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EYESHOT'S EXHAUSTIVE YEAR-END READING RUNDOWN (2012) BY EYESHOT AL SHERRIF
Last
year we posted little impressions of books that left the longest lasting
lingering impressions on us, and this year, lacking new stuff to post,
we decided to do so again. All years are good reading years, but 2012 was
beyond good, better than good, because we foresaw that in 2013 and subsequent
years we might not have as much peaceful quiet reading time/energy and
so we devoted 2012 to reading as though our procreative balls were to the
proverbial wall -- finally getting to Mann, Musil, Proust, among many others.
We read like camels gearing up for a long journey without watery books,
although we're sure we'll read just as much in the future as we have in
the past, mixing in way more Dr. Seuss and Curious George with the serious
hi-falutin lit we love, which we intend to read aloud to little Baby Eyeshot.
Anyway, here's what we thought about a few (not all) books we read this
year, presented in no particular order. Note: all paragraph breaks have
been removed for density's sake. To see future impressions as soon they
see light, befriend or follow us on Goodreads
and/or to a lesser extent on Twitter.
As a last resort, notification of new Eyeshot additions can be attained
by liking us on Effbük.
Author
is a friend from grad school but that doesn't mean I can't sincerely proclaim
that I just took a much-needed break from Proust to read a signficantly
more contemporary exercise in memory, only to discover that it doesn't
read like "an exercise in memory," thankfully, in fact it didn't feel like
a creative writing exercise at all (my initial fear), since -- lo! -- after
a bit the conceit seemed to melt away to reveal an excellent, formally
interesting, audacious, moving, vivid, suggestive, life-affirming, open-hearted
collection of short one-sentence autobiographical essays involving undergoing
surgery to correct a weird chest cavity, beheading copperheads, Tumblr,
long-lost Jordan-like friends, cutting one's own hair, staring at the embers
of a fire while coming off psychoactive drugs, strict Christian upbringing
(the whole thing inexplicitly expresses conversion from following G-d as
a child to something more mystical/literary as an adult), haunting old
family houses, advanced directives re: what to do with one's body, classic
'80s NBA (Bird, Rambis) -- not to give all the wonders of its nature away,
but this is a book that gawks at the wide-open world and thereby experiences
a sort of grace, making peace with the old verity of so much world/so little
time upon it, walking through neighborhoods at night wondering why everyone
doesn't walk at night every night (mad but not really mad at the blue glow
in at least one window per house), and -- most affectingly -- being a father
and being a son, plus other not-quite-polar pivot spots that make these
epitaphs come absolutely alive and, whether or not you're a fan of Michael
Martone or Some Instructions to My Wife or Pieces for the
Left Hand: 100 Anecdotes, this writer -- who come to think of it organized
a touch football game on weekends in grad school -- commands the huddle
and, with confidence in your writer/reader tandem's mutal desire to win
a nonexistent existential trophy, places a tight spiral into your outstretched
hands after he instructs you to go long.
*
My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Within a week of each other, my mother and a grad school friend recommended
this to me, both calling it "up my alley," maybe because it's a literary
autobiography unafraid of piling on the detail and ripping off pages of
dense, insightful exposition. I hadn't seen the James
Wood review in The New Yorker (didn't skim it until after I wrote a
draft of this review), but I've long loved the look and feel of Archipelago's
books and I'm an Anselm
Keifer fan (there's a Keifer on the cover). Fiction is fact selected,
arranged, and charged with purpose, said Thomas Wolfe in the foreword to
Look
Homeward, Angel, but Knausgaard's acknowledged precedence is Proust.
Narrator admits to gulping Proust down before writing this novel, memoir,
"roman," something that maintains the circuituous structure but swaps out
the velveteen serpentine suffusions for something cleaner, starker, heteronormative,
and involuntarily cathartic more than ecstatic -- none of which mean it's
better than Proust, just comparing the two because Proust is the archetype,
the way some bands derive from The Beatles, The Stones, Led Zep, and others
from Kraftwerk. A pretty clear division between scene and summary (exposition):
pages of always welcomed dense/deep exposition (usually about death, although
at first about parenthood) followed by pages of scenes (sometimes with
quick little refreshing streams of sparsely attributed dialogue). The exposition
I loved whereas the scenes, especially in the first part, I only admired
-- or maybe I overrelated to the first section involving his adolescence?
Teenage dudes driving around looking to drink, playing guitar (I loved
how my electric guitar case smelled), crappy bands playing outside to no
one (my college band once played outside to four of our friends), lusting,
making out, varieties of -- to my mind -- overly common experience that
may account for why I've never really written about my teen years, have
always pushahed them, deemed them necessarily stoned more than beautiful,
and therefore unworthy. But Knausgaard seemed to OK those years, those
experiences, and shows how to go about it as long as -- as in Proust --
teen/childhood talk is filtered through a mature narrator's recollections.
That depth, that distance, seems necessary for me in part to evade accusations
of YA-ness from fuckheads like me. Something else I loved: things are detailed
at times to the point of what Frank
Conroy called "abject naturalism": comprehensive minute detailing of
minor movements, especially washing dishes or setting a table or other
rote physical actions. Here, such naturalism is less abject than
the
object, the point, a cataloguing of momentary forms, like monumental
skyscapes at sunset, momentary, meaningless, lacking secret codes to crack,
glanced at, deemed beautiful, that's it -- appreciated but so common they're
taken for granted. "The veranda, the plastic bottles, the light in the
neighbor's windows . . . The gutter and the rainwater still running down
it into the grass. I could not grasp that he wouldn't see any more of this,
however hard I tried." There's something steely about the narrator no matter
how often he, like water from a rock, breaks into tears. Things are clear
and rational and yet move unpredictably -- nonlinear layering of the story
gives it more depth. It feels absolutely real and reading it enhanced perception
of life around at least one reader. Also, when they inevitably round up
the post-irony novels that have come since DFW's prediction in the famous
TV essay about Leyner, Knausgaard will be mentioned. He's sincere without
being stupid about it, without feeling like he's restraining a natural
instinct to entertain or humor. Loved the bit, after he talks with his
wife on the phone and they both say how much they miss and love each other,
how he gets some things at a convenience store and wants to sleep with
the chubby Iraqi or Iranian girl who won't look up at him. It's very well-done,
understated, its significance not overexplicated with exposition, plus
it suggests issues that might arise in later volumes. Throughout, its naturalism
feels natural, like literature more than contemporary literary fiction
that adheres to the rules of its genre and thereby so often for me feels
unreal, like a story, like fiction. 4.5 stars for me -- I'll definitely
read the next five or so volumes as they come out and maybe revisit this
rating if moved to do so. I'm sure this will stick with me. A half-star
off since it was a bit of a slog midway before the second half when the
aftermath of the father's death started up -- but I also had trouble finding
time to sit down for consistent stretches, plus it's too cold and windy
to walk and read at lunch or to/fro work. One thing of note: when I did
walk around at lunch and read this, it was fun to think that a few folks
might have thought I was reading a fancy new translation of "Mein Kampf."
That suggestion/juxtaposition is pretty audacious/rad since it adds heft
to the minor details throughout -- reminds me a little of the early Kiefer
photos (late '60s) of the artist giving the Heil Hitler while standing
in a bathtub filled with toy boats, in front of the ocean, or alone
in a field? The author's struggle is artistic, emotional, personal
if not solitary (ie, familial), literally and figuratively cleaning the
mess others have made in life, dealing with the memory of his father now
that the narrator himself is a father of three. Not a depressing book since
it's filled with life, even if it's mostly about death. Minimal talk of
fjords,
too, although the word definitely appears a few times.
*
The Scientists: A Family Romance by Marco Roth
Read this in various locations (parks, rooms, trains) but finished the
last few pages in the tiny park at First Ave and Houston about a block
from where the author bounds up the subway steps toward the end. I expected
to look up and see a 3D projection of Marco
(a Philly frend) turn the corner and bound toward the Lower East Side,
conspicuously alleviated, his self-portrayed nervous, self-defeating, self-consciously
"intellectual" intelligence at long last chanelled toward specific purposes:
this recently published, smart, moving "anti-memoir" about more than his
father's HIV contraction and death by AIDS, and his work as co-editor of
n+1. Anti-memoir, essay, or whatever it's called, it's a book very much
about the interdependent duo of life and text. As such, it's also very
much a book about writing a book, and therefore eligible for shelving among
other books I've loved like Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence
by Geoff Dyer, Concrete by Thomas Bernhard, Soldiers of Salamis
by Javier Cercas, and Bartleby & Co. by Enrique Vila-Matas,
among others I can't remember now but will add once I do. I love books
about trying (and predominately failing, of course) to write books -- it's
probably my favorite literary subgenre, in part because the existence of
the book itself suggests a successful struggle. This is an excellent example
of the genre, although it's not quite as explicit as those mentioned above.
The author traces intricate patterns on a sophisticated, elaborate, endangered
foundation of artistic, tempermental, and intellectual inheritance. Hand-wringing
involves living up to the expectations of privilege and one's talent and
education, and at most matching (if not necessarily surpassing) one's parents'
success. Like all worthwhile writing, essay or otherwise, this is primarily
a Truth Hunt, with the author presented as fragile literary investigator
with a nose for the facts, even/especially if they're abstract realizations
achieved via strict scrutiny of serious Russian/European novels his father
suggested he read. The investigation takes the author to Paris to study
with Derrida (as he learns more about his father's history/orientation,
the son's origin/center shifts); to Yale's PhD lit program to assay his
father's favorite texts (including Fathers and Sons -- high on the
Eyeshot 2013 reading list thanks to this
list) for traces of truth about father and son and to hash out anti-narrative
ideas of identity with brilliant/sloshed fellow grad students; and to his
ever-changing place of origin, the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It's an
investigation that pays off for the author in that this is clearly a book
that had to be written, and it's something that had to be written in proper
and attentively phrased prose worthy of the author's cultural/famililal
legacy and intense literary interest. But it also pays off for readers
because of the clarity and intelligence of the prose, the general spirit
of erudition lofted by engines of emotion (and vice versa), but also it
succeeds as a simple high-lit whodunit (the conclusion of the case I won't
reveal). All in all, a brave, intelligent, moving book for telling the
story of discerning the truth about the father's tragic story while devising
out of aesthetic and emotional necessity the book in the readers' hands.
After alleviating his family burden by abstractly avenging his father's
death, the son seems ready to trace new patterns across the interdependent
pages of life and text. Alt title: "Portrait of the Public Intellectual
as a Young Man."
*
Zone by Mathias Enard
A discontinuous sentence broken up by chapters, a few of which relate
a tradtionally formatted story (many sentences, paragraphs, etc) the narrator
reads while on the train from Milan to Rome. Not really a single sentence,
folks, but the formal aspects of this one only superficially interest,
the way each comma-delineated phrase is like a train-track tie, which the
book associates with bodies piled up on the horizontal. Like a cut-up of
an encyclopedia of the secret history of 20th century European/Mediterranean
atrocities, seamlessly streaming from the consciousness of a veteran of
endless armed conflict and endless psychic wars whenever at rest (if never
at peace). Namedrops and occasionally animates Genet, Burroughs, Joyce,
Pound. Receives consistent nonintrustive canonical support from the Iliad.
Every page lists exotic locations, not so Anglo names, wars, skirmishes,
battles, conflicts, assassinations, genocides, all while alluding to classical
mythology/long-lost antiquity, blending up a froth of world-weary and wartorn
sophistication, like a Sebald/James Bond hybrid, like Vollmann oozing Euro
essence (a mix of blood and Ouzo), like Keroauc invoking Zeus instead of
Buddha, like a paramilitary Proust (oft alluded to, as well as Celine),
all in all exactly like the narrator concocted by Monsieur Enard, born
a few weeks before me. As ambitious in its way as Infinite Jest and other
monsters (517 pages filled with words -- not much white space, no dialogue
etc), yet nary a mention of advertisements -- the stuff that makes people
sad in the Zone (the Mediterrean region, plus Serbia/Croatia, Austria/Germany,
Paris, etc) is purely gruesome historical hysteria thanks to compounding
violent revenge violently avenged, on and on to the apocalypse. Yeah! Good
times! Maybe four stars rounded up for the sake of audacity, authority,
originality, heft, scope, execution, oomph, language always pushing ahead,
hard to look away yet hard to read in bed, recommended for walking readers
or anyone reading on the move. Really a first-class foward-flowing associative
collage of horrific histories, but never seemingly gory for the sake of
gore (there's a great amputated forearm toward the end -- quotations to
come), sometimes it's tender, a heartbreaking memory of a glimpse of white
panties, the ecstatic sight of a pair of siren-like dolphins. A book everyone
should probably read since it so generously suggests how much I at least
don't know, not only the Iliad but mostly everything beyond the knowledge
of the occurrence of everything that's happened over time in Germany, Poland,
Serbia, Croatia, Spain, Italy, Lebanon, Palestine, Tunisia, Algeria, on
and on. Not really actually recommended for most readers but, for fans
of Sebald, Bolano, Vollmann, for fans of intertexual and/or high-art international
lit, this is a can't miss atrocity exhibition.
*
Chess Story by Stefan Zweig
A flowing, engaging, gripping, hefty, accessible, masterful novella.
Effortless/seamless old-timey Austrian structure: a narrator tells a story
that includes someone's third-person account about one major character
and a longish first-person account by another major character. The two
chess players are well drawn and absolutely differentiated: one's a stoic
idiot-savant peasant, the other's an anxious intellectual from a highly
regarded Viennese family. Really worth spending the hour or so it takes
to read. Directly addresses Nazi interrogation tactics and oppression,
but I'd say it's maybe more about the ability of the mind to free one's
ass but also potentially become a sort of prison in itself. The imagination
can embue a wooden grid and wooden statues with so much serious rational
significance that people devote their lives to chess and can ideally provide
a refuge against oppression, whether as obvious as Nazi occupation or as
subtle as daily boredom and/or a sense of the nothingness of existence
etc. But then it can also operate in overdrive, go too far, feed on itself,
become a sickness, an arrogance, a feverish instability that fails to recognize
what's going on in reality. I suppose this could be extrapolated to critique
National Socialism, too -- something about rational reclamation of a country's
spirit taken to sickly irrational extreme? Or maybe it has to do with the
war-damaged artistic imagination? Regardless, looks like I need to read
a lot more Zwieg . . .
*
The Man Without Qualities, Vol 1 by Robert Musil
Among the very best I've read. No question. Up there shining a bright
light in my own little personal canonical firmament. The ideal book of
ideas. Fans of towering literary artistry will love this. Recommended for
fans of Infinite Jest -- there's even a riff about what it means
when a tennis player is called a genius. Somewhere in Extinction (see
below), Bernhard notes that Musil is the best prose writer ever in German.
Fantastically drawn characters with incomparable depth thanks to such clear,
fluid, insightful exposition. Things happen early on that are sustained
and revisited throughout (ie, there's a plot). Ulrich's beaten up, he hangs
with his artistic piano-playing friends, enjoys some intimacy with a married
nympho, gets arrested, takes a shine to a society-symbolizing lady killer,
and becomes a member of the Parallel Campaign! Otherwise, despite all this
plot crap, every page packs an epigrammical wallop. Unfakeable insight,
wisdom, striking images. Exactly the sort of thing I want and rail about
when I don't get, especially in books considered excellent. So many ideas,
too many to even begin listing, but never does it feel thematically scatterbrained
or "encyclopedic" -- it's like a gracefully revolving squeezing out of
nuanced colors from every gradiation stop along the emotional, intellectual,
psychological, artistic, political, societal, and most importantly the
spiritual spectrum (note: "spiritual" doesn't mean "religious" as much
as having to do with that very Germanic concept of Geist, which I think
is like the soul, the body, the mind, the will, and all those old verities
like courage and dignity wrapped up in one -- the sort of thing ye olde
uber-Modernist novels like this are most concerned about). It's the sort
of book that you want to start summarizing and quoting until you've plagiarized
all 725 pages. Did things sometimes get a little slow? Not so often that
I lost patience -- slower lulls came before the storms (albeit more of
axiom than action). Loved the Utopia of Essayism sections, sort of like
prose-poem unpredictable statement tilt-a-whirls re: Ulrich's way of life.
Loved the two sections about the Great Author (Arnheim) -- couldn't help
thinking about how it applied to JFranz these days (particularly the recent
shitstorm about his off-the-cuff anti-Twitter riffs). So often things seemed
to directly address today's Twittering soul (the action is set in 1913
Vienna; Musil wrote it in the '20s/'30s) and, toward the end, the Occupy
Movement. Not sure how well this one would make out if run through the
race, class, gender thresher. Soliman, one of the most vivid and "poignant"
characters in the book, is like a horny Pip awash in a sea of upper-crust
whitecaps. Diotima and Bonedea I confused a little, despite warnings not
to do just that, thanks to their idealized names, but Rachel and particularly
Clarisse, if not Gerda, were more developed and felt real. There's still
the second volume and the notes of volume 2 to read but volume 1 feels
absolutely complete -- if Musil had said he was done at this point it would've
been considered a complete masterpiece instead of the first volume of an
unfinished mega-masterpiece. All the major character and thematic dealios
seemed to evolve and climax and close down at the end. Anyway, really glad
I've read this. Can't recommend it more highly to pretty much everyone
-- for a book of this size and sort, it seemed surprisingly accessible.
Can't wait to read some more Musil, some Mann, and other related Germanic
stuff (Broch's The Sleepwalkers) this summer. Let's hope it's dark
and dreary.
*
Steps by Jerzy Kosinski
Have had this since 1997, a crusty old paperback taken for free or not
much more from a neighbor's yard sale. Read some in the past but never
persevered to finish. Recommended for fans of dark, violent, realist fables.
Call it skewed yet scarily/stuntedly straightforward post-traumatic stress
syndrome lit? Sometimes like Kafka anecdotes but never even a smidge irreal
(what seem at first like humanoids are simply humans), also lacking suggestion
of a spiritual side? Sometimes like Jesus' Son but without that
hazy Christian glow. Heavenly reflection on earth is just the shadow of
a rotten brown leaf. Sometimes like an evil Kundera with a long knife instead
of philosophical exposition -- at the end of a brief part, when the knife
goes in, the whole thing seems to crystallize (sneaky starts, in general,
and yowza sensationalist endings). Perpetuates stereotypes of the sicko
post-war Old Country (fans of this sort of stuff should definitely check
out The
Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie: Three Novels). Right away,
ignorance and oppression dupes an innocent into beliving her liberator's
credit cards are magic. Decapitations. Gang rape. Crazy naked lady in a
cage. Soccer team obliterated by artillery fire. Bored snipers take out
strolling couples, a bored guy takes out the night watchman of an abandoned
building. On and on, short psychically linked bits, carefully and cleanly
composed, often told by a cold if not pathologically calculating post-war
narrator. Sometimes italicized psychoanalytic-like dialogue. Suggestion
of unspecified international atrocities provides sense of serious heft
(ie, human condition significance) throughout, despite book's general brevity.
Literature of the "Oh the Humanity"- or "The Horror, The Horror"-type.
A precursor to Brief
Interviews with Hideous Men -- read this after so many years because
it's mentioned in the DFW bio as an influence. A particularly vivid bit
about a fast driver hired to do just that as business deals go on in the
back. I'm interested in Kozinski's others but not about to run out after
them. Amazing this won the National Book Award in 1968. A very different
literary world back then, huh? 3.5 stars for me? Will come back to parts
of it now and again to retrace some unexpected "steps."
The cover-flap copy makes this seem like a playfully pomo tragicomic
treatise on contemporary city life but it seemed more like a simultaneously
straightforward and purposefully skewed narrative exploration of superaccessible
topics like long-term friendship, fluid identity (possibility of), order/chaos
(extremes to which we might alternately lean when there's lack or excess
of either), ye olde search for meaning in a world that rarely stays ordered
forever. All these themes are reflected in the structure: the stories of
two long-time female friends (Leah and Keisha/Natalie) interrupted by the
tangentially related story of a familiar neighborhood face (Felix), streaked
with the story of someone tangential from the girls' past (Nathan Bogle)
who affects Felix's present. These stories are for the most part presented
in chapters/sections ordered with traditionally ascending numbers, except
that (in Leah's section) when presented with a sufficient stressor, the
chapter numbers jump from 14 to 37, a number of irrational/mystical significance
involving numerological quasi-faith/sense of order in an otherwise disordered
world (see p 37, UK edition). Keisha/Natalie's section of the book is the
most traditional, an episodic series of 185 numbered short bits (missing
#37, of course) relating fleeting coming-of-age memories/nostalgia (great
bit about first listening to a Walkman, suggestions of TV shows from Friends
to The Wire), sexual experience with objects and others, first loves, education,
ascendancy by virtue of working twice as hard as whites not from the council
estates. This section, despite the appearance of numbers, reads traditionally/linearly,
often with scenes and dialogue, but it's an unfulfilling order for Keisha
(renamed Natalie to reflect her new professional identity), who longs for
disorder (p 267, UK): "There is a connection between boredom and the desire
for chaos. Despite many disguises and bluffs perhaps she had never stopped
wanting chaos." A thematic key for readers confused by this novel
appears early on (Page 10, UK): "Leah spins her spoon in her tea . . .
She pressed the bag too hard. The leaves break their borders and swarm."
Such swarms (chaos) abound after the borders of various tea bags (ideas
of order) are broken. Clearly, Leah's metaphorical tea bag is broken when
Shar enters her apartment in the first scene, but she can deal with it
until, in chapter 14, again, she breaks down after calling Shar a thief
and receiving a volley of patois in return on p 36, a scene followed by
chapter 37. Keisha at first longs to escape the order of the family unit
and then later as Natalie with her own family plus nanny etc she again
longs to leave it -- she wants to tear open her tea bag and let the leaves
swarm. Other ideas of order are expressed as The Law (see Kafka's The
Trial; also, "At RSN Associates the law burst from broken box files
. . ." p 215 UK), ye olde Anglo-Saxon London, bellies kicked and sliced
or swollen with baby, the encapsulated past (Garvey House photo book) and
the uncollected present, and again -- on an all-important formal level
-- conventional versus unconventional structure. Other dualistic dealios
exist, especially one related to boredom opposed to ecstasy/catharis/the
fullness of time (google link to Kierkegaard quote presented on p 223),
the difference between a moment and an instant that Natalie thinks of as
"blossom." And this sort of thing relates to the difference between a page
of Mapquest-style directions from point A to B (p 33) and a page of sensations
and specifics along the route (p 34). Some folks mention that they don't
quite like the characters, and I think this has to do with structure and
characterization. Early on I had trouble with characterization -- at first
it felt detrimentally underdone, but by the end I realized that this was
consequence of the structure (for example, Natalie and her kids are presented
early on but we don't know much about them -- they're more or less disembodied
proper nouns at first) but major players come to life once things focus
on Keisha/Natalie Blake, the latest in the line of slant semi-autobiographical
characters (see Irie in White Teeth and Zora in On Beauty).
Minor players (Jayden, Nathan Bogle, Marcia, Tom, Annie) maybe remain a
little underdrawn, and therefore seem like thematic representatives more
than characters (Jayden reps open-living freedom; Nathan Bogle reps the
encapsulated past torn open)? Natalie's husband Frank is somehow almost
a sort of superhandsome successful Trinidadian Italian hybrid stereotype
(if such a man can possibly be a stereotype), but he's the only one who's
characterized with real vibrant zeal, like the author was concerned that
James Wood might protest (oh lord, there she goes again with that Hysterical
Realism!) if she didn't tone shit down a bit in this one? In general, names
at first seem unremarkable (Tom, Frank, Leah, Natalie, Michel, Ned) but
fill out with compelling prosaics in time, almost as a lesson to the reader
in the importance of considering the complexity of consciousness and experience
inherent in commonplace names and faces. I realize I haven't gone into
the section with Felix and Annie so much. Felix tries to set things in
order and do what's right -- and he gets swarmed for it. Maybe I'll revisit
this part a little later on. In general, I feel like I need to re-read
the first two sections to really see how the parts relate, but that's also
the point of this book, to create initial readerly disorientation/sense
of disorder that solidifies/focuses/blossoms as the characters' lives become
more disordered (ie, as their tea leaves swarm)? That tension, that movement
-- readers acheiving order as characters lose it -- is maybe one of the
book's pleasures? Again, it's the sort of book that probably requires a
second read, a book whose first read for me I felt merited a second read
because I'm sure it's chockful of rewarding links between parts and people,
associative goodies throughout I couldn't easily make on first read, that
importantly relate to overarching themes of order and disorder/connection
and disconnection. It might call for a second read but not the way Joyce
or Faulkner usually do -- it's comparatively easy reading on a line to
line level throughout. Overall, an engagingly slant story -- in terms of
thematic and narrative procession, it's necessarily more angular (NW) than
straightup (N-S-E-W).
*
Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace by D.T. Max
A complicated chap, this DFW: capable of Aspbergian selfishness and
more than semi-noxious competitiveness, an explicitly excellent writer
who posits concern for readers yet nevertheless once dropped from a great
height "Mr. Squishy" upon our poor heads, an arch-grammarian thanks to
his mom capable of making usage stuff look like calculations intended to
trap infinity in a jar, maybe sort of a wonky weany despite his size and
high-protein breakfast vomit, apparently helpless around the house beyond
changing bulbs in his many lamps, a mama's boy who liked the ladies and
the ganja when young, no apparent deep interest in fine art or music or
food (beyond blondies and poptarts) or footwear (beyond untied workboots),
psychopathically obsessive about Mary Carr in an unambiguously creepy way,
worried about media's affect on American morality in what amounts to unattractive
moralizing at this point maybe -- his intelligence and humor and perception
and sentences are undisputed champs of the world but the overarching media-saturation
sadness stuff and his obsessive insistence on sadness/suffering/darkness
etc only seem to fight half the thematic battle (ie, what Milton called
"light and darkness in perpetual round"). But I'm not here to judge the
dude -- this is an impression of a biography that lays the foundation for
better ones to come but which is very readable and steady and an excellent
start. I admired how it mutes for the most part its judgments, how it presents
the facts, the quotations, the timeline, the memories of friends etc and
always lets us see the lies as much as the kindness. Typos and misused
words (passify, skein) didn't overly distract me but I did find recaps
of all work other than Infinite Jest not so fun. Would've LOVED 25+ glossy
insert pages of photos (at least the obligatory elementary school class
portrait with young DFW, top left, eyes bright but mercurially averting
direct contact with camera) and facsimiles of handwritten manuscript/journal
pages and college transcripts and samples of his teaching syllabi! Generally,
a serviceable bio studded with Franzen and DeLillo correspondence, with
juicy bits about his total insanity for Mary Carr, plus details w/r/t his
obsessive showering . . . Loved that he could write 22K words in a day.
Loved that he brushed his teeth for 45 minutes every morning and night
in college. Loved that the opening college interview freakout in IJ was
based on real events at my (and Lenore Beadsman's) alma mater. Loved that
he turned down inexpensive Iowa on financial grounds as though he couldn't
get loans and teaching jobs -- or have his parents pay his way through
his MFA. Mentions unrepentantly parochial books I'd heard he'd loved like
(the unfinishably slow for me) Catholics by Brian Moore and The Screwtape
Letters by C.S. Lewis. After a point I couldn't put this down and it was
a fine companion while cooped up sick as Superstorm Sandy devastated everything
-- there's something asssociable about reading a long-awaited bio about
the recently deceased DFW (a man known for his overwhelming intelligence
and outsized novel) and the recent Frankenstorm that churned slowly up
the coast. There's maybe something alternately devastating and underwhelming
about both, too, depending on where you live (literally/figuratively).
Ultimately, this more than sufficiently suggests what it felt like to be
the FHB (fucking human being) known as DFW -- and it answered lingering
WTFs w/r/t his life and superfucking heartbreaking death (surprised there
wasn't a post-death chapter about reactions and a lot more about his final
days than first appeared in the New Yorker article). Worth it if you've
ever wondered about the guy's story, his high school history, his grades
in the second semester of his sophomore year in college (spoiler: A+ across
the board), how much action he got after IJ came out, how many students
he slept with, etc, how many friends from recovery groups he helped out
financially, etc, and have read the interviews and Lipsky thing and want
to live in DFW World awhile more. It's a charismatic, virulent, thought-colonizing
place but, again, thematically, I feel like it's maybe partially pathological
and reliant on therapy/recovery-related simplicities restated in overeducated
serpentine slipstreams of high/low language -- not all of it, just some
of it, I'd say. What I mean is: what once was a literary marriage between
author and reader built on unabashed love has changed its status to "it's
complicated." Anyway, RIP
DFW, although through IJ and your essays you'll live forever. After
Both
Flesh and Not: Essays is published next week, let's hope for a bit
of silence -- at least until the collected letters, emails, responses to
student stories come out.
*
Written Lives by Javier Marias
Enjoyable little book of portraits of mostly very famous writers. Took
me longer than I thought it would since I usually read it in bed and usually
put it down and turned off the light before pushing on to the next writer.
I liked how Henry James and Ford Maddox Ford and Oscar Wilde and others
were strung through the text, like a Bolano book about real writers. Not
too much to say about it since it doesn't really present an argument etc
other than stray, not so immortalized moments in the lives of these writers.
Makes me want to read Djuana Barnes and James and Ford Maddox Ford and
Emily Bronte and Robert Lewis Stevenson.
*
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
The gateway to a full-on Proust habit. About varieties of love: eros
(carnal), agape (unconditional/motherly), societal (admiration), divine
(mystical/aesthetic). That last one isn't old-fashioned denominational
GOD LOVE, but more like a recognition of the wonder of existence/beauty,
often tinged with a wistfulness, or melancholy, since the instance of divine
love is experienced without warning or reason and then only remembered/recaptured
with decreasing intensity thereafter. Importantly, this sort of divine
love requires one to have an innate capacity to experience moments of incapacitating/life-elevating
beauty. The narrator has it, Swann does too, others also suggest an experience
of rapture. (Others not so much -- I'm looking at you, Odette). Everyone
knows the famous madeleine, but the other similar motifs/vehicles of ecstatic
beauty come to the reader in passages just as good/memorable/beautiful
about pink hawthorns and a phrase in a sonata. Not the stuff of visceral
plot-driven fiction, alas. No plot. It's also about the experience of TIME,
of course, and the book's length and approach exercise the reader's memory
and reinforce a sense that time in the novel has really passed, in part
because it's been days since you'd read a passage or image referred to
later on. Sometimes felt suffused with chrysanthemum dust. Best when discussing
solo apprehension of the divine. Slowest when about carnal superficial
love and attendant tilt-a-whirl adolescent worries (like what little I've
read of Balzac, Stendhal), and related highly calibrated societal sensitivities.
Words I'd use to describe the prose and approach would include mixolydian,
serpentine, rapturous, velveteen. At times like a psychedelic Stendhal,
sort of. Good call by the translators to name the first volume Swann's
Way instead of Meseglise Way, the true name of the path but not nearly
as catchy a title! 4.5 stars rounded up for canonical status and the sense
that it must be re-read to really appreciate once the whole thing's been
completed. It's clear now that I'm 250 pages into the second volume that
the prose in the first volume is softer, sort of prissier, redolent of
youth in the country, more innocent than it is at least later on when it
offers plenty of writer-related talk and brothels. A good time of year
to read this stuff -- something about it matches the light in September
(ie, it's "radiant" or "luminous"), although that might also have to do
with the beautifully formatted Modern Library paperbacks.
*
Within A Budding Grove by Marcel Proust
Now just past his adolescent years, our nameless little narrator friend
spends time at the Balbec beach and basks in the ambit of some fine young
lasses after chatting with a kindly ambassador and a famous (albeit brutishly
dressed and mannered!) writer he admires. The bits with Bergotte, the great
writer, were fun -- I love great writers as imagined by great writers (the
only other one I can think of is Arnheim in Musil's The Man Without
Qualities, Vol. 1). I'm having trouble recapturing all that's covered
in this one, particularly early on, since I somehow started it about six
weeks ago. Good to see Swann and Odette years later, comparatively settled
down, to feel like I'd experienced their most passionate episodes and now
know them well, can see the world through their eyes and appreciate changes
in character. Little narrator dude alludes to time spent in a brothel,
just chatting of course, and in general seems a lot less wispily enthralled
by pink hawthorns. Once he travels to the beach, he recognizes young yearning
ladies but has a low estimation of his ill self and sort of holds his tail
between his legs and talks not of sharing in their yearning but appreciating
young ladies for how interesting they might be, something which at first
seemed indicative of the author/narrator's sexuality but also nicely setup
a change of tune (from bashful whistle to let's get it on) after hundreds
of pages. Narrator hangs with some male folks his age, particularly Saint-Loup,
who really stands out at first, erect as a silver bishop on the swirly
shifting societal chess board, a kind kindred aristocratic kid for Marcel
to marvel at and befriend. For the most part, over 730 pages, all that
really happens (ie, in terms of a concentrated burst of action) is he tries
to mack on a hot little lady who's asked him to come sit by her bedside
after pressing on his hand, giving him meaningful looks, and speaking "the
language of affection" with him, and so when he leans in to kiss her .
. . I won't give it away since it's a relatively pleasurable payoff on
page 701. This long second installment seems a little more solid as narrator
comes into his own, essentially sides with writing over an ambassadorial
career, and then develops his eye for beauty in art, nature, and pale little
dark-haired ladies wired to please, all near the sea with its sets of waves
as liquidy and luminously lapidary as the prose, as always. A cathedral
is associated with rocky cliffs along the sea while talking to a cool painter
guy who sees everything's intricacy and serves as role model and ambassador
to the girls. Something continually of interest is the lack of Christian
religious significance/influence and the suggestion that a sort of mystical
artistic perception (all elements of life are embued with beauty!) transform
the world into a cathedral. The end's very much about the first stirrings
of adolescent eros, whose innocence is underscored by the hysterical tilt-a-whirl
romance between Swann and Odette in the "Swann in Love" section of Swann's
Way. This one ends with the recognition of his reserve of passion within,
sort of how the first one ended with recognition of his reserve of divine
love/artistic perception. It's not so much a "five star" book in itself
-- some stretches really dragged and others soared -- but the overall project
(its themes, characters, settings, execution, insight, and particularly
its language of course) is without a doubt at least seven stars. Monumental
without being monstrous at all.
*
A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers
A perfectly enjoyable, effortlessly proceeding, airily formatted, short
novel. It's not really 312 pages, more like 250 with lots of extraneous
white space between frequently occurring sections. A tone so accessible
it almost seemed like a YA version of some classic salesmanzy novel teleported
to 2010 Saudi Arabia. Loved the inclusion of nonfictional bits like about
Schwinn's fall and the blast-resistant glass for the Freedom Tower made
in China. Loved the snorkeling frolic and didn't really mind the end (won't
give away whether the King comes or not). Loved the attempt to dramatize
the moral complexities related to the current reality of international
commerce. Loved the sad little story about the wall the main guy built
in his hometown. Generally though Adam Clay felt fictional to me -- his
issues felt like a limited number of balls tossed in the air and juggled
but they never really transformed into birds of paradise and prey. I therefore
had some trouble believing he wasn't something of a fictional holograph
himself, which may have been totally intentional of course? The other characters,
particularly the other Americans, suffered from Disembodied Proper Noun
Syndrome -- that is, their only physical presence in the novel's world
was their name. Overall, it's a beautiful product proudly made in the USA
-- in the acknowledgements, every single person who works at the Michigan-based
printer is listed -- but I sort of felt like its innards were overcrafted
for me, too careful, restricted, self-consciously mature, maybe too off-handedly
newsy (a single mention of the concurrent BP spill), luminous thanks to
spacious formatting more than the brilliance of its bright-shining horizon
(by which I mean: its distant ideal narrative destination, beyond the shimmering
desert or the expected eventual arrival of the King). I liked a lot of
it a lot and enjoyed reading it most of the time -- and of course I've
seen people put out of work by outsourcing and fear at any minute I could
be next! -- but I prefer the similarly toned, wrenchingly readable Zeitoun.
As with the recent non-fiction "novels," there's something to this that
feels like he's doing a good deed maybe? And maybe something apparently
philanthropically/generously motivated doesn't distribute throughout the
prose and subsequently the reader's guts the same sort of viral barbaric
yawp as something apparently born of aesthetic self-indulgence, obsession,
greed? I've followed
this author's stuff for years now but would love for him to take off
the gloves and claw the world's eyes out. Or at least revisit the kingdom
of smart funny inventive metafictional maximalism now that he's older.
I'd love to read an evil Eggers, essentially -- more expressive, adventuresome,
unconventional, improvisational, indulgent; less intentionally artistically
inclusive -- but maybe that's logistically impossible at this point? Anyway,
a beautiful hard cover and an ultimately memorable story.
*
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
In 1997, in Jamaica Plain, Boston, ~4 am, mid-June, after a college
friend's band that was blowing up at the time played the Middle East and
everyone afterwards came back to our place, I remember a coolish girl on
our porch saying to me something like "Oh, you like to read? I bet you
like boring shit like The Magic Mountain." I don't remember my response
but since then whenever I've thought of this book I've flashed to that
scene and her assumption that only pretentious little fuckers read books
like this. Now, if I time-traveled back to Boston that night (the sun was
just barely up, actually -- early summer dawn comes around 4 am) I'd change
her mind about me and The Magic Mountain with enthusiastic description
of how the book was boring at times, sure, totally intentionally boring
at times, I'd say, but shit it's most certainly not. Sure, it's so slow
at first it seems like a chore, but I think in fact it's also a mountainous
testament to the importance of writerly/readerly patience, more than it's
a "magical" read. It didn't get going for me until 330 freaking pages in
(706 total). Turns out Mann ain't Musil -- he's more like a superintellectual
Stendhal
or, at his best, matches the vivid prose and encompassing scope of Tolstoy.
Formally steady pre-modernist approach: no real structural or extended
language-y experimentation (other than a 17-page essay on the connection
between cellular structure and galaxies). Content-wise, every page seems
infused with intellectual talk -- it's explicitly hyper-thematic, a novel
of ideas in which the major conflicts are theoretical, a novel that climaxes
with a confounding blizzard of argument between opposing intellectuals
("Operationes Spirtuales," p 432-460) followed by a sublime chapter ("Snow,"
p 460-489) in which the main dude Hans sets out for some solo skiing and
gets lost in an actual blizzard of wind-driven snow that gives way to abstractions
and hallucinations, like how conflicting theories about Progress or Spirit
or the necessity of terror or humaneness are manifested in reality -- first,
escalating into real physical conflict between the two intellectual adversaries
(the humanist Settembrini and the protofascist Naphta) and then later on
real physical conflict among nations driven to war by ideas: "What? Ideas,
simply because they were rigorous, led inexorably to bestial deeds, to
a settlement by physical struggle?" Overall, I'd award three stars for
maybe 600 total pages of this and nine stars for another scattered 106
pages, mostly during three parts: 1) the Mardi Gras bit ("Danse Macabre")
in which italicized English indicates French is spoken, 2) the aforementioned
chapter called "Snow" and much of the chapter before it that introduces
Naphta's horrific backstory (note: freaking Naphta doesn't appear until
page 367 -- try getting away with that these days, writer friends -- also,
reviews on here mentioning a certain Herr Naphta helped me make it through
the first 300+ pages since it was clear that a major character was yet
to appear), and 3) the riveting final 20 pages or so (really gets going
on page 686 - won't give things away). All in all, things seem intentionally
shaped like an arduous ascent in itself. It's a novel that knows it's arduous,
trying to induce irregular, elastic experiences of time in readers similiar
to those of the characters (time is one of the novel's major themes; its
elaboration/presentation here kicks the crap outta -- ahem, ahem -- recent
pulitizer winners also concerned with time). It's a novel that tries to
induce a confounded sense in readers, too, erring on the side of a sort
of highly managed confusion intermixed with occasional passages of extreme
clarity (eg, at one point there's a description of moments when the sides
of mountains all around can be seen through temporary openings in the clouds).
It's structured like an upwardly undulating slope that ends sort of in
open air. The language is always accessible but it's rarely propelled by
a narrative engine running on high-viscosity plot. For the most part, the
plot involves questions like: Will Hans get sick? Will Hans stay long?
Will Hans get the girl he likes? Will Settembrini or Naptha win the struggle
for Hans' burgeoning intellectual soul? Will Hans get sicker and die and
or freakin' leave this jawn, healthy or not? It's sort of like Paradise
Lost, where their sickness (moist spots) and their actual/theoretical removal
from the flatlands is their innocence, and Hans over the course of his
time on the mountain must awake from his stuporous dream-life where he
plays king while expertly wrapped in blankets and waxes about the stars
and weighs various philosophies including one involving the supremacy of
emotions over the intellect (imagined Pepperkorn in the film played by
none other than Don
Quixote). Thought about handing out four stars (ye olde 4.5 rounded
down) but that seemed more about my restlessness not always dealing with
the novel's requirements of audacious readerly patience, not to mention
its somewhat underdrawn minor characters, the semi-hokey thing about Hans's
unrequited love for a semi-Asiatic pretty boy in grade school he revisits
with an alluring lady with similarly slanty eyes and pale skin. Not really
a book with many favorable female characters other than one sort of protoliberated
object of Hans' lust known for slamming doors. In general, felt like a
month-long vacation somewhere I often wanted to leave that nevertheless
offered dramatic experiences and vistas and insight. Now I'm glad to be
home -- I really look forward to reading a few quicker, easier, shorter
books in a row -- but also I feel like the effort was totally rewarded,
especially in the last twenty pages. I'd recommend the experience of this
book to anyone with ample patience or, better yet, anyone interested in
trying to slowly but surely overcome their readerly ADD; everyone else,
make sure to read the chapter called "Snow," just under thirty of the finest/most
vivid pages I can remember reading in my life here in the flatlands, pages
I'm sure to read many more times. Anyway, a major mess-with-me-not weapon
to wield against those who argue against the presence of ideas in fiction.
Highly recommended to pretentious little fuckers everywhere, of any age
over 30 (if younger, I'd wait to read it).
*
Dublinesque by Enrique Vila-Matas
Transmigration of souls through time and space via intertextuality transport.
Vila-Matas is his own deal but he's also maybe like Markson meets Auster
meets a careful dedicated craftsman who juggles thematic balls almost to
the point of whirlwind (not necessarily a good thing toward the end since
it maybe seems too managed and thereby loses a sense of the noble natural
looseness of life?). You don't need to know Joyce or Larkin or Beckett
or Borges, but it probably helps to have some familarity with them, to
catch it (and care) when the modified first line of Beckett's Murphy
starts a chapter. Felt like it went on 60 pages too long as it repeated
and maybe sort of resolved everything emphasized in the sparkling first
half or so -- felt like it wasted way too much space wrapping things up
(almost a quarter of its total length). Would've liked a little more boldness
at the end on the part of the author or narrator. Lost a little steam for
me when they finally get to Dublin, but so much fun when recruiting fellow
travelers for a funeral for the pre-Google Gutenberg age. Loved all the
mentions of writers from Bolano to Auster to Handke to Larkin to a one-off
David Grossman cameo during the Bloomsday reading, among tons of others
real or not (Vilém Vok doesn't exist -- I
googled!). To list the themes would require repeating most of the book:
chief among them is age, genius, publishing, writing, New York as center
of world and what that means, relationships, solipsism, the internet, alcoholism,
the ever-present apocalypse, books, books, more books, and maybe how all
these come together into a sort of religion almost like a Buddhism-less
Buddhism that simultaneously saves and destroys you? Consistently charming,
smart, self-negating, probing, opinionated, forever at war with idiocy,
and deeply deeply in love with books (in a way that's perfectly non-romantical
and therefore doesn't make you wanna puke), I got the sense that Samuel
Riba is probably a lot like the author -- and therefore things felt real
(until the end, in part because of plot mechanics [it's not a spoiler if
I type "young Beckett ghost fog!"] and, again, in part because of excessively
crafty repetition/resolution) and so ultimately I rooted for this bundle
of thought processes, be it Riba or EVM or the intertextually animated
amalgamated spirit of Beckett, Joyce, Borges, Vuk, et al. Uneven, as they
say, but really enjoyable for the likes of me (not everyone -- you sort
of have to love books and writers and "high lit" in general, or at least
really want to learn about this stuff -- this is the sort of book that
leads to a longer "to-read" list). Some reservations for me, ultimately,
but not enough to undermine my affection for EVM, which after reading Bartleby
& Co. last summer hath now progressed to the next level. Will read
at least two more titles soon before proclaiming my love . . . Representative
quotation: "He'd published lots of important authors, but only in Julien
Gracq's novel The Opposing Shore did he perceive any spirit for
the future. In his room in Lyon, over the course of endless hours spent
locked away, he devoted himself to a theory of the novel that, based on
the lessons apparent to him the moment he opened The Opposing Shore,
established five elements he considered essential for the novel of the
future. These essential elements were: intertextuality; connection with
serious poetry; awareness of a moral landscape in ruins; a slight favoring
of style over plot; a view of writing that moves forward like time."
*
Will Oldham on Bonnie "Prince" Billy
At the end of this
2009 profile in the The New Yorker, Will Oldham says "I don't
know. I really hate press. And it's . . . . yeah." And so a few years later
he's published an official 400-page interview that can be used in lieu
of ever doing interviews again. If someone wants to write a profile about
him they can simply consult the master interview, recently published in
the UK and due out in the fall in the US. For fans, it textually manifests
the fantasy of sitting down for a few hours/days to chat with Will about
his music
and history and performance and identity and the Incredible
Hulk. Also fantastic to turn down pages to look up so many musicians
I didn't know: Solomon Burke, Oum Kalsoum, Roger Miller, Roy Harper, June
Tabor. Otherwise, I first heard "For
the Mekons et al" on the Hey Drag City compilation soon after
it came out my first year after college and have kept up with every major
release (and most minor ones) since then and seen
him live maybe a dozen times, so as he talked about each album it brought
back memories. It's clear that the music helped define so many personal
eras/locales/situations, especially in the Nineties when I was extra-susceptible
to exploring the songs, deeply associating with them, co-creating them
over and over as I drove around. As I changed, so did the songs, so hearing
him talk about how his approach matured meshed with things I've thought
about my own maturation. Also great hearing about his collaborations with
his own personal holy trinity of Johnny Cash, The Mekons, and R. Kelly.
Would have liked some more talk about his family and relationships and
all -- there's a suggestion of family wealth that had always been the rumor
("Oldham County"?): international family travel to India, Scotland, elsewhere,
plus cabins on plots of lands in the woods, philanthrophy, etc) but he
also delivered pizzas in Providence. Maybe would have liked thoughts on
how class influenced the art he and friends made, especially the idealist
indie approach? I can't think of another book-length interview, although
Renegade
by Mark
E. Smith comes close (loved BPB's references to MES and the Fall, too).
Would love to read Volume II in 2030 after BPB records another 20+ good
albums (something to look forward to). Otherwise, for Will fans, this is
major and essential. I read it slower than I usually do because I didn't
want it to end. Would be interested in the opinions of people unfamiliar
with his music, although I can't imagine anyone reading this who doesn't
know everything from "The Ohio River Boat Song" to "Quail and Dumplings."
Odd, also, reading this right after reading Conversations with David
Foster Wallace -- it felt like taking the pulse of the two most important
younger figures in music and lit I've followed since college ended. As
Will says about David
Grubbs at one point, it feels good to know that, early on, I put my
money on winning horses.
*
The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. by
Robert Coover
Thought at first this was five stars all the way. Loved the hokey old-timey
baseball lingo, the imagined play by play, wisecrackery, the names, all
the TWIBby "how 'bout that?" boyhood baseball wonder and a box of Cracker
Jacks, the joys and sorrows of the personalities and stats, the history
and the present, especially in that all of it -- the games and the chatter
in the dugouts and off-field scandals -- very explicitly took place in
an obsessive gamer's imagination. Laughed out loud when I learned what
happened to the young ace at the end of chapter two! Really cared about
what happened, saw it clearly, dimensionally. Loved how the story slipped
in and out of Henry's fictional reality and the imagined reality occuring
within Henry's head. Loved the related light-handed metafictional aspects
about author and characters, how Coover is to Henry as Henry is to UBA
players. Loved larger theological suggestions about freewill and fate:
all just a lucky roll of the dice etc. Loved, therefore, the structure,
the beautiful nested levels of reality among characters and themes. For
the most part, again, also loved the language, which mostly popped and
postured and swerved and swung for the fences with poise. But then after
the second chapter, things fell off the table, intentionally, since Henry's
deep deep immersion and enjoyment in his game would of course cost him
in the so-called real world. Anyone who has something serious going on
outside of what they do for money will relate. Poor Henry -- a loveable
obsessive loser, a tragicomically thwarted genius up there with Ignatius
P. Reilly, I'd say -- so deeply sees his game, so deeply believes in the
existence of the players and coaches and alt-reality of the UBA, that he
loses his grip, but then what happens if he loses his enthusiasm for the
game? What's he have then? Very sad. Surprisingly poignant for such a smart
book. Coover mimics the drying up of Henry's enthusiasm in the prose, which
works in moderation but after a while weighed on my enthusiasm for the
book itself, especially when it comes after a longish Ulysses-like bar
scene complete with slurred imaginary baseball player speech. Generally,
despite all the love for the above, I felt like things peaked early and
then fell off the table in terms of my interest as Henry lost his shit
and the game became endangered. Occasionally it perked up a bit but never
regained its early peak for me. The ending that so many on here complain
about didn't bother me, and in fact I sort of like how the players go on
with their existence even if their God (Henry) isn't keeping track anymore.
I liked the theological/philosophical suggestions but felt things maybe
a little fuzzed with that sort of pomo playfulness involving so many characters
(characterized mostly by their kooky names) gesticulating giddily and exclaiming
excitedly lotsa silly turns o' phrase in alertly alliterative prose. Three
point five stars, therefore, rounded up to four thanks to five-star sections
particularly early on and overall inventiveness and great names (Witness
York, my favorite). Now I gotta go hunt down my old Strat-o-Matic Baseball
game in my parents' crawlspace -- note: the UBA game is more like the Strat-o-Matic
boardgame than fantasy baseball, which involves teams consisting of real
MLB players and mostly is all online these days.
*
Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico by Javier Marías
Entertaining, occasionally grammatically liberal, surprisingly gripping,
thoughtful, Elvis-evoking, half-day read. My first Marias, although I've
read the opening bits of three others. Now I know to trust him and will
give the ones I own a serious try before too long.
*
Extinction by Thomas Bernhard
Like Correction, this one is twice as long as the average Bernhard
book and therefore it does twice the damage as the average 150-page Bernhard
book, damage mitigated by the introduction of self-conscious acknowledgment
about the narrator's abominable pronouncements, also direct attack on Austria's
Nazi past, also two sympathetic idealized characters to counterbalance
all the imbeciles and insincere simulators. As always, there's nothing
as good, no approach as viral, nothing as unbearable to read for more than
30-page stretches -- nothing seems as ordered and chaotic at once, organic
and orchestrated at once. Interesting that I was thinking about the importance
of extremism and exaggeration of approach and then toward the end there's
a revealing stretch where the narrator talks about himself as a great artist
of exaggeration. Not as "funny" as some of the others (Woodcutters
or The Loser). Really great reading but as always glad to step out
from under Bernhard's extinguishing shadow.
*
Soliders of Salamis by Javier Cercas
Fiction that feels unlike fiction. Fiction that's partially about how
it's not fiction. Non-fictional fiction about writing, about war, about
endurance/persistence, about poets realizing their ideal worlds through
political action, about heroism, about historical reconstruction from fragments
as a creative act that keeps the dead alive, especially the dead who live
on in the words of people almost gone themselves. Structurally interesting
novel about a writer trying and failing to write fiction and backing into
this significant story through coincidences related to journalism, including
interviewing Roberto Bolano who's a major character in the third part of
this, a section that made what was an OK novel in the first part (about
the writer's discovery of the title story) and a pretty damn good novel
in the second half (the title story itself, essentially a biographical
essay on a Spanish fascist poet, sort of like Bolano's Nazi Literature
in the Americas but more accessible and more dramatic -- firing squad
survival!) a pretty GREAT novel. Almost a few touching moments, too, toward
the end. A novel that, although it doesn't feel like a conventional novel,
excels thanks to its old-fashioned 45-degree angle narrative arc: upwards,
upwards, upwards, upwards until it reaches its long-sentence recapitulations
in its last pages, including the refrain onwards, onwards, onwards, ever
onwards. Worth it for the intelligence and honesty and the complex yet
clear semi-extravagance of the prose, for the approach, for the writing
insight ("a person doesn't write about what he wants to write but what
he's capable of writing about" or "a writer never writes about what he
knows, but precisely about what he doesn't know" or "To write novels you
don't need an imagination, Bolano said, just a memory. Novels are written
by combining recollections"), for the Spanish Civil War education, and
especially for the portrait of Bolano, including what's basically an interview
with him ("a man of action is frustrated writer; if Don Quijote had written
one single book of chivalry he never would have been Don Quijote") and
a drunkenly related tale about a WWII soldier's journey to Chad in Africa
and all the way back through Europe, a story reminescent of some of the
best parts of 2666 that spurs
the final section that makes this book, in the narrator's words, "function."
I probably read the first 120 pages in too many sittings. Also didn't love
the characterization of the dippy girlfriend, and maybe thought repetitions
of sentences in the summation at the end seemed maybe a bit like high-literary
hokiness? But otherwise a really excellent, enjoyable, educational, interestingly
structured, serious yet never haughty novel that, best of all, felt to
me unlike a novel ("all good tales are true tales, at least for those who
read them"). Onwards and upwards! From Bolano's Between Parentheses
about
this novel: ". . . there appears a character, someone by the name
of Bolano, who is a writer and a Chilean and lives in Blanes, but who isn't
me, in the same way that the narrator Cercas isn't Cercas, although both
characters are possible and even probable." "His novel flirts with hybridization,
with the 'relato real' or 'true fiction' (which Cercas himself invented),
with historical ficton, and with hyper-objective fiction, though whenever
he feels so inclined he has no qualms about betraying these generic categories
to slip toward poetry, toward the epic without the slightest blush: in
any direction, so long as it's forward."
*
The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq
Just finished the last thirty wonderfully flowing and surprising pages
that end with the total domination of vegetation and then went back to
the first lines namedropping Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst and said aloud
"Ha, what a great book." I love how clearly he writes, with such unexpected
analysis/insight, exaggerated generalizations asserted as truth (although
toned down in this one -- not as much potentially politically incorrect
stuff in general, and certainly not as much sex as the last two). I purposefully
read nothing about this one and only knew it had been called an art world
thriller -- which is half right. It's not a thriller and it's not so much
about the art world as it is about how the nature of human industry relates
to nature itself? A must for fans and a good introduction, too. No one
else does genre-mashup semi-misanthropic nihilistic philosophy quite like
him, although this did at times seem like a much better rendition of what
BEE did in Lunar Park, genre-y literary fiction that includes the author
as a character? But this novel doesn't devolve into spare plot mechanics
-- the detective crimey bits are just as robust and typically swervy and
"written" as the stuff that seems more literary. A nod, I think, to 2666
at one point but transposed to Thailand and the murders dropped from 300
to 30. Overall, an enjoyable weekend plus a few other sittings reading
this. A softer, gentler (even accounting for the vicious murder and assorted
body parts here and there), more mature Houellebecq, with his sharp, authentically
Franch eye now a little more on the end of life (and the end of authentic/traditional
French culture), although in this he spends 30 or so pages early on delivering
the main character's backstory, something I don't remember in his other
books, wherein characters are usually presented without much authorial
worry re: their histories, like in genre books. Amazingly, there's even
a strong-willed successful female character in this one who's not treated
as a sex object! This book will probably be treated as news about contemporary
(French and international commerce) culture that'll stay news in the future,
or maybe like the old photos Jed films it'll fade with exposure to time
and the elements, like Balzac before him? Houellebecq suggests that all
he wants to do is account for what he sees, aspiring to the patient vision
of plants. What he sees he presents as an inexact map of the thickety terrain
of life, where all things change, except for ever-changing nature and the
criminal motivations of sex and greed. Something like that. Anyway, a real
good book. Might go back and read The Elementary Particles.
*
The Sugar Frosted Nutsack by Mark Leyner
3.5 stars (of a possible 5) rounded up for the sake of audacity and
originality -- and the excitement/expectation/military-grade Gravy-like
ecstasy we felt with our hands on a new Mark Leyner novel after a 15-year
absence. Didn't mind that it's a looping, recursive epic, with excruciating
redundancies, heavy-handed, stilted tropes and wearying cliches, overwrought
angst, gnomic non sequiturs, off-putting adolescent scatology and cringe-inducing
smuttiness, depraved tableaus and orgies of masturbation with all their
bulging, spurting shapes, and compulsive repetitions about Freud's repetition
compulsion . . . That last bit there is plagiarized from the novel -- it's
compulsively repeated throughout, like a built-in critique for lazy haters
to use. Laughed out loud and/or made strange happy vocal noises maybe 40+
times? Bothered wife person several times with requests to let us read
aloud. There's a ZINGER of a John Cage joke. There's a tearing-up-laughing
joke about Dick Van Dyke. And otherwise there's typical Leyner brand pyrotechnic
high-lit pop-lit satirical silliness, featuring clinical language mixed
with Romantic language mixed with postmodern theory language mixed with
Jerry Springer language mixed with tabloid language mixed with online commentary
language, all of it undermined by a god named XOXO. This sort of thing
is not for everyone. Not at all for everyone. If you like Charlie Kaufman
movies ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" or "Being John Malkovich"),
more recent George Saunders (Leyner has the same agent, Binky Urban), the
wackier DFW stuff (Leyner has the same editor, Michael Pietsch), you'll
bask in this intentionally over-the-top hi-falutin mock-Homeric craziness.
If you don't like the aforementioned stuff, if you're a picky humorless
reader who cares about character development and plot and emotionality,
that is, anything more than riffs about gods doing human characters with
the frozen head of Ted Williams used as an anal bead once the human character
is increased in size by the god to 50 feet, etc, I wouldn't bother with
this one. But otherwise, if you're interested in an example of truly LOL
writing that's unhinged and intelligent and puerile and SO FREAKING POMO
and, importantly, serves as a great example of a book that teaches you
how to read it, Leyner is at the very least a demi-god. Otherwise, this
was maybe too long for me by 100 quick pages? An absolute must for fans
of seriously funny effed-up writing. Familiarity with medical terminology
a plus!
*
My Dark Places by James Ellroy
Loved the phrasing and the author's druggie homeless pervo life story
more than the catalogue of vivisected women and the facts of various crimes.
Descriptions of mucho paperwork and the prose form the life of the author's
murdered mother in ellipsis. Read most of it on location in LA and maybe
liked it since I'd just been on the same streets and freeways. Read it
thanks to Bolano's recommendation in "Between Parentheses" and liked seeing
how this one's occasional transition-less lists of crimes clearly influenced
2666's
famous catalogue of vivisected women. The crime's unsolved but it's more
an obsessive search for someone long lost than an attempt at closure via
belated justice. At times the best DeLillo-y clipped and sculpted language
ever. But also often surprisingly boring/stolid/mechanically fact-heavy
flat, like the famous 300 pages of 2666.
*
Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan
What a wonderful weird book about the influence of cities and sounds,
knowing what you want and going for it and getting it thanks to talent,
luck, attitude, and meeting the right people. Funny how it emphasizes what
no one really wants to know -- "New Morning" and "Oh Mercy" era stuff instead
of everything from "Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" to "Visions of Johanna" to
"Shelter From the Storm" to "Isis." Those songs are hardly mentioned at
all -- maybe one or two mentions of "Hard Rain." Otherwise, this is a compulsively
readable, folksy, lightly insightful, non-linear self-portrait of the mythic
artist as regular guy from the North Country, a family man more concerned
with privacy than popularity, a devout Woody Guthrie fanatic of course,
not someone particularly special -- emphatically NOT the messiah, NOT the
chosen one, NOT the voice of his generation, NOT the leader of the revolution
-- umm except he acknowledges that, for a time, he could see and describe
and supercharge the deep truth of reality. This ellipitically argues that
his success came from casual, wide-open exposure to the world and art (more
than just music). He's a super-sensitive empty vessel blessed with the
necessary restless desire for MORE, sufficient native critical faculties,
just enough OCD, and more than enough midwestern simplicity and charm --
that's pretty much it, says Dylan (not that he can be trusted). Looking
forward to volume 2 where he colors in the circles he's drawn in this one.
Required supplementary viewing.
For now, to keep you entertained if not totally sane through the wintertime,
listen to the Book Fight
podcast -- subscribe via iTunes or stream via their site (I'm a streamer
who listens in during my commute). Also, if you've read this far, you might
be interested in this essay on Full
Stop by our very own Eyeshot Editor -- it's about Goodreads, reviewing,
and other stuff. Note: the image far above was taken at a gallery in Chelsea
(NYC) this fall -- it's a detail of a painting by Natalie
Frank (used without permission but if the image and her name are linked
to her site it should be OK, right?)
