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

I got over my Bolaño block with Jim Thompson's The Getaway. I thought I must have read this before but I think I would have remembered the grisly realism of it and the batshit ending, which takes some, uh, hallucinatory liberties with the notion of a 'getaway'.

I started Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford. It's a great title for a novel and that drew me in, but a comedy on the social morés and personal dysfunctions of the English upper crust, set in an era when they had far more wealth and power, is rather tepid fun. I read Highland Fling last winter and not one bit of it remains in my memory. Not sure I'll finish this one.

I got over my Bolaño block with Jim Thompson's The Getaway. I thought I must have read this before but I think I would have remembered the grisly realism of it and the batshit ending, which takes some, uh, hallucinatory liberties with the notion of a 'getaway'.

― Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Friday, June 3, 2022 7:45 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

oddly enough neither of the film versions uses the end that Thompson had on the novel.

Eustace Chisholm is truly balls-to-the-wall insane, highly recommended, highly readable if you can stomach it

I read James Purdy’s Malcolm a long time ago and remember it being impressively overwrought, so am interested in reading Eustace Chisholm

There’s a notorious scene that I arrived at today, and I immediately understood why he’s equally beloved and reviled. It was horrifying.

still want to read Bolaño's 2666

Me too./pvmic

read 2666's 'the part about the critics', found myself not caring at all, stopped

2666 would be on the shortlist for my favorite novel.

read 2666's 'the part about the critics', found myself not caring at all, stopped

perfectly valid response and one I can easily sympathize with. the whole book required me to fight against a desire to not keep traveling along the road Bolaño was pulling me down. I only continued because the novel eventually inspired a weird fascination with Bolaño's vision of his characters and the world they inhabit. it is a bit like what I've heard about durians. nobody's first impression of a durian is favorable.

are you talking about durian the fruit? because I don't want to ever encounter that

"has been described variously as rotten onions, turpentine, and raw sewage"

no thanks

I can assure you my copy of the book is nearly odorless and tasteless, if that's your worry.

Every part of 2666 (he meant for them to stand alone, incl. publication, wanting to leave more money for his kids) after the Woody Allen-ish "The Part About The Critics" is different from it, pulling me in more and more---don't know how well they would have worked if published one by one; anyway, context accrues. This thread has a lot about 2666, which tends to come back through my head like a late night train, with a very irregular schedule: Roberto Bolano

Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz & Dina Gilio-Whitaker All The Real Indians Died Out

Book refuting a number of widely held myths and misinformation about Native American people. I read Dunbar Ortiz 's book An Indigenous People's History of The United States last year and enjoyed it also caught webinars and podcasts with her so wanted to read more. I ordered this through interlibrary loan and got sent the wrong thing. This became inactive on the file system so I assumed it was the other book wrongly entered. Then I saw it was heading to my library last week and arrived yesterday.
I've now read the first few chapters and am enjoying it. But another book I'm reading at the same time. Good though and will be trying to read more by her.
I've also ordered Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States which she contributed to the research of.

Today I finished CONSUMING JOYCE. Not very well written. Some bad grammar and sentences that needed fixing. Not very ground-breaking in its claims. But contains a lot of primary material that's worth knowing. The author had put in time to research newspaper back catalogues.

One thing I take away from it is the bland, irritating, superficial quality of much journalism. The journalists seem often to have written from a POV of superiority to Joyce though they'd probably barely read him. Seeing so much of this material in sequence reinforces this realisation.

alright fine I’ll read ULYSSES (1922) stop hassling me

[...] journalists seem often to have written from a POV of superiority [...]

Agreed, and find this mystifying. No better is confessional self-qualification for diversity, equality, inclusivness (DEI) initiatives. But I guess we all find listening (and openness) difficult (, understandably?).

sorry missing that 'e'

and equity not equality (too many typos - sorry)

Finished El Golpe Chileño by Julien Poirier, taken on a whim from a stack that my bookseller friend was sorting through.

Some interesting lines and a lovely set of elegiac poems about the death of the Diner in many Us cities, but otherwise a strange book that seems mostly to collect random stray writings from Poirier’s decades as a poet. I don’t mind books without a unifying theme or formal conceit, but this was a little too much of a mish-mash for me.

Finally finished War and Peace, one of the best books I've ever read & a real pleasure to read right up to the second epilogue, which feels interminable because it's literally Tolstoy saying "here's what I was talking about, here's my point" and, you know, lol

having done that it's back to Serbia for me, got into Croatian lit two years ago and now it's a large chunk of my reading diet -- David Albahari's Leeches right now. The other one of his I read, Götz and Meyer, was a short and devastating novel of the Holocaust; this one's funnier, very modern to be reading after Tolstoy, kind of jarring as I expected

W&P was my first pandemic read. Everything I wanted and more.

I went on to David Thomson, HOW TO WATCH A MOVIE (2016). Welcome, of course, to go from a poor writer to a great one. I can hardly fail to enjoy this book. But after 90 pages or so I'm not sure how far it's going to bother to fulfil its title. I'd quite like it if DT actually wrote about *how to watch a movie*, but he's mostly riffing on old themes: watching, screens, acting, with some very familiar examples: yes, VERTIGO, REAR WINDOW, PSYCHO, REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, CITIZEN KANE!

It's like a Paul Morley book on 'how to listen to pop music' that mainly talks about seeing the Sex Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in 1976.

But it holds pleasures, for sure, in its rolling yarn, including a couple of pages on BLOW-UP. Writers on BLOW-UP always talk about the wind in Maryon Park.

His apprentices publish a book a year under his name.

W&P was my first pandemic read. Everything I wanted and more.

so glad to share this feeling, every time I picked it up I'd be thinking, within a page or two: "The best book! It's just the best book!"

re DT's apprentices:

Actually more than one, some years!

The outstanding case of that strange phenomenon is Peter Ackroyd. I can't fathom how prolific he has been; even if others have done all the research for him, it still seems like he wrote it up.

I picked up that How To Watch a movie a few weeks ago so have had it in the pile on the bed. So will give it a shot when I get a chance then.
Also picked up a few books on film making from the mid 80s that sound like they might be along the same lines if things go by the label on the tin. may be out of date but i assumed basic principles would remain. Came from the same charity shop i think . If i actually got around to reading every book I picked up things would be so great.
All of them look interesting. I think one of tehm has an interview with George Miller that's about 30 pp long.

finally delving into an olaf stapledon omnibus i picked up going on 15 years ago now. kind of in the hg wells philosophical sf mould, though with a thirties era quasi-marxist sociological bent. liking what i've read so far.

How to Watch a Movie seems like a candidate for DT's worst book - rambling, under-researched, very much 'will this do?'. Feels a bit like DT was given the title by a publisher and then, as you say Pinefox, just dashed off the usual old stuff about the usual old movies.

The best thing I've read by him in recent years was his book on the Warner Brothers, perhaps because the relatively narrow subject kept DT more on point.

Is that a new / recent book, WF? Interesting.

I'm impressed that you have read enough DT to be able to judge. Looking at a list of books inside this one, I saw that I had read maybe a majority of books by him from ... well, 2004 to 2016. That's not much, actually. He has probably produced about 10 since 2016! And I'm afraid I haven't read a single whole book by DT from earlier than 1996 - though of course the bulk of the Biographical Dictionary dates from c.1975.

You're right in that I was underestimating DT's productivity - and his Wikipedia entry doesn't even include the Warner Bros book, reviewed here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/31/books/review/david-thomson-warner-bros.html

The 21st-century titles I've yet to see, let alone own, are Try to Tell the Story (2009), Murder and the Movies (2020) and A Light in the Dark: A History of Film Directors (2021). I've got Why Acting Matters (2015) and Sleeping With Strangers: How the Movies Shaped Desire (2019) (remaindered in Judd books!) on the to-read pile.

The book i picked up and thought sounded like it should be along teh same lines as How To Watch a Movie is How to Read a Film: The Art, Technology, Language, History, and Theory of Film and Media by James Monaco which does look like it has been well regarded. the edition I got came from 1981 so may have been deeply upgraded over the last 40 years. Think it may have some insight from the time, not sure how things have changed in teh world of film studies., Have been hearing taht locally at least teaching art has become a lot more commercial orientated.
So could be taht some older texts have better perspective on the actual art form and could be I picked up the edition that turned up. Far as I can see technology has changed a lot and the idea of commerciality has possibly increased, studios driving things to make money more though maybe taht is something that has come and gone several times over the history of cinema.
Anyway it's a book I need to get around to having a look at. & maybe How To Watch A Movie is one I should skip. Well have both so will see.

I read TRY TO TELL THE STORY last year. It's a personal memoir of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. So it doesn't just rehash, though familiar films are mentioned. I'd have to recommend it for anyone who likes DT.

I might go for A LIGHT IN THE DARK. If I found that other book in Judd I would snap it up.

I'm reading The God of Small Things. Seems to be one of those books that delights in turning up the stone of the world and showing the horribly slimy things underneath, to the point of making you think that everyone is awful, everything is hopeless and there's no point caring about anything. Not that these things shouldn't be written about, but I'm certainly not enjoying it. Also not a fan of the non linearity.

The DT book I most liked in the last decade was Sleeping With Strangers: How the Movies Shaped Desire

you WAR AND PEACE folks -- which translation did you read?

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (but not during the pandemic)

Agatha Christie - They Came to Baghdad. The only other non Marple/Poirot Christie book I have read was 'Why Didn't They Ask Evans' which I enjoyed but this did seem a little bit of a stretch away from that. The main protagonist is a complete liar and goes to Baghdad on a whim chasing a guy she has just met. there then follows some unconvincing spy business. Quite fun.

Pevear and Volohonsky

I also read it at the beginning of the pandemic, the translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude, revised by Amy Mandelker (the Oxford World Classics edition).

I found it hard-going at times, and took a few breaks, but it's definitely lingered in my imagination in the last two years.

I read the Constance Garnett long ago, and might possibly find fault with it today, but back then, no prob: her non-modernist 1904 English seemed to suit the material. It's online now, public domain, if you want to check it out. This guy briefly comments on four translations (his fave, just for reading pleasure, is Anthony Briggs' version):
https://www.tolstoytherapy.com/best-translation-war-and-peace/

This guy Oops, sorry:

Hi, I’m Lucy! I’m a British writer, adventurer, reader, and author of Mountain Song: A Journey to Finding Quiet in the Swiss Alps.

i've read other P/V (so to speak) translations and found no fault with them, but honestly i probably picked them because the editions have looked nice. but i've seen some things questioning them and the fact that P doesn't actually read russian. might try the briggs version if i can work up the will

anyway ty for your answers

One thing I wasn't expecting out of W&P is how vivid and visual it can be, especially the battles. It somehow finds ways to bring you into these incredibly detailed scenes without any confusion. (Though I also had Wikipedia on standby.)

Finished Monolithic Undertow which seemed to drop in quality a bit. Between getting Flipper's line up pretty confused. & some iffy description of metal related music. It was an ok read. Not sure if it turned me onto much stuff I wasn't previously aware of.
So took that back and got

Hood Feminism by Nikki Kendal
Which I've been waiting for a copy of since the start of the year. But queue for next copy has been getting confused. Library website said I was next in line and then it went to someone else a couple of times.
Well here now.
So will get through it over next few days.

IMO the P&V translations are horribly stilted and full of odd grammatical choices and badly chosen words. P’s solo translation of the Three Musketeers (from French, a language he actually speaks) is a really dreadful piece of work. I don’t know how faithful it is, but the Briggs translation is very readable, and readability is key for me in a book that length.

you WAR AND PEACE folks -- which translation did you read?

Briggs. Very good indeed!

Pausing Thomson to return to Steven Connor, THE MADNESS OF KNOWLEDGE.