Lilacs Out of the Dead Land, What Are You Reading? Spring 2022

Robert Gottlieb's Garbo makes a persuasive case that his love object's most consistently (yet relatively) fathomable artistry was in The Art of The Deal---yes, she would have totally gotten Donald Trump, also Fred, if she bothered to be aware of them (we're told she "favored junk TV," so maybe)--but her deal was: if you played by her rules (or, much more rarely, by yours, maybe, but either way--the rules, baby!), she'd give you something, or let you have it, pick it up, while she was on her way.
You might get a movie, yes, or more likely, a really good still, even without a telephoto lens---known as a "hermit about town" in Hollywood and Manhattan and the Med, especially, she could be found until she couldn't, her choice. (Sure, other people have tried to run the gauntlet of zombies, but you gotta somehow know to pick just the right running buddies and drivers, not like poor Princess Di: more artistry.)
You might, however she treated you, get something to write about, as so many did (Gottlieb's dedicated, never solemn throughline of biography x critical/fanboy study, personal x professional and post-professional phases has no prob citing sources, incl. coming up with some startling quotes from previous bios, memoirs, and press coverage, both features and reviews). You might even get to do some
or all of your best writing ever, as evidenced by A Garbo Reader, the section after the biography proper.
But you might not have to bother with any of that: you might just get some attention, and let somebody else do the work. Like the reporters who started coming around the old neighborhood pretty early, and o hell yes people there remembered the beautiful little girl, often dressed like a boy, greeting them with a smile and an open hand, ready for the coin she would take straight to the show, marching past the candy butcher. Putting on her own shows with other kids--if nothing else, she'd grab her big brother, Sven, as he recalled it: "You are the father." And the middle sib, their sister, Alva---also beautiful, a promising actress, who would die in early adulthood: "You are the mother. And I am your child who has drowned."
Sven said she always had that dark side, enough to seem like the oldest, not the youngest, in the family, which may have had to do with why she was the one who took their slowly dying father around to charity hospitals---he known for his own beauty, and charm, and love of the arts, though he could never afford to go anywhere for fun, even when he could still work. She called it a scarring experience,, because of the way they were treated and the way she saw his suffering, up close and often, when they were alone together. )Long after, she finally managed to persuade her mother, brother, and and his family out of Europe, just before WWII might have made flight impossible, but she kept them on the East Coast, rarely if ever visiting even after she moved there, not 'til the coast was clear of the older generations, and she could be the fun greataunt, albeit with rules, of course.)
The experience with her father, however, may have had something to do with the times she submitted to the rules of older men: usually thought to be gay, but with some kind of furious macho passion for her. The brilliant Swedish director broke her down and built her up, rewarding her with Germany, where she had a more thoughtful following, even got her to work with the gentler GW Pabst, who offered more roles---but Stiller was furious, and hustled her off to Hollywood dammit.
Louie G. Mayer took over as her desert god, casting out the impractical Stiller, though Mayer was increasingly balanced by Thalberg, who guided and was guided by her---"She can do that? Let's see if she can do this, then"--until his sudden death, which may well have had to do with her quitting the biz.
More King ov Garbo Gays: George Schlee, Cecil Beaton. Other noted gay guys, the ones quoted by Gottlieb, couldn't figure it out. Marlene Dietrich, archenemy in her own mind: "She rapes men." Garbo: "Who is Marlene Dietrich?" Boom, drop the mic.
The compulsive skating along the surface of pleasure, the rules of the game between the cobwebs of self-knowledge. rang a bell when mentioned by James Harvey during his A Garbo Reader guided tour of Camille, re the relationship of the courtesan and her sugar daddy---she even acts the pet daughter to him at times, but they also, increasingly, have a sour running joke about each other and themselves, almost implicit, just under or a little further into the surface. Maybe Garbo's own self-knowledge, encountering this creative opportunity, released something in her, that made its way to the screen like it never had before.
But what? That pop psych really doesn't explain all the results of her artistry here, and Harvey doesn't try to, he just watches and learns what he can, makes notes, makes a narrative of it he can watch in his head, like Thalberg and Gottleib and others.

The brilliant Swedish director *Mauritz Stiller*---actually Finnish (and Jewish, AKA Moishe), but mostly known as a key early Swedish director, who cast greenhorn Greta Gustaffson (and may have renamed her)in and into Gösta Berlings saga, based on Swedish Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf's 1891 novel of the same name, which, long before the movie came out in 1924, was a stone cold classic, and it was a patriotic duty to give Stiller all the time and money he needed to make it (this did not work in Hollywood, natch.)
Gottlieb says Swedish coverage was mostly concerned with how faithful to the novel, but Stiller saw that the Germans were more appreciative of him and Greta as artists, so he took her there.

PS: she long outlived relationships with Stiller, Schlee, Beaton, also the men themselves, and a lot of other people in this book.

John Gilbert, still sweet and young, boyish, even, yet a veteran star, took her under his wing and into his heart, then gradually turned their life together into A Star Is Born, for a while.

(More interesting, especially the way it turned with him, out than the movie[s].)

I loved the book.

EIGHT DETECTIVES after 70pp is going well. It seems to contain of detective stories nested within a meta-story. So far a great concept, very intriguing, prompting thought about genre and narration.

Wolfgang Hilbig - The Interim
William Shakespeare - Antony and Cleopatra
William Shakespeare - Othello

The Interim is the latest of a series of works, all translated by Isabel Fargo Cole and (mostly, if not all) published on Two Lines Press. Probably one of the main achievements of that whole ecology of translated lit to come out over the last ten years. In this particular work, the narrator is recounting his trips between East and West Germany, from his humble beginnings working in a manual labour role in the East to fame as a published writer in the West. Not that this makes him much happier in his life...but also not exactly sadder either, in fact its a life in this sorta permanent 'Interim' (there are some wonderful descriptions of train trips and looking at stations and shopping malls). Its a bit like how I'd imagine (not having read) Solzhenitsyn's work post fall of communism, without the chauvinism and nationalism that a lot of people accuse him of (and I've been reminded of recently). Hilbig's writing on sex and relationships was a highlight. I read it with this recent ILB thread in mind (male authors writing female POVs & vice versa: possibly ilb’s worst thread title) it feels really well drawn, how the narrator goes from being this virile man to a lump of decayed flesh and nerves. There is a sensitivity and honesty present.

I followed this with a couple of Shakespeare's tragedies. Its my first read of them.

A&C is fun! Enobarbus is my favorite of Shakespeare's weary James Mason characters. But, god, so many bit parts with one lines.

Had a look through A Slip of the Keyboard by Terry pratchett his collectiion of non fictiion essays etc. Now hoping i didn't already get this cos I picked up this copy on Saturday.
Interesting stuff.

Had a look at Aldous Huxley's Brave New World Revisited hi slook back at some of the ideas he had used during Brave New World to show how they compared to the real world.

Working away at David Treuer's heartbeat of Wounded Knee which I'm enjoying though it is pretty depressing in its depiction of the betrayal of indigenous population's faith etc.

David Toop Flutter Echo
Memoir by avant garde multiinstrumentalist. Pretty good so far.
JUst got this through as an interlibrary loan after the Irish system has just been reshuffled. You can now see book covers on the website .
So that's like cool like.

Also just picked up Ron Nagel's book on Islams Black Slaves which si a sequel to his Black Diaspora which I got last year but have not read yet. Thought I'd have a look to see if i could find Gramsci's prison diaries which I had a go at a couple of years ago but didn't get very far into. But that was out and this was on the shelf in roughly the same area.

EIGHT DETECTIVES reaches a chapter called 'An Inferno in Theatre Land'. A burning building down the street, while quite separately, it seems, a civilian woman is enlisted to manage a murder scene above a restaurant. Remarkable, as the dialogue gathers strangeness. One of this novel's appealing features is how far most of its inset stories are set back in the past - the 1950s? earlier? - with a gentle sense of pastiche, and characters in a different setting from ours (technologically, etc). But the actual era is not always clear. It's puzzling for instance if this story is set in the 1930s but begins in an East Asian restaurant in central London - I admit I didn't know that any had existed then.

"Casanova's Chinese Restaurant", the fifth(?) part of A Dance to the Music of Time, is set in the thirties IIRC and the titular restaurant its in the theatre land neck of the woods.

"Eight Detectives" sounds good!

Thanks Tim, an excellent fact.

Got me wondering whether if Eight Detectives is, as you say, pastichey, it might actually use the Powell as source material.

The 33 1/3 on ABBA Gold by Elisabeth Vincentelli already feels like an artifact from a bygone era, both in its discussion of the technology (compilations might soon become obsolete because ppl can pick their fave songs...and burn them onto a CD!) and in its positioning within the discourse, which laments that praise of the group always has to be defensive while failing to break out of that mode herself. Difficult to imagine that level of baggage now when ABBA's return was greeted with pretty much universal fondness. As it is the author makes things a bit too easy for herself, pointing out the obvious sexism and homophobia that's part of critic's rejection of ABBA while failing to engage with the fact that a lot of the animosity also stemmed from a perceived lack of Afro-American influences (Vincentelli includes an admitidely offensive Xgau quote that mentions this but doesn't respond to it); it is to my mind both questionable whether that's actually true and, if true, not automatically a reason for dismissal, but I don't like that she doesn't talk about it at all; if you're gonna tackle the isms you can't cherry pick. Likewise her final conclusion that ABBA allows you to be a weirdo is kinda willfully ignoring that the vast majority of their fanbase were anything but - if anything you could say ABBA make it ok to be normal.

Choosing a compilation is an interesting move, and it's def their Classic Album, but while the creation of the compilation itself was a pretty engaging read obv it's not enough for an entire book, so the author then goes song by song ordered around the albums they appeared on, which is ultimately unsatisfying as well.

>>> her final conclusion that ABBA allows you to be a weirdo is kinda willfully ignoring that the vast majority of their fanbase were anything but

Yes - a preposterous claim.

Next week: "Being a fan of Simply Red's STARS made me stand out from the crowd - but I learned to love the fact that I'm not like anybody else".

Wolf in White Van, by John Darnielle. This was a book in my book club several years ago and I missed out that month. I've finally got around to reading it. It's a pretty compelling narrative. It seems to me to be a meditation, or maybe a thought experiment, that asks the question, What if the outcasts that often end up taking out their angst on others, usually violently, turn that violence on themselves--and survive? How does someone go on living through what most of us would consider an intolerable situation, and what are the limits and consolations of escape? A worthy read.

I finished Herodotus. It picks up considerably in the final third, but he still runs after every digression, giving equal weight to world-shaking battles and trivia. My overall impression is that if one can suspend the desire to know which details are factual, which are rumor-mongering and which are pure folktales, he gives the fullest possible picture of greek culture of his era. He was the chronicler of greek normcore.

I've started reading The Flâneur, Edmund White, one of those books where the author just writes about whatever comes to mind, as a sort of monologue version of 'table talk'. It's pleasant and convivial.

How does someone go on living through what most of us would consider an intolerable situation, and what are the limits and consolations of escape? Central to his books that I've read (which are all except the first, Master of Reality), and many of his best songs. Question before that also often pertains. I'll have to read MoR, his first (in the xpost 33 1/3 series, so a response to the album of same title), and re-read the two since WIWV, but that one's a genius consolidation, if there is such a thing.

I owe Edmund White for introducing me to the term xpost

How does someone go on living through what most of us would consider an intolerable situation, and what are the limits and consolations of escape?

This is a great distillation and pretty much sums up Master of Reality too - a book which didn't add up to much when I read it but which I think about often.

I finished James Shapiro's 1599, which like 1606: The Year of Lear wears its considerable learning lightly and which has sent me back to Hamlet and Henry V, looking for new things.

Not really sure what to read over Easter. I have A Place of Greater Safety, Priestdaddy and, uh, a Reacher book lined up.

Interestingly, Darnielle claims to have written the last chapter of WIWV first.

"I just started typing it up and it ended with a guy shooting himself and I said, 'Well, that’s not a good story.' So then I wrote a bunch of other chapters with no direction at all."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_in_White_Van#:~:text=The%20title%20Wolf%20In%20White%20Van%20is%20a,song%20Six%2C%20Sixty%2C%20Six%20is%20played%20in%20reverse.

My only complaint about The Flâneur so far is that it explains flâneurie quite well, but engages in it metaphorically far more than literally. I had hopes for more street-wandering and crowd-gazing. As disappointments go, I'd say that's a trivial one.

I've just realised I've read the Wilson book - as part of the 'Writer and the City' collection. I'm going to be honest and say I don't remember a huge amount about it but I do recall thinking I'd read it again next time I went to Paris (whenever that might be). I loved Peter Carey's addition to that series, 30 Days in Sydney.

Greatly enjoyed

To The Finland Station.

EIGHT DETECTIVES approaches its end. A basic fact about this ingenious, compelling novel remains that the frame story seems less well crafted and compelling than the embedded stories, which often have terrific ingenuity; as well as, again, being fine exercises in pastiche.

I'm also oddly unsure when the frame story is actually set - the early 1970s? Strange for it to be so unspecified.

a visit from the goon squad
everyone remembers their formative years
why are they so compelling
detective stories are for ingenuity in plot devices and as a challenge to the reader in interpreting c(l)ues
i imagine they are for the reader who likes to solve puzzles and problems of a certain kind
but has the nature of the problem to solve been thoroughly explored by the genre

still reading war & peace, hoping to finish before I leave for a 3-week work engagement but that's looking decreasingly likely. it's utterly fantastic.

which translation are you reading?

March 28, 1972 pic.twitter.com/MvKCBEAkSb

— Peanuts On This Day (@Peanuts50YrsAgo) March 30, 2022

W&P was my first pandemic novel and I gobbled it up in eight blissful days.

tom mccarthy's THE MAKING OF INCARNATION

impressive (if less so than it thinks it is), interesting, rather less than the sum of its parts. the characters go various places so the reader can learn about intellectual property law, taylorism, motion-capture technology, modern movie-making, the properties of windows, etc. but have no other purpose. for a while it seems like there's a plot, but in the end there just . . . isn't

also two characters, almost laughably, have sex for no reason and to no purpose. it's as if the author thought 'well, let's make this a bit less bloodless' and then inserted a couple emotionless lines noting that they hooked up. (it's barely mentioned in passing and not graphic at all, which is just as well, although i'm grimly curious about what a full-on mccarthy sex scene would be like)

i have nothing against egan and i know this is publicist patter but my god could you specifically create something i'd less want to read

From one of the most celebrated writers of our time, a literary figure with cult status, a "sibling novel" to her Pulitzer Prize– and NBCC Award–winning A Visit from the Goon Squad -- an electrifying, deeply moving novel about the quest for authenticity and meaning in a world where memories and identities are no longer private.

The Candy House opens with the staggeringly brilliant Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, is so successful that he is "one of those tech demi-gods with whom we're all on a first name basis." Bix is 40, with four kids, restless, desperate for a new idea, when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or "externalizing" memory. It's 2010. Within a decade, Bix's new technology, "Own Your Unconscious" -- that allows you access to every memory you've ever had, and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others -- has seduced multitudes. But not everyone.

In spellbinding interlocking narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of Own Your Unconscious through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades. Intellectually dazzling, The Candy House is also extraordinarily moving, a testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for real connection, love, family, privacy and redemption. In the world of Egan's spectacular imagination, there are "counters" who track and exploit desires and there are "eluders," those who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of narrative styles -- from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter and a chapter of tweets.

If Goon Squad was organized like a concept album, The Candy House incorporates Electronic Dance Music's more disjunctive approach. The parts are titled: Build, Break, Drop. With an emphasis on gaming, portals, and alternate worlds, its structure also suggests the experience of moving among dimensions in a role-playing game.

The Candy House is a bold, brilliant imagining of a world that is moments away.

a chapter of tweets

They forgot to mention the waffle party.

I wrote to a magazine offering to review that novel. They completely ignored me.

I finished EIGHT DETECTIVES. It maintained the twists to the end.

Then I started Isaac Asimov's FOUNDATION (1951). I had imagined FOUNDATION as a vast, lengthy, demanding project, and I realise that there are several more books - maybe they're bigger. But what's surprising to me is that this first book is only 230 modest pages, highly readable, zips by - I was halfway through after a day of not reading it very solidly. That's refreshing.

The book narrates the decline of a Galactic Empire, and the rise of a Foundation that seems to be designed to preserve knowledge against this decline, over a period of - decades at least, maybe it will become centuries or millennia. The scale is already vast. I expect it gets vaster as the books go on. There is a sense of Asimov playing a canny, wry sense of enduring realpolitik against his knowledge of science and higher things. So far, after over 100pp, the book includes no women characters.

Back to Mande Music by Eric Charry
just onto the bit about the Guitar and groups. Which may be he section I was mainly looking for when getting the book.

Peter Barry beginning Theory
still reading through this and finding it pretty interesting. It's part of a series of introductory books on various facets of art, culture, literature etc. The copy I'm reading is about 15 years old and I know it has been updated since. So wondering if that means details updated or generally rewritten in total. Anyway I';m finding it rewarding but do wonder if I would be better served reading the recent one. Though a book in the hand is worth 2 in the bush and all like that.

finished
David Toop Flutter Echo
his memoir published by Ecstatic Peace. Really interesting read. I was going to order his Into The Maelstrom but it appears to have been destroyed or not returned. Not entirely sure what the term write-off on the library system means.
Anyway did enjoy and does triegger me to want to look more into his work. I'm semi familiar with him . Got some stuff Simon Finn, some of the Virgin compilations he did. & I think Ocean of Sound though not sure why no others if that is true.

also Walter Rodney Russian Revolution
the book compiled/edited from his teaching notes for the course he taught in Tanzania.
Again seriously enjoying and hoping to investigate more of his work. Waiting for How Europe Underdeveloped Africa through the interlibrary thing too.

& buying a load of books from charity shops. Possibly too many bu it is giving me some exercise in walking between the ones dotted around town,. But I have less dosh now so need to not overindulge myself. Also don't have as much space as this entails . May need to rethink certain habits but I have turned up a lot of interesting stuff. Now to reinvent time so I can read it all.

just finishing jack black "you can't win", just starting jose saramago "blindness"

Wow I'm really glad I didn't read any marketing copy before I started Candy House (or Goon Squad, for that matter -- I went in cold a couple of years ago, knowing only that it has been much-praised on this forum). Not sure why every sales pitch for these books makes them sound so shite (I have some theories), but it's definitely one of those "fans make it hard to love the band" situations.

Various - The Tragic History of the Sea. All of the pieces in this book are accounts of Portuguese travellers and their journeys to establish African colonies in the 17th century. I found out about it after reading an interview with a blogger who gave the items in this compilation as examples of the earliest, good Portuguese prose -- as oposed to France having a Rabelais or Italy having a Boccaccio, and while none of the writing is on that level I can see his point. These accounts veer from what they attempt to be, which is something like a functional guide of snakes that future explorers should avoid in their quests, to these tales of losses...whether that's of life or health or nerve, with the constant need to keep moving to survive from one day to the next, and with some embellishments for sure (that's where a thing is on a path to becoming a literature of sorts, from one POV anyway). Its like an almanac of grotesqueries mixed with a religious fervour, where God is repetitiously thanked whenever fortune shines on these explorers, and no faith is ever shaken when a bad thing happens (which is often enough).

I finished FOUNDATION and have started Ian Sansom: THE SUSSEX MURDER (2019).

Will keep an eye out for The Tragic History of the Sea, thanks.

(or Goon Squad, for that matter -- I went in cold a couple of years ago, knowing only that it has been much-praised on this forum) Also much denounced, alas---on ILB, it's the Bizarro World The Mountain Lion.

My current book is A Small Town in Germany, John LeCarre. It was published after The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, but prior to the George Smiley series. His approach in this is well advanced toward his final voice, but he was still only half-formed as a writer. My reissue edition includes an Introduction by LeCarre from the mid-90s in which he clearly expresses his overall dissatisfaction with the book. It's not as bad as all that, especially after he gets past the somewhat clumsy early exposition and the characters take over from the plot as the force moving the story.

about to tackle the behemoth that is john cowper powys's a glastonbury romance

Good luck! How many pages is that one again?

I like the fact that THE MOUNTAIN LION is ILB's favourite book.

FWIW Smiley is the protagonist of two - very compelling - novels before THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, as well as featuring in that novel itself.

A woman character did appear in FOUNDATION on about p.188 out of 234. She was the wife of a planetary ruler. She was sharp-tongued and critical. She knuckled down when given a trinket. But she later appeared again and was still sharp-tongued.

That was literally the only woman in the book. I believe that this balance changes slightly as the FOUNDATION series goes on. I'll find it, to a degree, if I manage to read more of the series.

1/3 through THE SUSSEX MURDER which is the 4th or 5th in a series of THE COUNTY GUIDES, a series that Ian Sansom seems to have concocted to get a secure publishing and creative platform. In the 1930s a polymathic professor and his beautiful daughter travel England, accompanied by the narrator, researching for guides to the English counties (a bit like Pevsner but less architectural?). Seemingly, in each county they encounter a crime and have to solve it. However, 1/3 through this they still haven't got near the crime (except that the crime is mentioned on the first page). So these are detective novels with the balance only 50% or so detection and the other half comedy and travelogue. There is a great deal of historical pastiche and detail that Sansom will have enjoyed. The heroine lives in the Isokon Building in Hampstead. The Professor knows A.A. Milne. The narrator has a long scene around the top of Brick Lane in the era of its market and pie & mash shops. The interest of particular places is a very big part of the appeal. Overall it's very well done save that it could be handled with a lighter, less repetitive touch.

in a sense there is nothing that is not a pi(p)e

A book that is much more dreamlike than FW is Ishiguro's THE UNCONSOLED, though it's not presented as a dream. The dream quality of the whole is implicit.

amis is on thin ice (or as he might write it "exceedingly low temperature h20 arrayed in the manner that one spreads marmite on a morning slice of toasted comestible") talking about stodge and thin gruel tbh

some good dreams in bolaño

"It's not so easy writin' about nothin'." The ole cowpoke settin' at Patti Smith's kitchen table and talkin' while he's writin' (and, come to think of it, sounding and looking like Seinfeld meets one of Smith's ol' buddy Sam Shepherd's plays)(She does mention watching TV, though so far all detective shows) is ignoring her, and she doesn't like that, so she wakes up and goes to the Cafe 'Ito (black coffee, toast, olive oil, table, chair, notebook, pen: all she needs for quite a while) and writes about him, briefly, then goes on to next item. She gives the occasional arresting image its due, but then back to what the hell, dreams? They're not allowed to crowd her waking life, the things that happen as she keeps writing. (The ol' cowpoke does poke his oblivious head back in occasionally.

Sorry, that's Station M, my current bedtime buzz.

Dreamlike Vs a depiction of a dream seems to be the error here.

(M Train, that is) she's good at both, more into the former, and only as these things come by the intent, fairly careful traveler.

In Homeland Elegies, Ayad Ahktar's somewhat autobiographical novel, the Pakistani-American narrator has himself set (with pen tied to hand, I think) to record dreams as soon as he wakes, for a while. Mainly, he manages to write down a sequence about going up into the hills in the old country, near the town where he still has a lot of relatives, a place he used to visit occasionally. Now he's reminded of things he saw and how they and the new-seeming dream images relate to thoughts about his family and their situations that had faded into the background, as given, at best, as he'd become more self-absorbed.
It's not that long a passage, but all the parts about his family, in Pakistan and America, give the book most of its strength (and taking dream lessons, then reverse-engineering the results, is completely in character).

I liked that book

The Housing Lark, Sam Selvon - More straightahead comedic than I remember The Lonely Londoners being. A great Dudes Rock novel (and thus unsurprisingly not great on gender), love the poetry of the language and the liveliness of a London long gone. Selvon should have much higher standing in popular British literature imo.

ah wrong thread