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

Anyone read Hurricane Season, by Fernanda Melchor? Just picked it up for my wife and I'm wondering if it's too bleak for her

xp it is

Prose Stylist

Some famous terrible prose writers: Isaac Asimov is unspeakably bad, tin-eared and clumsy and ugly. I love Dick (haha yes okay), but he's sometimes bad. Sinclair Lewis was stiff and dull, but not as rotten as Dreiser. Barbara Cartland is much worse than you even imagine she would be.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 8 September 2002 20:36 (nineteen years ago)

Whole posts is worth reading though, since he also says who he thinks is good.

posts

Any discussion of Bad Writing increases the already high incidence of typos for some unknownobvious reason.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzlK0OGpIRs

I would say that the FOUNDATION books are workmanlike as narrative, sometimes clumsy or awkward, very occasionally and tenuously reaching for something more lyrical (about space). But I, ROBOT is better: clear, crisp, functional, rational, getting complex ethical dilemmas and the like across.

No prob w Dreiser's prose in the Library of America omnibus of Sister Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt, and 12 Men. Haven't read any more of him, and maybe I hit it lucky/am too permissive. No problem with PKD either, though I've read a lot more of his.

Think I pretty much enjoyed the trilogy when I was 10, incl. not feeling in awe of/intimidated by the grown-up's prose. Pretty sure he was trying to please my demographic (I was mostly reading comics at the time), and all that "By the Galaxy!"" was part of it, even though I could read "son of a bitch!" and "Tell him to get his ass down here" in Galaxy magazine, in gen. audience contexts usually not too hard for 10-year-old mind to grok.

The Golden Age of By Galaxy Time is ten.

pinefox: i was happy to read your thoughts on the foundation series -- i'm still a great fan of the original three books, despite their flaws. i don't mind the clunky dialogue (someone on ilx once suggested that all the characters talked a little bit like mr burns), and i honestly don't remember the descriptive writing being too bad (plain and non-flashy, certainly).

iirc, asimov wrote the later novels at his publisher's urging, and i struggle to remember much about them. he seems to have lost interest in fiction in the mid-50s and spent most of the rest of his career writing, well, every other type of book: limerick collections, autobiographies (at least three of these), an annotated gilbert and sullivan. if halley's comet was due to return, you could bet there would be a book out that year called "ASIMOV'S GUIDE TO HALLEY'S COMET." (that very book has been at the used bookstore down the street for years, but i've resisted the urge to buy it so far.) apparently one of his goals was to get at least one book in every category of the dewey decimal system.

Whole posts is worth reading though, since he also says who he thinks is good.

I finished Prisoners of Geography, which had a few good points about it, but the less said about it the better.

I am now reading a pop history of the US Dust Bowl in the 1930s, The Worst Hard Times, Timothy Egan. As popular history it is exemplary. Egan finds and tells the stories of individuals, families and various small towns which lends human scale and emotional resonance to the history he wants to convey, then surrounds these small scale stories with the larger context of US homesteading, WWI, frontier capitalism, the mechanization of farming, and patterns of immigration. He also writes very 'punchy' prose without getting too gaudy to be readable. It works the way it is designed to work and delivers a large amount of information in a painless, engaging fashion.

this list he posts of good stylists is senior year of high school type stuff, not terribly interesting imho. also all men .

I don’t object to authors being problematic, I just object to a list of dead white dudes who are part of an English language canon (and have been for 50+ years in some cases) being construed as interesting when it comes to style. I agree with his choices, but just don’t think they’re very interesting ones! Not trying to pick on you, I am just a little confused by what you wrote.

tbh I really only care that the dead white dude, whose taste in sf was always interesting to me, posted about M. John Harrison, who is still around and still a dude but maybe can still write too. But yeah, looking at the list again, your point is fair enough.

I don’t object to authors being problematic, I just object to a list of dead white dudes who are part of an English language canon (and have been for 50+ years in some cases) being construed as interesting when it comes to style. I agree with his choices, but just don’t think they’re very interesting ones! Not trying to pick on you, I am just a little confused by what you wrote.

_I don’t object to authors being problematic, I just object to a list of dead white dudes who are part of an English language canon (and have been for 50+ years in some cases) being construed as interesting when it comes to style. I agree with his choices, but just don’t think they’re very interesting ones! Not trying to pick on you, I am just a little confused by what you wrote._


tbf this post from twenty years ago is more about addressing the topic of that thread than it is about coming up with an “interesting” list of names of authors

The post, not the list, was construed as “worth reading” because it mentioned good prose as well as bad

Citing Wodehouse as an example of good prose is no more interesting than citing Asimov as an example of bad, I agree, I just think you’ve focused on the wrong part unless you are just heavily invested in the interestingness of citations of authors

I finished Jenny Erpenbeck's 'Go, Went, Gone'. Really, depressingly good on the refugee situation in Europe, and as I said above good at making one feel guilty for one's comfortable life. Hugely and rightfully scornful of the enormous abrogation of responsibility that is the Dublin regulation. Very simple prose that occasionally startles you with an image e.g. 'For a moment, this thought opens its jaws wide, displaying its frightening teeth'.

Now started Lethem's 'Gun, with Occasional Music'. I wasn't expected such a brazen Chandler pastiche, will see if it overstays its welcome - it's fairly short at least.

It's still as good as almost any book he's written.

Finsihed Will Sargent's Bunnyman which has me hoping he gets the 2nd volume finished soon. He stops just after De Freitas has been recruited though not sure how taht works if he was still aschoolfriend of a friend in a Somerset boarding school. Though since everybody else is like 19 or 20 maybe this wasa couple of years after taht anyway.
Really enjoyed this. So do definitely want more.
I caught teh City Lights webinar book launch thing of this and Bobby Gillespie's memoir and wonder if that is remotely worth a look.
Like only reading about 15 books already.

Think I will have the combined bio of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor and Miles Davis by the end of this week. Have already read a lot about Miles and far less about the other 2.

A combined bio of those three? What book is that?

Miles, Ornette, Cecil : how Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and Cecil Taylor revolutionized the world of jazz / Howard Mandel.
ISBN:
9780415967143 ((hbk.)(hbk.) :)0415967147 ((hbk.) :)

Forgot about that book.

Holy shit that Mandel book costs a fortune! Was hoping I could find a cheap copy somehow.

Can you really accept this guy as an authority on jazz?

https://e.snmc.io/i/600/s/12938adddf5d9510964c642ea31bece4/2115107/howie-mandel-fits-like-a-glove-Cover-Art.jpg

Lol. wrong thread maybe.

Stevo, have you read A.B. Spellman's Four Lives In The Be-Bop Business? Early scuffling years of Ornette, Jackie Maclean (still young, still in with the bop crowd, but emerging from long heroin detour), eternal outlier Herbie Nichols (already dead in'63, but with, to this day, still-underexposed, still striking music), Cecil Taylor, still scuffling as of this book's publication in 1966---from the NYTimes review then, not paywalled:

Spellman steers clear of the misty romanticism that often colors writing about the struggles of jazz musicians. He views these men with a perceptive and understanding eye, digging through the protective surfaces and telling much of their stories in skillfully edited direct quotations that have the ring and bite of reality.

His place on Taylor is a particularly provocative portrait of a thorny, adamant and penetrating individual with a delightfully mordant wit. It sums up much of the essence of the book. It is Taylor who provides Spellman with a microcosm of the endless, Job-like adversities that can follow an innovator through the contemporary jazz world. And it is Taylor's thoughtful analysis of the relation of European music to the cultural aspirations of the white American and the black American that clarifies not only for justification for "serious jazz" as opposed to jazz as entertainment but also the underlying reasons why he and other likeminded musicians persist in the face of alienation and frustration that are their steady lot.

30pp into Asimov's SECOND FOUNDATION (1953). Having been disillusioned with the tiresome Mule story in vol 2, and not keen on this character's domination at the start of vol 3, I'm nonetheless encouraged. Two space captains set off in search of the Second Foundation, in what feels rather like a malign and cold version of Lando & Chewbacca's search for Han Solo. Adventure and intrigue seem to await. The nature of the Second Foundation remains, at this stage, quite mysterious (no spoilers please).

Separately I've been been going back to Ted Hughes - not his own poetry, but critical work, notably Paul Bentley's socialist interpretation TED HUGHES, CLASS & VIOLENCE (2014), which can be compelling to read but which I also gradually realise is fanciful and strained. The CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO TED HUGHES (2011) is of some use. The LETTERS OF TED HUGHES (2007) seem more remarkable, in the way that only letters can be. Also dipped into Jonathan Bate's TED HUGHES: THE UNAUTHORISED LIFE (2015).

I was particularly seeking evidence of TH's political views in later years and these seem to be more interesting and mixed than I'd expected. He quite often fires off moments of disdain for the influence of Conservatism in Britain. On the other hand I suspect any sustained comment on the political Left would be equally negative.

I haven't read the Spellman no. Not sure what I've read on Taylor or Coleman outside of music press. Are they in As Serious As Your Life and the Freedom Principle? That may be it if so.

Rereading Franny and Zooey the first time since I was 16. Probably holds up better than any other loved object of teenagerdom that I’ve revisited.

He feels astonishingly modern on young men and why they’re awful

I read it a few months ago for the first time -- otm

I've had a run of film-related stuff. Finished William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade which goes from funny and scurrilous into something approaching transcendent in the final third. It certainly functions as well as any other 'how to write good' book I've read.

A couple of BFI books: Yvonne Tasker on Silence of the Lambs, which didn't seem to say very much at all; David Thomson on The Big Sleep, which didn't really say a huge amount either but I could read Thomson all day so.

Now reading Otto Friedrich's City of Nets about Hollywood in the 40s.

janet malcolm wrote a great essay on franny and zooey (and how reviewers generally misunderstood it at the time) that’s well worth reading

xpost Chinaski, you might enjoy Robert Gottleib's bio-anthology Garbo, which I carried on about upthread, and Alfred said he loved it too. Incl. an otm James Harvey excerpt, so I'm going to check out JH's Watching Them Be: Star Presence on the Screen from Garbo to Balthazar
Yeah, I read Franny and Zooey in high school too, took it as, "Hang on to your dreams, kids, but don't end up like Holden!" He had followers by then---not yet Mark David Chapman, but was prob getting a bit alarmed. So, "Zooey" 's big brother lectures were understandable, esp. after Seymour's demise, but still I got a bit tired of them, though I thought of "Franny" as killer finale downtempo bonus track for Nine Stories, the high school fave that still plays in my head, maybe esp. the voice on the telephone at the wrong time, dead tired, but "rudely, almost obscenely quickened for the occasion." I know that voice.

Yep! It inspired me to read it xpost

Thanks for the Malcolm tip-off, that sounds fun - is there a free version online? (Unless I'm missing something)

If you can: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2001/06/21/justice-jd-salinger/

Aha - just being dozy and missed the "view this article if you register" smallprint - thanks!

"The 'mistakes' and 'excesses' that early critics complain of are often precisely the innovations that have given the work its power."

Love this so far

"The 'mistakes' and 'excesses' that early critics complain of are often precisely the innovations that have given the work its power."

think that applies to Hanya Yanigahara, but I know a lot of you hate her writing and I respect that

most recent for me

Colm Tóibín - The Magician
Anthony Doerr - Cloud Cuckoo Land
Jonathan Lee - The Great Mistake
Sally Rooney - Beautiful World, Where Are You
Thomas Grattan - The Near East
R.O. Kwon - The Incendiaries
Damon Galgut - The Promise

Returned briefly to Sean O'Brien, THE DEREGULATED MUSE (1998) and read the essay on Hughes. Eloquent and agreeable. Very brief, though he plainly knows Hughes' work so well. Funny emphasis on the Laureate poems, which happen to be the one collection I've read in full.

Colm Tóibín - The Magician

Thoughts?

I liked it, it was entertaining and informative, but it seemed like a biography more than a work of fiction

I recently read Buddenbrooks, an amazing novel, it was hard to compare the two

Soldaten Sonke Neitzel & Harald Welzer
A cache of recordings of WWII German POWs casual conversation was found and transcribed after the war . This book is based on compiling and annotating those transcriptions the contents are far from pleasant. They show the epistemology of the average German soldier at the time. Their indifference or possibly numbness to killing both uniformed enemy and civilians. their attitude to what they perceived as the jewish problem, like it is universally accepted as something they need to deal with. Quite harrowing reading that this is what a group of people can believe through peer pressure and whatever other influences. & wondering how different it is to what some elements feel today.
I picked this up from a charity shop by chance and had taken in what the subject matter was etc. It was sitting in a pile of books to read when I pointed out its existence to somebody dealing with some things in the area as in perpetrator trauma and other forms of PTSD and related trauma. I thought I should get the book read as soon as possible. I currently have it as my bathroom book. So its being read slowly. I wonder if reading faster would be less traumatic.

Harlots, whores & hackabouts : a history of sex for sale Kate Lister
Recent book on the history of sex work and what that entails and its various understandings and motivations. I think it is right across recorded time which makes things possibly more interesting. I know she refers to Gilgamesh though it may be more tied into its Victorian era translation and the prudish reaction of the main translator George Smith to the section where the wildman Ekidu is tamed by the priestess of Ishtar. I heard taht bit during a book launch tie in webinar a few weeks ago so need to read the book to know more. I've so far read the introduction since i just got this from the library yesterday. I went out last night so wasn't reading then and woke up late so wasn't reading as much as i normally do. Did see images of icons of Ishtar depicted though.
I think I'm not that hot on the font being used in the book though, think I'm seeing letters morph which isn't very handy. Don't think I get that with more solid fonts. Oversize book with 2 columns of lightweight font. Like what's the opposite of bold?

Miles, Ornette, Cecil : how Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and Cecil Taylor revolutionized the world of jazz Howard Mandel
Canadian jazz critic writes an overview/short history of 3 majorly influential jazz artists. Again I've opnly read the introduction.
So looking forward to getting into this.

Have a bunch of other books out that I need to get further into.
Nelson Algren Never Come Morning
well written 1942 novel set in a largely Polish American section of Chicago. I should really have this done by now. IT is a good book I'm just reading a load of different things at the same time.

Eric Charry Mande Music
Good Ethnomusicological study of a North West African Music i really enjoy and still need to know more about. Like reading this and knowing all the music talked about are 2 different things.
I'm currently copying the discography out to RYM so I can check it out after returning the book . Am getting to hear single tracks from Spotify from the discs listed. Hopefully this will be helpful to others too.
But unfortunately not everything is in the RYM database and omigod could do with the search engine being more specific.

stacks of bell hooks, working my way through everything in the Irish library system though do wish there was more. I find her an easy read but may need to revisit quite heavily.

& still buying books from charity shops and have 12 books out of the library.
At some point I will like DEFINITELY read every book I have at hand .

Finished Gun, with Occasional Music. I dunno. He can clearly write, even a Chandler pastiche demonstrates that. But the SF aspect seemed mostly done for effect and I didn't really care for the whodunnit, the protagonists were all unlikeable and I guessed half of the twist. And to borrow a phrase from Tom Paulin, it was like reading a jockstrap. I'd like to know what else he can do but so many books, so little time.

I read As She Climbed Across the Table and found it the most difficult short book I've ever read, and never been tempted to go back to him.

Ducks, Newburyport - I'm about a quarter of the way in and it's skipping by. I wish I were on a sunlounger by a swimmingpool so I could race through it undisturbed in a few days. The witer I'm reminded of most is Anne Tyler.