...garbled contractions...aid and abet the death of intelligent discourse.

Nice slippery slope hyperbole. If the apostrophe goes then intelligent thinking goes with it! DF Wallace and McCarthy are the enemy of intelligent discourse!

If I can't make my intent or meaning clear without adding a smiley face on the end of a sentence, I'm not much of a communicator

Maybe that smiley face mark adds something to the discourse. We communicate by marks and noises. Some marks are letters, some marks are smiley faces and in the right context (an email to a friend, a comment on a website message board) the smiley face can be an effective tool to use to communicate our beliefs, desires, moods and attitudes to other humans. In other contexts, say, in drafting a nation's constitution, I agree it would be inappropriate.

And Anna's right. Sarcasm tags, or eye-rolling emoticons, would be a welcome tool in some contexts.

>22 iansales: I understand what you're saying . But there is a difference between a student being lazy vs. a hard-working student knowing when they have a creative assignment vs. a regular assignment that requires adhering to grammer rules .

Cliff, here are some recommendations for you, you old curmudgeon!

http://www.librarything.com/work/404096
http://www.librarything.com/work/124569

semck: Of course, you've already read them.

Thanks to the internet, bullies and fuckwits now have an international forum where they can strut their stuff.

As if organized religion, the government, military (all branches), and corporate offices weren't already filled with them already. Scum usually rises to the top. Thanks to the Internet, the scum usually can't spell, form a coherent sentence, or assemble an argument that can't be lost against an aggressive mudpile.

Unless you're e. e. cummings, you end up sounding like a jackass. And jackasses are better used in the halls of Congress or Westminster. The Internet is for hitting on Congressional pages, at least among the family values-teabagging set.

>218 kswolff:

Dali was expelled from the surrealists due to his fascism (maybe even before then). I think a lot of the surrealist 'breaks' had more to do with politics and personality than with style. Breton could definitely be cruel but was often justified. A few decades after the xenith of surrealism the situationists took the art of breaking with people one step further. I recommend Debord's letters highly.

It's a huge disservice to history that Dali is the surrealist everyone remembers, considering where he ended up.

It's also a huge disservice to history that there does not seem to be a complete publication of Breton's correspondence in English. I wonder if there ever will be?

>228 anna_in_pdx:

I clicked on the second book and found this review: "This book is about 3 girls: Maddie (madmaddie), Angela (SnowAngel), and Zoe (zoegirl). They IM over the internet, and there starts a lot of drama in this book. This book is not recommended for kids that are under 13 years old."

Let's read this sentence again: "They IM over the internet, and there starts a lot of drama in this book."

Game over.

Yosh: I've had MAGNETIC FIELDS, a collaboration between Breton and Soupault, on my "Find" list for ages. Can't get it for a reasonable price. Atlas Press in England put out a volume years ago.

Breton a very interesting man. Kept an iron grip on surrealism, excommunicated those who veered from the path--very much like a Pope in his power and defense of dogma...

His relationship with Bataille is one of the most compelling intellectual wrestling matches of the 20th century.

I searched for the book on addall.com, and you can easily get a copy for $20 online.

Have you read MAGNETIC FIELDS? Is it worth the pursuit?

I just found this edition, from Serpent's Tale, of IMMACULATE CONCEPTION, which seems to include the text of MAGNETIC FIELDS. Translated by David Gascoyne.

http://www.amazon.com/Immaculate-Conception-Andre-Breton/dp/0947757228

Only a fiver, so far less pricey than either the Atlas or Hushion House editions. Anyone have any thoughts? Is there a superior translation? I've waited this long, I want to get the right one, not merely the cheapest.

After all, I have my snob reputation to uphold...

Picked up the pricier, Atlas Press edition of MAGNETIC FIELDS/IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. Ordered it from some place in the U.K. so hopefully it won't take forever to get here.

Just finishing Charles Stross's first book, THE ATROCITY ARCHIVES. An amusing concept for a novel, a combination of Neal Stephenson and H.P. Lovecraft. I've been skimming a bit in the latter quarter of the book, too much gobbledegook and tech talk and it really does get in the way of the narrative (I wish more SF scribblers would realize that).

Three stars out of five.

Finished Lessing's The Memoirs of a Survivor. Dull. And strangely old-fashioned - as if it had been written a decade or two earlier than 1974.

Currently reading A Scanner Darkly, Philip K Dick. Looking like one of his better ones.

That's my favorite PKD. Enjoy, mon.

Think it's ON CHESIL BEACH next for me. My wife finished it last week and said the couple in the book infuriated her. She gave the novel high marks so I'm looking forward to it--its brevity appeals to me as well...

Well, you know what I thought of On Chesil Beach. Worth reading but McEwan's getting very samey these days.

just finished a short and very melancholy novel, a partisan's daughter - a novel based on story telling. A younger Yugoslavian woman and an older (40 something) Brit drugs sales rep, tell each other their lives. Takes place ~ a decade before the Balkans fell into chaos. Melancholy doesn't mean depressing - if i was more sure of my HSchool French, perhaps "triste" would be a better word? Delicately and quietly told, a rueful story of understandings and misunderstandings, desires and loss.

Also Mendel's dwarf - a brilliant dwarf geneticist seeks the origin of his deformity and (simultaneously) love, or at least lust, among the librarians. Back and forth in time via a bio of Gregor Mendel. Lots of basic genetics in passing.

A Separate Peace

Haha...no, I am just kidding.

I am reading some sci-fi fluff right now: Broken Angels

worst book of the year, so far.

Also began, and tossed aside, the memorist - i think it's a historical thriller - long but after 20 pages, its innate crappiness made it already seem interminable. NEVER ever check a book out of the library on which the blurbs compare the novel to the DaVinci Code debacle. Past life regression mentioned far too often. Also a vile plot to blow up a Viennese concert hall.

(An acquaintance once "experienced" past life regression..he believed he and his wife had been paired together repeatedly through the centuries. A few years later they divorced - he never said if they'd also divorced repeatedly). Karma's a bitch.

Tattoo Machine continues to totally rock. Fun insider stuff and great stories about love, crime, and redemption. An oddly effective self-help book for people in these dire economic times. I'm finding it inspiring, since Jeff Johnson went from junkie burn-out to successful tattoo shop owner. Irreverent, vulgar, and wonderfully written. An inspiring tale without all that "by your bootstraps" BS that usually permeates memoirs and business literature.

Portrait of a Lady continues to impress me. Not had for fiction written in serial form. Some passages are, like Moby Dick, marvelously poetic.

Getting close to finishing The Cantos Nearly done with "Thrones" and then it's the final "Drafts and Fragments." I plan on writing a lengthy review of the book and the experience. No wonder no one writes epic poetry anymore.

in re modern epic poetry, try the throne of Labdacus is terrific. Themes are classic - Oedipus/Apollo/nature of art/ and the poem is engrossing. Among the very best 20th C poems i've read. Obvious influences of Pound and Eliot but very much her own voice.

Hello all, I finished Ulysses - WOW what an experience that was. I am now reading 3 things simultaneously - the Great Gatsby along with my son, Early Spring which is an early reviewers book about ecology and global warming, and Nine lords of the night which the author very nicely mailed to me when I didn't win the member giveaway lottery.

>246 anna_in_pdx:

Go YOU! (and I mean that!)

246: A good experience or bad? What did you get out of reading Ulysses?

What did you think of the discussion about Hamlet?

248: I loved Ulysses. I absolutely could not stand the Shakespeare discussion. I disliked Stephen since the end of PotAaaYM, and U did not do anything to improve my opinion of him - his misogyny is off the charts WRT Anne Hathaway for example... His pedantic need to impress people with his great knowledge of Latin, Shakespeare, etc. just annoyed me. I much preferred Bloom's idiosyncracies.

To be fair, I don't have a strong enough classical education to really enjoy the Stephen oriented chapters as much as the Bloom oriented ones. So maybe it is just my inferiority complex coming out against Stephen this way.

And responding again to 248: I think the greatest thing I got out of reading Ulysses is seeing how a writer could truly capture stream-of-consciousness realistically. And I am not just talking about the Penelope part, although I loved it. It was in Wandering Rocks that I really was impressed at how Bloom's mind went off on tangents, based on weird things like words or sudden visual impressions that brought back random memories, just how real people really do think if they are wandering around town. I have never read a book before that was able to do this so realistically.

Finished Legends of the Fall and wasn't overly impressed - rather like well-written pulp in places. Then read Kotzwinkle's The Hot Jazz Trio - nonsense but enjoyable.

Just started Fragments: Portraits from the Inside by Andre De Toth - one-eyed director of westerns and film noirs in the 40s and 50s. Hopefully, the interest level will get me over the prose hurdle.

I send this to anyone who has read (and enjoyed well enough to have a sense of humor about the authors' respected styles) Joyce & Beckett.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p856CfM64w8

And remember: this makes more fun of their style rather than the people themselves. The first line says it all "riverrun..."

very pfunny. joyce and beckett on the first tee of Fawlty Bowers.

249 and 250: Interesting. It's been 20 years since I read Ulysses, and I didnt get much out of it because I was young and hadnt done enough reading. At the time I bought in to the Stuart Gilbert approach, but if I were to go back now I would most likely ignore that sort of reading.

I asked about the Hamlet portion as it is Joyce's interpretation that Shakespeare played the Ghost in Hamlet to artistically work out an affair of Anne Hathaway with his brother. So there's some intellectual interest.

As far as stream of consciousness goes, I will have to go back and read Ulysses again because on the whole I am not a fan of the technique.

>129 iansales:. I think you have to be quite careful when trying to work out Stephen. On one hand I Joyce wants you to sympathise with him. On the other he wants you to see him as a comic figure; full of his own self - importance, totally arrogant. Stephen, by the way, is practically Joyce as a young man. The Dedaluses live at the same addresses as the Joyces did, Stephen goes to the same schools etc. Also, Joyce used 'Stephen Deadalus' as a pen-name for a while (check the original The Sisters - the one printed in the Freeman's Journal, before it was rewritten and printed in Dubliners).

The Hamlet episode is untended as satire. It's Stephen showing off; doesn't he claim that he doesn't even believe his own theory? When one of the other characters goads Stephen into proving that Shakespeare was a Jew, Stephen seems confident that it won't be a problem, even though it's a ludicrous suggestion. It's the intellectual chest beating of that social set that Joyce is ridiculing. Compare the bit in the newspaper office when the librarian (maybe he isn't the librarian, it's one of them anyway) starts pontificating about how the English are to the Romans what the Irish are to the Greeks. Joyce is clearly taking the piss.

I can't think of any evidence to support the claim that Stephen is a misogynist.

255: Stephen said he didnt believe it, but Joyce did. Ellmann (p.155) believes that Joyce came up with this interpretation in June 1904 and was quite proud of it.

255: It was the intellectual chest-beating (along with the over the top personal remarks about Anne H) that made me dislike him. I disliked the other guys at the library as well, because I just get annoyed at that sort of thing. And I very much identified with Bloom's need to get him away from his silly set because he saw something better in him, but you have to admit Stephen's a prickly smart-ass and very hard to like. I know he's a young edition of Joyce to some extent, and marvel at Joyce's ability to honestly depict a character with such negative traits (the very opposite of a Mary Sue/Gary Stu), but if I met Stephen in real life I would head for the hills.

Bolano has a similar ability to portray himself (at various stages in his life) rather negatively.

as observant as he was about the world-out-there, he could remember all the shops on certain Dublin streets, etc. it seems to me that Joyce always lived in a cloud of his own making. he put his art above everything. read NORA by Brenda Maddox or LUCIA JOYCE by Carol Loeb Schloss, they are interpretations, of course, but it is all-too-clear that our author was more than a handful for those closest to him. and he LOVED pulling the readers' leg. Read his brother Stanislaus J. for more.

towards the end of the morning by michael frayn - It's original title "your fleet street novel" sums it up nicely. Very droll story of life and competition in the lower bowels of the London newspaper industry in the late 60s. The portrayal of the advent of the talking heads on TV "serious" issue shows is terrific. (The book was written ~ 1967 so it was defn. dealing w/ current trends that have morphed into god knows what all by now). Frayn had been working for the Manchester Guardian and then The Observer before he'd written Fleet Steet.

Finished Philip K Dick's A Scanner Darkly. Definitely one of his better ones. Just started The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulisch. Only two chapters in and I can see why Mulisch insisted any film adaptation cast Stephen Fry as Onno Quist...

I loved A Scanner Darkly. It's one of those rare books, for me, that made me feel rather sad at the end. I felt sorry for PKD and how much he lost. Good book!

It's PKD's best book. Gimme that one and DO ANDROIDS DREAM, UBIK, THREE STIGMATA, FLOW MY TEARS, RADIO FREE ALBEMUTH and about twenty of his short stories.

I just started ON CHESIL BEACH. Unfortunately we spent a good chunk of yesterday outside, cleaning the eaves, raking off the flower beds, getting this old joint ready for spring/summer. So I tumbled into bed exhausted and only got about eight pages into the book before conking out. My fault.

Apologies, Mr. McEwan...

Reading Donald Harington's Farther Along - on the basis that Cliff said anything of his is worth reading (and it was the only book the library that of hs remember - this is the UK though). Quite impressed so far.

finished Solitaire by Kelley Eskridge. Criminal punishment goes virtual as the protagonist finds herself spending 8 yrs in solitary over the course of a few months. Demonstrating how a "commercial" technology intended for entertainment becomes a tool for "justice." The protagonist, a young woman of privilege in a corporate island/state accidently kills hundreds and is tried as a terrorist. The novel is broken into 3 parts: description of life in the small corporate state (kind of an apotheosis of Hong Kong or Singapore) where the heroine is being trained as her county's representative in a new world govt.; then Ren Segura's experience in virtual punishment; and then her release/parole into a foreign country where she tries to put her pieces back together again. She's taken aback when it appears that criminals released from virtual confinement have become part of celebrity culture.

A well plotted and engrossing book; rather better than my synopsis makes it appear - possibly 4/5 stars? I'll think about it.

I've read her collection, Dangerous Space. That was quite good.

I'm half way through Vanity Fair by Thackeray. So far so good...

Jargoneer: Relieved my plug of Harington met with your approval (so far). Fascinating author...

Finished Bryan Talbot's Alice in Sunderland last night. It may be a graphic novel - a book with pictures - but it's not one you can read in a single sitting. Excellent stuff. I can understand why it made it onto the BSFA Award shortlist last year.

ON CHESIL BEACH.

Done. Should have completed it in two sittings at the most and I'm an arse for dragging it out. Had a couple of projects and just couldn't find the right time to read this book properly.

A good read, the characters' innocence, lack of experience really made one wince during their scenes of (attempted) intimacy.

Give it *** or ***1/2 out of five.

Do you agree with what I said about it?

You made a very valid point when you wrote, re: McEwan:

"It's all getting a bit samey: leisurely stroll up to turning point, protagonist makes wrong - and often dumb - decision, quick montage showing how their life went as a result of that decision..."

But it's a pleasure to read well-constructed sentences and prose that isn't completely tone deaf. There's an undeniable intelligence to Ian Mac's work that sets it above the crowd.

I find it interesting that even his friends, Amis among others, when asked which of Mac's novels are their favorites, answer "the first 100 pages of CHILD IN TIME" or "the last 50 pages of ATONEMENT". Not citing books in their entirety.

Hmmm...

In case any of you missed the NEW YORKER feature on Ian McEwan I posted on another thread, here 'tis again. It's VERY good:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/02/23/090223fa_fact_zalewski

>256 semckibbin:. Coming up with an interprtation and believing that it is true are two different things.

>256 semckibbin:. Coming up with an interprtation and believing that it is true are two different things.

Today I have been happily diving into Anna Karenina. It's really beautiful to read - all the characters are so sympathetic. Tolstoy has always been able to do that for me, present characters that I'd probably dislike in real life and make me somehow like them.

This morning I was discussing confirmation bias with a friend at work, and went to look at the Wikipedia entry on it. This made me very happy:

(from Wikipedia article)

The behavior of confirmation bias has sometimes been called "Tolstoy syndrome", in reference to Russian writer Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), who in 1897 wrote:9

“ I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabrics of their life. ”

A related Tolstoy quote is:

“ The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.10
(end excerpt from Wikipedia)

So: Synchronicity (that I should be reading Tolstoy the day I happened on this) or confirmation bias in action (because I tend to believe in synchronicity)?

finished the terrific memoir/meditations on being in war, the things they carried by tim o'brien.

drop books off @ the library and look for a couple of new ones to take along for a short trek into the mountains of SW Virginia today.
(http://web.mac.com/laurelpoint/Site/Welcome.html) right off the AppalachianTrail, so feets not failing, a lot of hiking during the day. Having a close friend whose bro has a bit of money does have some benefits, at least in so far as a nice place to hike out of is concerned!

Finished off Kingdom Come by Alex Ross & Mark Waid last night. Like a lot of people, I'd always thought Marvel better DC - well, all the DC superheroes are walking clichés. But it seems DC had a bit of a renaissance in the last few years and churned out some really intelligent stories. Kingdom Come is one. Identity Crisis is another. Have yet to make up my mind about Justice.

Bob, I am envious. What a gorgeous looking site. Lucky, lucky, bah-stid. You'll have a ball (and it's good for you too). We have a lovely river valley here and I should get out hiking and walking more. All sorts of excuses but, really, none of them are valid. However, if I had a spot like yours to return to, sit out on the deck with a stiff drink, watching the sun go down...yup, I think I could manage that.

Be careful of the rattlers and bears. They're both going to be coming out of their hidey-holes to check out the surroundings. This is their most active season.

I just started Here and Now: a novel by Robert Cohen. The writing is not amazing, but I'm a sucker for fiction about Hasidic Jews.

276: My grandparents used to live in Hendersonville, and I really think the Blue Ridge is some gorgeous country. Love to get back there sometime.

Finished Tattoo Machine by Jeff Johnson. A fun, inspiring read, full of well-crafted sentences and abundant profanity.

I'm finally on to Volume II of Portrait of a Lady by HJ. I'm also past the 100 mark in "The Cantos" by Ezra Pound. I'm finally approaching the ending of that epic.

Devil take the hindmost is fascinating and educational, especially in the aftermath of the housing, credit, global economic crises.

When I'm up to it, I'll dive back in to Rising Up and Rising Down by Vollmann.

rereading in the lake of the woods, having just read the things they carried last week.

We were watching out for snakes - but haven't seen any here yet - though Mike had a copperhead in his yard back in Chapel Hill the day before we came up. Watching the eagles underneath us, from the top of Buffalo Mountain was striking

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/1436156

Mike's fox terrier got v. excited when he came across a woodchuck in the field across the road from his brother's house. But that was about it for wildlife today. Esp. when i turned out the Va ABC store ~ 18 miles away closed at 6..instead of 9:00, as we'd assumed.

LAKE OF THE WOODS isn't as good as other O'Brien stuff but it's still pretty decent. Have you read TOMCAT IN LOVE?

I stepped on a copperhead (or as we called them in tidewater NC, popper leaf, I always wondered about that) in my barefeet once. It just slid out from under my foot and moved a little further away. That's when I knew it was time to mow the grass.

Started reading The Judging Eye by R. Scott Bakker. Although it is your standard take-off on Tolkien-esque epic fantasy, it is wonderfully written. Since I'm about 400 pages in Portrait of a Lady, I thought I could read this a little quicker and hopefully pound out a review sometime soon. Just need a little respite from HJ, Pound, and the history of financial speculation.

Finally done with writing and grading papers for the semester, so now I get to dive into my summer reading. I'm most of the way through with Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, going to finish that tonight. Tomorrow I'll probably get started on The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt (for a reading group), and some Henry James, either Wings of the Dove or The Golden Bowl. Anyone have preferences between the two?

I've never read any of his later stuff. Let me know how they are.

I've read The Golden Bowl, and it kept me to my standard attitude of "I will read more James," but somehow I left everybody in a museum in Wings of the Dove and haven't gotten back to it. The movie of The Golden Bowl was a strange little thing; I can neither condemn it or tell you why you might want to watch it -- I'm glad I did because of its connection to the novel.

Have fun,

Robert

I polished off The Stainless Steel Rat on the weekend for my 2009 reading challenge. It was dreadful. I can't understand why I ever liked it as a kid.

And here is my review of it.

Good piece--and you know we are simpatico on this whole notion of the "golden age" of SF. Golden if you're twelve in 1956 and just figuring out the hula hoop and what to wear to the fucking sockhop.

Few of the works of "great" SF of that era are interesting, relevant or even readable today.

Your review was bang on.

Still to come this year, I have Stranger in a Strange Land, Second Stage Lensman, Jack of Eagles, The Left Hand of Darkness, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Lord Valentine's Castle and Radix. Some of them I'm expecting to be pants. No prizes for guessing which ones.

Have read only a bit of Le Guin and find her style rather dull, to tell the truth. I admire her obvious intelligence and her ability to world-build, but her work doesn't speak to me, for whatever the reason.

TO YOUR SCATTERED... Read that one--had to be thirty+ years ago. Fun but not much more than that. At least you won't be bored. I really like Farmer's collection RIVERWORLD AND OTHER STORIES; it contains the original novella that was expanded into SCATTERED BODIES and a number of other first rate short pieces. Highly recommended.

The Silverberg, Smith et all...er...better you than me, mate. At least the reviews should be amusing, be sure to keep postin' 'em.

>284 CliffBurns:. Is Lake in the Woods the one when he finds out he's been drafted and has a near nervous break-down? I really liked that one. I thought it was one of the best ones in The Things They Carried. It's certainly the one I remember best apart from The things They Carried.

Hey, what if he had of called it The Things They Humped? Sounds wrong.

Don't think that's the same one. LAKE OF THE WOODS had a political subplot, as I remember. Something about a Senator and a missing plane. It's been 10 years since I read it, so...

Picture of Dorian Gray seems good so far, though it seems that Wilde is a little too clever to make me pay attention to any sort of plot. His constant wittiness, while great in essays and the like, gets a little distracting when there are characters and plots.

The Moon is Down by Steinbeck has been pretty simple but good; I'll probably finish it tonight. I feel like Steinbeck is great when he can write tons (East of Eden is one of my favorites of all time) or write something really short and to the point.

And for some reason, The Eye of the World... I decided to regress to middle school and reread one of my old favorites. It's fun. :)

I note that Mark Danielewski, author of HOUSE OF LEAVES, has a new book out, titled ONLY REVOLUTIONS.

Anyone read it? Interested?

Cliff, I too took a look at Only Revolutions and it really seems like a lot of work. I already have House of Leaves, so I will try that one first.

Saturday I started reading The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. I'm a little bit freaked out by it and I am having truly bizarre dreams. I've always been told that I have a hippie mind set, but I hope this is not what people mean when they say that.

Tried to read it when I first got the hardcover. My experience in epic poetry is not wide, but I found it nonsensical. I may go back to it after having become smarter. Also, the premise is VERY similar to that of The Inner Side of the Wind by Milorad Pavić, which cements my theory that Danielewski is just making a career by lifting Pavić's conceits and exploding the typographical play. House of Leaves had many similarities with The Dictionary of the Khazars (crossed with Pale Fire, and wrapped around a Stephen King novel). That isn't to say that I didn't enjoy it immensely, but Only Revolutions was NOT enjoyable, which made me less inclined to forgive the serial borrowing of plot and motif from another author. To my knowledge, his innovations with printing and layout haven't been done before, but really couldn't anyone do that?

Thanks for the candid reactions, folks. I was curious--I've mentioned before that I have HOUSE OF LEAVES but have never had the guts to give it a go.

But ya never know...

P.S. It's been a long time but I remember loving ACID TEST.

Loved Acid Test and The Right Stuff, in fact many of the early essays. His fiction, however, is another thing entirely.

both the lake in the woods and the things they carried are based in O'Brien's experiences and the things he heard, while in Vietnam. the lake in the woods delineates the effect the unenthusiastic participation in a My Lai type massacre has on a marriage, a life and a political career. It's not a missing plane, it's a missing boat and wife after a failed Democratic primary in which the candidate's past, which he's hidden from himself, as much as anyone else, is brought to light. It's defn. a novel.

the things they carried is much more a series of essays/meditations upon different facets of O'Brien's personal experiences as a grunt in VNam. Topics are all over the map: from a platoon comrade who never adjusts to civilian life; to trying to answer his daughter's question "did you kill anyone daddy?"; to a true fable about a GI who manages to get his stateside girlfriend into the war zone base where he's stationed - and the things that happened.

Both are terrific books; i happen to prefer the things they carried but that preference doesn't mean much.

I've been struggling with House of Leaves for a couple of weeks. The plot's developing slowly, and I find myself getting annoyed at the devices (lengthy footnotes, etc.) that he incorporates.
>299 emaestra: I've heard that the pages of some copies of Kool-Aid have been laced with LSD -- maybe that's what you're experiencing (and what might make House of Leaves more understandable).

the things they carried felt pretty amazing to me; as someone who'll probably never be involved in a war it's interesting that some of my favorite books - All Quiet on the Western Front, Catch-22, etc. - are all war books.

house of leaves really intrigued me when I was in high school. It can be REALLY creepy when it wants to be, but a lot of people treat it as a Derrida-esque deconstruction of the novel rather than a good horror book. I have a feeling that it was meant to be more the former than the latter, but it works pretty well as the latter if you ignore the Johnny Truant parts of the book.

307: I didnt see how "the novel" was "deconstructed" in House of Leaves. Mainly because I dont know how to define either of the words in quotes.

My main criticism of House of Leaves is that Danielewski wrote it in bland Americanese. I do not think he is a poet.

ALL QUIET is a staggering war novel. Read it a number of years back and its realism and power floored me.

Hey, Karl, found the perfect book for you. Susan Jacoby's THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON. It traces the history of anti-intellectualism in America, from the revolutionary war right up to the present day.

This one is right up your alley, muchachos. See if your local library has a copy.

308: I don't think that's quite fair. The main portion of the book is posing as a dry scholarly work, and it still reads much more evocatively than the main of that style. The Truant portion is written by a young man, intelligent but uneducated, mostly cataloging his sexual and narcotic exploits, all of which would seem to suit a bland conversational tone quite well, for the purposes of irony and disassociation if nothing else. Not to mention that there is plenty of his writing that is decidedly NOT bland, as he is documenting his descent into madness. That half of the book may seem to belong to the same territory as Palahniuk or Ellis, which you may (rightly!) hold in low esteem, but it is still a stylistic choice rather than a deficiency. When does Danielewski claim to be a poet?

Cliff, I read The Age of American Unreason last summer and really wanted someone to talk with about it. Unfortunately, the first person I chose was my new department head. All conversation was squashed almost immediately when she began defending GW Bush's folksy talk as just being real. (Folksy I probably could handle, ignorant gibberish, not so much.) Needless to say, we have not had any more discourse there.

311: The main portion of the book is posing as a dry scholarly work

See, I dont get that. I would not list being boring as a goal for a novelist. Claiming imitation is no defense.

Emaestra:

It's too bad you couldn't get a dialogue going re: AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON. The portion I read seemed excellent--well-presented without appearing overly academic or partisan.

Hope you enjoyed it.

In terms of non-fic, I'm tackling David Grann's THE LOST CITY OF Z. It's Grann's account of his search for Percy Fawcett, an Amazon explorer who disappeared 80 years ago. Good stuff so far.

The 101st Airborne couldn't make me go into the jungle.

Giant bugs, lizards, enormous snakes, slimey things everywhere...it's like a Promise Keepers Convention...

313: That's the GENRE he's imitating. The style he employs to do so is most definitely not boring. If you continue to the full stop of the sentence you quoted, you'll find my point. Ah, well. I'm sorry you were bored by it. I found it fascinating personally, and I guess that's as far as a discussion on taste can go.

The Here and Now by Robert Cohen finished strong, so I can confidently recommend it to y'all as a fun read.

I started on Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi by Borges and Bioy-Casares. This is my first time reading Borges, and I don't know why I waited this long.

315: sollocks, please rest assured I read your entire post #311 before writing my response.

You say he is evocative and his style is most definitely not boring. I say the language is bland Americanese. There is a difference in opinion, but all conversations dont have to converge in agreement.

(Oh, yeah, I didnt find it scary either).

>307 chamberk:

Georg Lukacs attempts to answer the question 'what is the novel' in his classic The Theory of the Novel. Walter Benjamin takes his own stab in his essay 'The Storyteller'. I lean more towards the latter because the Hegelian concept of "totality" trips me up.

What did Benjamin say?

having just finished going after cacciato, to my tastes it's the best of a very good lot.. Vietnam turns into the war found inside the tunnels. chapters more or less alternate - O'Brien will write movingly of humping grunt materiel over hill and dale; the banality of war - the all too often actions of futile, killing despair and well as individual and platoon actions of hope.

In it's style, going after cacciato is more "modern" - though no more modern than Alice falling down the rabbit hole or Persephone doomed to 6 months underground. But the platoons real? metaphorical ?chase of Cacciato's dream of Paris, guided by a young VM refugee is fascinating. The meta-real chapters were more moving to this reader than the bitter, bitter truths which my bandmates, who'd all served in Nam too, would tell from time to time. Hell, i can't classify the book properly. war novel? war fantasy novel? Dreams of war and dreams of peace.

In college i luckedbout..#248, high enough that i could pretty much relax. But when i dropped out to join a band, I was the only one who hadn't been in the field in VM - The guys were very matter of fact about what they did... Basically they were totally amoral. NOT immoral- amoral.. One friend lost his thumb; as a skilled machinist the thumb was key to doing his post war job. But he got no disability. So every now and again he'd rob a big box store. Or our bassist whow had the misfortune to get drafted into the marines the one year that happened. What he brought back was total loyalty to friends and if someone fucked him over, he'd chase him from city to city to get his Rickenbacker bass returned - hopefully w/out bloodshed, but if needs be, then needs be.

i'd love to get their opinions on the books.

> 319

I will quote directly from the text:

"The earliest symptom of a process whose end is the decline of storytelling is the rise of the novel at the beginning of modern times. What distinguishes the novel from the story (and from the epic in the narrower sense) is its essential dependence on the book. The dissemination of the novel became possible only with the invention of printing. What can be handed on orally, the wealth of the epic, is of a different kind from what constitutes the stock in trade of the novel. What differentiates the novel from all other forms of prose literature—the fairy tale, the legend, even the novella—is that it neither comes from oral tradition nor goes into it. This distinguishes it from storytelling in particular. The storyteller takes what he tells from experience—his own or that reported by others. And he in turn makes it the experience of those who are listening to his tale. The novelist has isolated himself. The birthplace of the novel is the solitary individual, who is no longer able to express himself by giving examples of his most important concerns, is himself uncounseled, and cannot counsel others. To write a novel means to carry the incommensurable to extremes in the representation of human life. In the midst of life’s fullness, and through the representation of this fullness, the novel gives evidence of the profound perplexity of the living. Even the first great book of the genre, Don Quixote, teaches how the spiritual. greatness, the boldness, the helpfulness of one of the noblest of men, Don Quixote, are completely devoid of counsel and do not contain the slightest scintilla of wisdom. If now and then, in the course of the centuries, efforts have been made—most effectively, perhaps, in Wilhelm MeistersWanderjahre—to implant instruction in the novel, these attempts have always amounted to a modification of the novel form. The Bildungsroman, on the other hand, does not deviate in any way from the basic structure of the novel. By integrating the social process with the development of a person, it bestows the most frangible justification on the order determining it. The legitimacy it provides stands in direct opposition to reality. Particularly in the Bildungsroman, it is this inadequacy that is actualized."

http://slought.org/files/downloads/events/SF_1331-Benjamin.pdf

Finished David Grann's THE LOST CITY OF Z. Very good adventure/travelogue (I shall never go anywhere near the Amazon--bugs, snakes, disease, ugh!). Grann is a good writer...but he doesn't find Percy Fawcett's bones or unearth any clearer idea of the great explorer's fate. In that sense, does the story deserve a book...or a fascinating magazine article?

I just started Kaddish for a Child Unborn by Imre Kertesz to go along with the Borges. The Derrida book will have to wait for a little while.

323: I am glad you're loving Borges. I need to read more of his books. I fell in love with the short stories in the Aleph book and then didn't read anything else for 20 years, and am wondering what is wrong with me.

Afraid of bring lured and trapped in some Borges-ian maze, perhaps?

I'm intimidated by him--he's one of those authors who make me feel dumb, untalented and utterly lacking in imagination in comparison. Can't read him if I'm working on a writing project or my confidence and inspiration flee.

And we're only reading him in translation. Imagine what experiencing Borges in his native tongue would be like. My God...

325: Can't you just read him as a reader, rather than a writer? I did read the Aleph stories in Spanish, I was a Spanish/French Lit major in college, and believe me they blew me away.

Cliff, I recommend Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi. It is well written but not overwhelming and intimidating. The genius is subtle.

SIX PROBLEMS looks terrific. It's just been added to my list. And I must get around to reading Casare's INVENTION OF MOREL too. That one's been on my shelves awhile...

My only problem with Six Problems is that I probably don't get half of the jokes. I imagine a lot of the characters are making fun of various figures in Latin American literature and politics, and I just don't know enough to pick up the references. Still loving it!

Eeeek, I just checked SIX PROBLEMS FOR DON ISIDRO PARODI out on both Amazon.ca and .com. That volume is one pricey item. May have to await a different, cheaper edition.

Hello New York Review of Books Classics?

I got mine at the library.

I also imagine it's in the book of collected fiction?

This one?

http://www.amazon.com/Selected-Stories-Adolfo-Bioy-Casares/dp/0811212750/ref=sr_...

It will be available in Canada in August, methinks...

I was thinking about the book of collected fiction by Borges.

Got a phone call from the library at 9:30 this morning: two interlibrary loan books had come in for me. One was Abraham Rodriguez's novel SOUTH BY SOUTH BRONX (I love this guy, SPIDERTOWN is one of the best novels I've read in the past decade).

The other book is Dennis & Terence McKenna's INVISIBLE LANDSCAPE--I believe the subtitle, "Mind, Hallucinogens and the I Ching", tells you all you need to know about that one.

My pile of must-be-read books has now reached ridiculous proportions. And you people keep "kindly" drawing my attention to MORE bloody books.

It's time to go on a bit of a binge. Clear out some of the dead wood.

Hope everyone's having a good weekend.

I quote regarding me:

LibraryThing thinks you probably will like The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching (certainty: medium)

Robert

Love those crazy McKenna lads...

Well, I told Barny Noble that I might be buying it someday.

Robert

Finished Devil Take the Hindmost by John Chancellor; here's my review:

http://driftlessareareview.wordpress.com/2009/05/17/book-review-devil-take-the-h...

Still reading James, Pound, Vollmann, and R. Scott Bakker. Started reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Schirer. Looks promising, albeit dated. But Schirer's "I was there!" immediacy more than makes up for its historical shortcomings.

war todd Komarnicki. Bleak fable of a nameless soldier attempting to survive in a .. more later..
v. good . off to work.

Fill in the blanks for us, Bob. When you have the time, at least.

Ive just been blown away reading EASTERN APPROACHES (Fitzroy Maclean). He travelled all through Stalin-era Russia, trailed by a faithful cadre of NKVD goons.

He enlisted and joined the newly formed special forces (SAS) and carried out top secret missions behind the lines in WWII Egypt.

Now Churchill himself has just given Maclean the assignment to parachute into "Jugoslavia" and assess the guerrilla skills of this chap who goes by the name of "Tito".

And I'm only halfway through the book!

Whatta life!

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz - A pretty exciting and funny story of a fat nerd from Santo Domingo. I don't know too much Spanish so I doubt I'm getting a good deal of it. However, I'm definitely fluent in the OTHER language spoken in this book, the language of nerd-dom. In the first 20 pages, Diaz references Sauron, Arawn, Captain Trips, and Dejah Thoris. I cackled aloud.

Just Above My Head by James Baldwin - I'm a little bit infatuated with Baldwin's writing nowadays. The guy's just got a warmth and life to his prose, and occasionally there are passages or lines that simply take my breath away. Next up by Baldwin: Another Country, the book that got me started on this fella. I read it in college and I've been feeling the need to come back to it - hopefully I haven't built it up too much in my mind.

The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan - Yeah, I need some sweet mindless fantasy sometimes, and this definitely fits the bill. The early parts of this series were oh so very good.

OSCAR WAO was something of a letdown for me. I appreciated learning more about Caribbean history but by the latter part of the book the title character is peripheral and the story got lost.

Finished EASTERN APPROACHES about an hour ago and it was a dandy read. As a travelogue, a portrait of that time (1937-45) or a Kipling-esque adventure tale--it succeeds on all those levels (and more).

Here's Fitzroy Maclean's obit from the N.Y. TIMES (1996):

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/18/world/fitzroy-maclean-war-hero-and-author-is-d...

Reading Abraham Rodriguez's SOUTH BY SOUTH BRONX. Not as brilliant as THE BUDDHA BOOK and SPIDERTOWN (his best) but definitely a page-turner.

This novel was released by Akashic Books in New York and good on them and head guy Johnny Temple for nabbing a first-rate, worldclass writer. Check out Akashic, they're one of those small presses that will lead the publishing biz out of its present doldrums:

http://www.akashicbooks.com

Akashic books has a great Noir series. I read the one from Istanbul - really great, grim noir short stories.

Finished the section on violence in Jamaica in Rising Up and Rising Down by Vollmann.

Completed SOUTH BY SOUTH BRONX this morning. Not quite as good as the others by Rodriguez but a worthy read. Kudos to the people at Akashic Books for taking the novel (his other two books were published by a much bigger outfit).

I wrote to Akashic and congratulated them for snapping up Rodriguez and got a very nice note from publisher/editor Johnny Temple, along with an offer to send me one of their catalogues--took them up on it.

Terrific little press...

I'm on Canto 104. So close yet so far ...

It's been a hell of an experience.

Was than an endorsement or a complaint?

Finished Anna Karenina and going to start Hoffman's Life & Opinions of the Tomcat Murr this weekend.

I enjoyed Anna K, don't know why I have not read it before because I always love Tolstoy's writing style. there is so much heart in it.

It's a shame L. Durrell didn't write more comedy. He could be brilliant. Has anyone else read Stiff Upper Lip (NOT Stiff upper lip, Jeeves)?

I'll bet Monsieur Sales can chat with you about that one.

Go to www.iansalesisalimeygit.co.uk.

That's his home site. Or something like that...

I'll be starting The Alexandria Quartet shortly. I have a feeling I'll like it, but one never knows...

#350 Durrell wrote three Antrobus collections - Stiff Upper Lip, Sauve Qui Peut and Esprit de Corps. They're amusing, but not as good as his "straight" fiction. He also wrote a potboiler, White Eagles over Serbia, which is pretty good - the scenes set in the Yugoslavian mountains are excellent descriptive prose.

I started on another book by Kertesz: Detective Story. Facing the inhuman...

I have Esprit de Corps as well. Yes, it's on a difference level than his serious stuff. I really like the Alexandria Quartet, but I really disliked the Black Book and Pope Joan. I found them unreadable.

Finished The Judging Eye by R. Scott Bakker. It was excellent, highly recommended. It stands far above the usual epic fantasy tripe (and at a lean 400 pages), full of violence, intrigue, sex, and death.

Started reading "Godless" by Dan Barker Far more appealing than reading the drunken scribblings of Christopher Hitchens

I like Hitchens! Letters to a Young Contrarian is good book, and I enjoy his columns in Vanity Fair and Slate, even if I disagree with a lot of it.

I will probably never read God is Not Great because I'm already an anti-theist, and there are better books on the subject. One day Hitchens might realize that cataloging the horrible acts done in the name of religion is not the same thing as attacking theism.

At work the other day I actually started flipping through his book of essays about the war in Iraq - A Long Short War...

Hitchens is a damn fine writer. I don't mind his anti-theism. Someone has to do it, especially with so many atrocities done in the name of imaginary figures. But he's a drunken hypocrite, mainly because he sided with Bush in the Iraq invasion. A rabid anti-theist being instrumental in the creation of Iraq as an al-Qaeda recruiting ground. Who said fundamentalists weren't the only ones to not get irony? Good one, Hitchster. Then again, he sees life through a gin-soaked haze and inhabits the festering entrails of the Beltway. Pundit is another word for "not to be trusted." Dear Hitchens, STFU!

Started reading Fulgrim by Graham McNeill, a Scots author from the Black Library stable. I have about 10 chapters left of Portrait of a Lady and will finish it in time. James is up there with Vladimir Nabokov and Proust for characterization and scene-setting. He truly can see the shadings of the butterfly wings.

I think Hitchens is wrong about Iraq, but I don't think he is a hypocrite. His positions and principles are consistent.

I do not buy into the myth that Islamist terrorism is merely a misguided response to American & European foreign policy in the Middle East. I think Islamism is a force with its own trajectory and, for lack of a better word, imperialist aims. Aims that include exterminating Jews and enforcing a kind of theocratic-fascism on whatever territory can be conquered. On this count Hitchens and I agree, while most of the "anti-war" Left is at best ambivalent on this question if not openly cheerleading for Islamism as an "anti-imperialist" force.

Unlike Hitchens, I do not buy into the myth that the US is or ever was on a humanistic drive to rid the world of Islamist fascism and spread "democracy and freedom". The ongoing situation in Iraq and Afghanistan makes it clear that both the "pro-war" and "anti-war" positions are not solutions at all and that both perspectives have nothing to offer but more horror and bloodshed.

As for his anti-theism, the problem with his book is that it is not anti-theist enough - it is merely anti-religious.

If Hitchens isn't a hypocrite, he comes across as incredibly misguided and utterly inept at foreign policy. Kind of like Stalin signing the Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler. Oh yeah, that's going to end well.

Iraq is a lot more complicated than the usual "Islamist-fascism" charge. Since we invaded and slaughtered hundreds and thousands of their civilians, it has become a complex labyrinth of struggles: al-Qaeda wanting to create a worldwide caliphate; nationalist guerrillas; Sunni Baathist extremists; and secessionist Kurds. Yeah, an election will solve all their problems, just the US in 2000. Good luck with that, neoconservatives.

Hitchens is partially responsible for turning an authoritarian secular state (Saddam and Pals) into an Islamist theocratic state with ties to Iran (also not good). What did he expect would happen? His blind faith in Bush and Co. is almost as laughable and idiotic as Christian fundamentalists believing the universe is 6000 years old. That's a blind spot you could drive a gas giant through.

The reason the anti-war left has been ambivalent is because there has been no draft. Then again, most of the heavy lifting in Iraq has been done by mercenaries from Blackwater, so why would we need a draft. Free enterprise will solve all our problems. Glad to see the neoconservative eggheads adopting the same far-sighted strategies that worked so well on Wall Street and the housing market.

All religions have imperialist aims, it's just Christianity had its imperialist drives defanged with the separation of church and state. Islam never had a Reformation and there's no such thing as secularism in the Middle East -- unless you're a pro-US dictator and want to get killed by the Muslim Brotherhood

But it is interesting seeing Hitchens go to bed with the pro-Israel (not necessarily pro-Jew) Christian Right with Iraq. Strange bedfellows.

#359 Islamists are not anti-Jew, they are anti-Zionist. There's a difference. Al-Qa'eda was created to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan. It then switched its mission to the destruction of the state of Israel and the re-establishment of Palestine, a cause the Saudis and Gulf Arabs had been supporting financially for decades. Also instrumental was the creation of US military bases in Saudi following the first Gulf War. US foreign policy in the area was, to put it bluntly, ham-fisted. Its easy to understand why their presence was resented.

Invading Iraq on a flimsy lie - even if the Iraqis are not well-liked in the Arab world - only intensified anti-US and anti-Western feeling.

I see a couple of lads who are about to become intimately familiar with those "black bases" in Eastern Europe we keep hearing about. No postcards allowed, unfortunately, but we hope to see you both again, er, some time in the not so distant future.

Ianales: No, they are anti-semitic. Have you ever read the Hamas charter or heard Al-Qaeda speeches? Do you remember the murder of Jews in Mumbai? Or the recent attempt by some (thankfully) incompetent would-be terrorists to blow up synagogues in New York? Or we can go back further and look at the direct connections between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Nazis...

"In a certain respect, the semiotics of the attacks in Mumbai were even more ghastly than those of 9/11, since it witnessed the deliberate hunting of Jews qua Jews, especially at the Chabad House, subjecting them to savage beating before their execution, unlike even the Americans and Britons who were also singled out. For those who planned the attacks killing Jews was a priority and it was executed in the midst of a siege by police units by killers who had, in all likelihood, never so much as seen a Jewish person before. Though the murderous anti-Semitism on display in Mumbai ought by now to be an all-too-familiar aspect of Islamist ideology, Guardian correspondent Richard Silverstein, like Gopal on the editorial page, declines to acknowledge the obvious. Instead he insists that the attack on Chabad House was “not necessarily anti-Semitic”, claiming that the attackers were seeking “redress for crimes against Palestine”. “Why did the Attackers Choose to Attack Chabad House”, Guardian (December 4, 2008) cf. Alex Stein “Inspiration from India” Guardian (December 4, 2008) From this we may safely conclude that, for Silverstein, anytime a Muslim kills a Jew he need only utter the magic word “Palestine” to have his guilt absolved: Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza means that it is open season on Jews all over the world. In the same vein, William Dalrymple informs the wised-up readers of the Guardian that “the horrific events have to be seen in the context of. . . the abject failure of the Bush Administration” and the “ill-treatment of the people of Kashmir”. “Mumbai Atrocities Highlight Need for a Solution in Kashmir” Guardian (November 30, 2008) In Arundhati Roy’s column, too, we rely upon the terrorists to tell the truth and to remind “us” of the “things we don’t want to talk about any more”. “The Monster in the Mirror”, The Guardian (December 13, 2008) It is one thing for a journalist to report the content of authoritarian manifestoes or the statements terrorists make in the course of an attack; it is quite another matter to rationalise such statements in the manner of Silverstein, Dalrymple, and Roy.

Highlighting the political significance of the attack on Chabad House cannot be allowed to obscure the fact that there was also something quite discriminating about the seemingly more indiscri-minate killing of commuters at the Victoria Terminus. It is not enough to say simply that, compared to the foreigners and the rich people at the Taj and Oberoi Hotels, the victims there were poorer, working people, though this is true. It is also worth pointing out that at the train station, the attackers fired directly into crowds. The Muslims among the dead there were not unintended victims. They were punished for living and working in peace in secular democratic India, that is, of having failed to join the jihad. Of course, the Hindus regarded as pagans were positively marked for slaughter. As for the attacks on Mumbai’s elite hotels, likewise, the clear intent was to comingle on their marble floors the blood of dying unbelievers of all sorts — Zionist, Crusader, and Infidel. There again was the same unbridled murderousness that has been a significant feature of previous attacks, such as the 2006 commuter train in Mumbai and the serial bombings earlier in 2008 in Jaipur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, and Delhi, to name just a few. These rather elementary aspects of the politics behind the Mumbai attacks rarely merit mention in the analysis to be found in the Guardian. But while the “Left” cannot remain at this elementary level of analysis, neither can it afford to ignore the obvious."
- from: http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article1168.html

My Arabic isn't up to reading the Hamas charter, or listening to speeches by Al-Qaeda, but I'd take any translation of them with a pinch of salt.

Besides, when members of Islamic terrorist groups conflate the US and the West as targets, it's no surprise they conflate Jews and Israel. They're not anti-semitic, which implies a racial hatred of Jews. They are responding to events in Israel and Palestine. The fact that the mythology of Israel vs Palestine now provides a "justification" for action rather than the actuality is a sad result of Western support of Israel and the Israeli bias of much Western media.

Oh, and the connection between the Nazis and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Grand Mufti of the time was rabidly anti-semitic and collaborated with the Nazis. Thankfully, it came to very little. But that doesn't make all Muslims anti-semitic, not even Islamists.

Oh, and please - no right wing press in discussions of this sort.

How can Islamists be anti-Semitic? Most of their membership is made up of Arabs, a Semitic people. Jews and Arabs are similar genetically, although extremists on both sides would have you think differently, since fanaticism and bombs trumps science. The whole "chosen people" bit loses its relevance when you see the similarities in genetics. Too bad when the Christian Right enter Heaven, they will see a Jesus who looks a lot like Osama bin Laden. Talk about irony.

That's an argument I've used myself, but I then discovered that the term "anti-semitism" was originally coined to refer specifically to Jews.

"Too bad when the Christian Right enter Heaven, they will see a Jesus who looks a lot like Osama bin Laden. Talk about irony."

Karl, you are incorrigible. And I say that with real admiration.

366: Then you can put "anti-semitism" in with the other useless junk words like "indie" and "alternative." Words so over-used and commodified, they are drained of all meaning.

It does suck when you try to discuss this labyrinthine, touchy topic and you attempt to mildly criticize the heavy-handed, counterproductive, ham-fisted strategies of Israel to have accusations of "anti-semite" lobbed in your direction. It cheapens the whole debate, as if all Israelis were hardcore militarist Zionist imperialists who base their foreign policy decisions on the Old Testament. Sorry, Isreal, like the United States, isn't entitled to special rules because the Christian Right thinks the Battle of Armaggedon will be fought on Israeli soil. Jews who are allied with the Christian Right would be advised to read the Book of Revelation. The Christian Right says they are friends of Israel, but in the Book of Revelation, the Jews will be cannon fodder once the End Times begin. With friends like these ...

I wouldn't say it was "overused and commodified". It was coined with an inaccurate meaning, and those who like to bandy it about are quick to point to its origin rather than any accurate definition of the word. Because, of course, it serves their argument.

whatever the original coinage, if one does a pair of Venn diagrams, the overlap between self declared Anti-Semites/Anti-Zionists has become quite large. Although it was really impossible to be an Anti-Zionist before the advent of Zionism in the late 19th C under the leadership of Theodor Herzl (sic) who, after the Dreyfuss affair in France despaired of Jews being able to fit into modern European society (not w/out reason!~). Zionism was really not much different from any of the other many "nationalisms" that came to the fore w/ the onset of the disintegration of the European (mostly) colonial rule over much of the globe. The biggest problem, of course, that the promised land had been promised a few times too often to too many sets of monotheists. I'm surprised the Mormons haven't laid claim to Palestine. Or maybe i've missed a message from the Salamander. Herzl began his political career as a supporter of German unification. In one of history's many ironies, until ~ the defeat of Germany in WWI, the german states and then nation had been relatively liberal in re treatment of Jewish citizens (though arguably less so than Islam under the aegis of the first Caliphate, which generally left "communities of the book" - Jewish towns in particular in N. Africa and soon Moorish Spain- w local self rule as long as the towns cooperated w/ paying the tax penalties to the Ummah. ) NOT to deny the long history of exclusion, "special" treatment and cultural disdain German/Austrian authorities (cultural and political). A large # of German Jews converted to Lutheran church, esp. in the 19th C, in an attempt to become more fully assimilated into German society. But there were always charmers such as Dickie and Cosmic Wagner to remind the Jews of their outsider status. Personally i'll take both Mendelssohns' music over Wagner's mythic bombast any day of the week.

But there's blame to go around everywhere for post WWII mess that's become of the "Palestinian" question. The Brits were less than helpful w/ the initial map they drew up for portioning out the new state of Israel. That map was a patchwork quilt of barely contiguous small regions that left matters about as confusing and fraught w/ potential future violence as possible. Not that the Brits didn't make a habit of this - cf the partition of India.

The Brits originally promised the land to the Hashimite Arabs. Then reneged on that deal, thanks to Chaim Weisman and Balfour. Partition was never going to work, and everyone knew it. The Jews had been sending in settlers since the 1880s - the First Aliyah - so whatever was decided at international level was pretty much irrelevant. The Zionists were going to get what they wanted.

Finished David Benioff's CITY OF THIEVES last night. Quite a good read but, as one of our members noted, there were some rather quasi-unbelievable aspects to the novel. But the depictions of wartime Leningrad were very powerful, the efforts that were made by the citizens of the besieged city to find food (including boiling the glue off book bindings) were astonishing.

Say...3 stars out of five.

The weird thing was, Benioff tells his "grandfather's" story whereas his "grandmother" fought behind German lines with the partisans and was a highly accomplished sniper. Wouldn't her story have been TWICE as engrossing?

"Or maybe i've missed a message from the Salamander."

Ha!

Groups that call for the extermination of Jews and propagate conspiracy theories about Jewish World Domination (TM) are anti-semitic. There is no other word for what they are. In the case of Hamas, Al Qaeda, et al they have translated this anti-semitism into mass murder. It honestly boggles my mind that anyone could argue otherwise - the Islamist groups in question certainly don't; they are proudly anti-Jew. (And as for the previously linked article, it was written by a student studying under Moishe Postone, an acclaimed Marxist... hardly 'right wing'.)

As for the 'Arabs are semitic too' line, I will yield to someone who discussed that question more eloquently than I am capable: http://contested-terrain.net/on-the-wordplay-approach-to-antisemitism/

First, Hebrew and Arabic are Semitic languages, so any discussion using the word to apply to race is flawed. Second, "anti-semitic" was coined specifically to refer to Jews, and although not technically accurate, that's its usage. Any argument depending on word meaning is going to be torpedoed by those all too keen to point out that fact.

Second, where does the Hamas charter claim to be anti-Jewish? Anti-Zionist, yes. But it also says (in article 31): "Under the shadow of Islam it is possible for the members of the three religions: Islam, Christianity and Judaism to coexist in safety and security." Which is not so very different from Islam's historical treatment of other religions. All other references to Jews in the charter are clearly in the context of Zionism and the Israelis: e.g., "In order to face the usurpation of Palestine by the Jews, we have no escape from raising the banner of Jihad" (article 15). And article 20: "The Nazism of the Jews does not skip women and children, it scares everyone. They make war against people’s livelihood, plunder their moneys and threaten their honor. In their horrible actions they mistreat people like the most horrendous war criminals. Exiling people from their country is another way of killing them." Which is clearly a reference to the treatment of Palestinians by Israelis.

In many respects, this rhetoric follows a historical pattern, and not just one limited to Islam.

Raising "the banner of Jihad" against "the Jews", who are compared to the Nazis... yes, that is an anti-semitic manifesto.

Funny when fellow Semites are raising said banner. Crips and Bloods fighting for turf. Just because both sides exploit their religion for the nutjob agendas shouldn't be any of our concern. The Middle East is the perfect storm of Crazy, Fanatical, and Certain. The only reason Islamic extremists are re-purposing Nazi literature is it's a lot easier than actually coming up with original material. Why buy milk when you own a cow? (Or however that idiom is phrased?)

One man's anti-Semitism is another man's foundation of Catholicism. Fun fact: the Catholic Church didn't drop the charge of deicide against the Jews until the very modern date of 1965.

In a nutshell:

"I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam -- good people, yes, but any religion based on a single, well, frenzied and virulent god, is not as useful to the human race as, say, Confucianism, which is not a religion but an ethical and educational system." -- Gore Vidal

The term "anti-semitism" was developed by anti-Jewish parties in Germany in the 19th century who wanted a more 'scientific' way of saying Judenhass. It refers explicitly (and only) to Jew hatred.

"Semite" is a leftover term of biological racism that has no bearing on the reality of the Middle East. The Jewish diaspora is multi-ethnic.

#377 - reminds me of the bumper sticker i was too chicken to have printed here in the bible belt: "monotheism: an idea has come and gone" (preceded by Patti Smith's line:"Jesus died for somebody's sins; but not mine.")

#367 And your rhetoric is anti-Islamic. Pot, meet kettle.

How is my rhetoric anti-Islamic? Islamism, a reactionary political-religious ideology expressed by groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Al Qaeda (expressed theologically as Wahhabism, etc), is distinct from Islam, a religion/culture that has nearly a billion adherents. It should never be forgotten that most victims of Islamist terrorism are Muslims.

If you can find anything I wrote that attacks Muslims or Islam generally, please point it out to me so I can repudiate my mistake.

You're claiming that the Hamas' references to Jews, which in context clearly refer specifically to Zionists and Israelis, are general anti-semitism. Ergo, your references to Islamism can be applied generally to Islam.

That does not make any sense. I oppose Hamas and take them for their word when they say that they are fighting a 'holy war against the Jews', an enemy they want "vanquished" from the earth. I do not understand your logical leap that my opposition to Hamas and insistence on calling them anti-semitic means that I oppose Islam generally.

More from the Hamas charter: "Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah's victory is realised."

And more: "Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Muslim people. "May the cowards never sleep.""

The latter quotation from the Hamas charter shows that they differentiate between Israel, Judaism, and Jews, and that they consider all three to be enemies.

Even if you are correct - which you are not - and 'the Jews' actually means 'the Israelis' (does this mean Israeli Muslims too? They get killed by Hamas rockets and suicide bombers afterall), their charter is still a call for mass murder and ethnic cleansing. To use their language: pushing the Jews into the sea.

I'm not sure why you are going to such lengths to defend a group that would have you shot if you lived in a place where they were in power.

What's the difference between Hamas' Holy War against the Zionists and the Zionists Holy War against Hamas?

The Zionists left Palestine two thousand years ago. the Palestinians stayed. Who has the better claim to Palestine, those who left, only to return some 1800 years later, or those who stayed?

Israel is an ongoing land grab by a European power in the heart of someone else's land. Explain to me the justice in that!

Whatever problems Israel has, they brought it upon themselves by colonizing someone else's land.

If North Korea occupied parts of the United States and bullied the rest wouldn't you want to see them vanquished from the earth? Operations such as the one recently carried out in Gaza make it harder and harder to see the Israeli's as the victim here.

Is this thread about the clusterfuck in the Middle East or what we're reading? Back on topic, folks!

In a desperate attempt to bring this thread back to topic before someone's head explodes in righteous indignation...

I'm slumming a bit this week and revisiting my middle school/junior high days. I need to decompress now that the term is over, so it's YA fantasy all day every day until my brain has recovered. Tamora Pierce and J. K. Rowling, here I come.

I've been eyeing Persuasion and Portrait of a Lady to regain some street cred once this is out of my system. Also promised a Joyce-crazed friend of mine that I'd read Ulysses this summer. I'm open to good/bad/cautionary comments to about these selections before I dive in.

Since my major life change -- become non-employed -- I've been seeking solace in Warhammer 40K books. Violent stupid fun, full of space demons and such. I am approaching the end of Portrait of a Lady and nearing the conclusion of the Cantos by Ezra Pound

British RPG space fantasy is intellectual comfort food. Once I become liquid again, I'll tear into some Alexander Theroux and Nabokov

Right now the times aren't conducive to intellectual challenge. On the other hand, I'm working hard to churn out new book reviews and critical essays on my blog. Building up my critical street cred the only way I know how.

Geneg - blood and soil, eh?

---

Ok, back on topic. I'm working through the complete works of Kertész. Almost done with Detective Story and then onto Liquidation.

I'm also reading A Long Short War by Christopher Hitchens and need to pick up The Politics of Friendship again.

My lengthy review of R. Scott Bakker's The Judging Eye:

http://driftlessareareview.wordpress.com/2009/05/27/the-judging-eye-the-aspect-e...

Hey, nicely done, Karl. Bakker should send you a case of scotch. At the very least, a review copy of his next book. I think you might have a knack for this stuff.

I sent a note to his publicist. I enjoyed the review copy of The Judging Eye, better than paying for it ... although I would have, since the writing is so exemplary. Far better than the majority of the genre, where the writing strategy is:

*Get a copy of LOTR
*Get a copy of Mad Libs
*Change the names and the places, keep the rest, call it "original."

Bakker had LOTR as a starting point, but he evolved the genre to such a radical degree it transcended its roots. Not many writers have the balls or the talent to pull that off. He created one of the few epic fantasies that feel "lived in" as opposed to a Ren Faired version of a vaguely medieval vaguely Europe-type place. It's also a slim 400 pages, damn near novella length compared to those bloated turds Terry Brooks and Terry Goodkind keep excreting.

Snagged Spiders of Allah by James Hider from LC Early Reviewers. Should prove fascinating, given our recent rhetorically overblown digression into Monotheist Crazy Land aka the Middle East.

Yesterday I read Ron Hansen's 1989 short story collection NEBRASKA.

Wow.

Absolutely lovely. Uncluttered, sharp, thrilling writing. This is short prose at its absolute best. He even has the balls to concoct a sequel to Ernie Hemingway's tale, "The Killers"...and carries it off!

Hansen, among other things, also wrote the novel THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES (made into a so-so movie with Brad Pitt).

This guy is something.

My copy of THE AUTOMATIC MESSAGE (Atlas Press) finally arrived from the U.K. today and it's a gorgeous edition. Glad I went for the pricier version--I'm paging through it and have to keep dabbing at the little, thin streams of drool that threaten to splash onto its pages.

OK...back to a note on War by Todd Komarnicki - finished a couple of weeks back. A spare, terse novel from the POV of an anonymous soldier in an anonymous war in an anonymous city. The narrator enlists as an alternative to jail and finds himself bunked up in an abandoned hotel in w/ a group of nameless compatriots. The book flips back and forth between the narrator's memories of family - a brutal father, and a failed marriage (his ex is one of the few characters who retains a name) and a burnt out present. Literally - the hotel in which his squad is bivouacked is bombed and he sets out on a journey through the metaphorically hellish land (see Dante).

War sounds bleak, and so it is; but it's also surprisingly thoughtful. The blurb on the back compares his writing to Auster - having only read two of Auster's books and the one by Komarnicki (his previous, surely upbeat, book is titled famine ) the comparison seems fair, but my grounds for evaluation are slight. But having just gone through three of Tim O'Brien's Vietnam novels, "War" fit in nicely with those books for reading company.

Short interview with Komarnicki--the guy behind the movie "Elf"(?!):

http://www.blackbookmag.com/article/todd/3859

A Christian in Hollywood--talk about a lamb laying down with lions...

P.S. Bob, I'm sure I read and reviewed his book FAMINE years ago, when I had a regular column in a Florida-based magazine. And, if I recall, I liked it quite a bit.

yeah - he seems to be an odd duck to be sure. i was quite taken aback by his Elf credits which were mentioned on the brief book bio. He writes quite beautifully though.

I usually don't read two books in a row by the same author but after completing Ron Hansen's NEBRASKA collection, I plucked his first novel DESPERADOES off my shelf, started reading...and now I'm hooked.

This guy has it in spades. I'm wildly jealous...

Finished on odd,little SFish book, the stone gods by Jeanette Winterson. Multiple post apocalyptic themes in which the current residents both "east" & "west" - on planet Orbus have managed to fk up the mother planet quite thoroughly in the course of the ultimate consumer socieity; yet a modicum of hope survives.--even if surviving only means the discovery of love before dying. Three linked novellas in one short novel. In the first, the corp. which controls post-everything "euro-sector" makes plans to settle the first human friendly planet found and to hell w/ everyone "left behind." In the second, Billie, a seaman on capt cooks crew gets left behind on Easter Island and leaves a journal of love and despond. In the third the Orbus is REALLY post-apocalyptic as the east/west nuclear war has occurred. All three feature "every-scientist" Billie and one version or another of Spike - the robo-sentiens - self evolving robot, out for self discovery.

It's disconcerting to find beautifully written paragraphs/meditations abutted by talky exposition. I found this one in the YA section...even I wouldn't put it there - defn. an adult book w/ graphic (albeit illustrative, not extensive) scenes of weird sex - ie a Spike, the robot sapiens out to understand her world, gets it on, (or at least her head and tongue do - in the 3rd story she's bodiless, )which again are not at all gratuitous but not YA either. I'd guess the librarians noted how short it was, and a not uncommon YA type theme and didn't really read the book first.

There's much to like - the human factor is well done; world building nicely accomplished and (under the strained circumstances, rather believable main characters). I have a major caveat - that doesn't put the book out of the realm of the readable - but could have been avoided. Throughout much of the book Winterson does a fine job of showing and implying via conversation rather than telling; but, esp. in the 3rd section, she goes overboard into well meaning polemical speech by way of her characters which is both obvious and unneeded as she's demonstrated in the first two novellas that she CAN write movingly, gracefully and subtlety - even in a very "non-subtle" satirical setting.

maybe 3.5 stars - would've been 4 except for the excessive talkiness of the 3rd section.

Excellent critique, Robert!

think we need a monthly thread for readings? quarterly gets quite slow to load w/ the amount of books this group reads?

Sounds like a good idea to me, chum. These threads get a tad unwieldy after 150 posts.

This morning I finished Ron Hansen's DESPERADOES. Those people who claim not to like Westerns should have a look at authors like Ron Hansen and Richard Wheeler (especially THE BUFFALO COMMONS) and Elmer Kelton. They're fine books and authors, regardless of the genre they're slotted into. And Cormac McCarthy isn't averse to writing about the old west; BLOOD MERIDIAN is one of his very, very best...

Cliff, if you liked Blood Meridian, you'll love Twilight.

**Ducks**

But seriously, check out The Judging Eye The epic fantasy has a group called the "Scalpoi," who hunt and scalp the Sranc (think Orcs meets "I am Legend" rabies zombies) and there's an entire industry based on scalp-hunting. There's many other reasons to read the book, but the scalp-hunting culture is a radical re-interpretation of the anti-orc Tolkien trope. And at a brisk 400 pages, it's damn near novella length, especially in the bloated, padded, overextended genre of epic fantasy.

I'm just one canto away from Cantos: Drafts and Fragments and thus the end. I'm planning to write an extensive blog post on my reading experience. The Usura Canto is oddly prescient in this time of economic suffering. When is charging interest ever a good thing?

"All the perplexities, confusion and distresses in America arise not from defects in the constitution or confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, as much from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation." -- John Adams

I'll refrain from commenting on Blood Meridian - suffice to say I wasn't its #1 fan.

My Name is Asher Lev currently; a friend recommended it to me and I've been lending her books left and right, so fair's fair. I got her copy but haven't dug in too deep yet.

Also War and Peace... yeah, I intoxicatedly promised another friend I'd read it. Oof. That said, so far the story and characters seem fairly interesting. Can they maintain themselves over 1300 pages more? We'll see, I guess...

405 posts! In the words of a Star Wars extra: "There's too many of them!" Cue explosion.

Let's start a monthly reading thread before this one becomes any more unwieldy.

Monthly reading threads--agreed. Ian?

Re #404: BLOOD MERIDIAN--we'll have to agree to disagree. I thought it was STUNNING.

Here's a side note: my 13 year old son, Sam, is reading McCarthy's THE ROAD. I tried to warn him off it, telling him how dark and hopeless it was but he heard me praise it to someone else and is determined to give it a crack. Yikes...

I think McCarthy's talented - I just finished No Country for Old Men and really liked it - but I suppose Blood Meridian was a bit too much for me at the time. I felt like the pacing was odd and off. Perhaps I stray into hyperbole, but there would be fifty-some pages about how awful and testing the desert is, then about half a page or less involving a major plot development (usually concerning some horrendous act of violence), then back to that darn desert.

It'll be interesting to see what happens if they ever get that movie version off the ground. For instance, who'll play the Judge?

Oh, and re: The Road, if the school districts I tutor near are any indication, that book is well on its way to becoming part of the school reading canon. Had a ton of students reading it last summer and several reading it in the fall as well.

#406. Works for me.

#408--I wonder if THE ROAD will make the curriculum once the trustees and administrators start actually, y'know, READING it. Because it's a tough, nasty book and not exactly redemptive.

Both THE ROAD and NO COUNTRY are pretty commercial fare as far as McCarthy goes. His earlier work, THE OUTER DARKNESS and CHILD OF GOD (and, yup, BLOOD MERIDIAN) are unrelenting and intense books. I urge you to seek them out.

407: Check the recent lengthy write-up on McCarthy on "The Quarterly Conversation" website.

408: Finally, something to replace A Separate Peace