Everything is Whirling and Twirling! What Are You Reading this Summer 2023?

What's the best critical edition of Tristram Shandy? Is Norton good? Seems to be most commonly available in library loan, but I'm willing to dig further.

and Nicole Flattery, not Natalie.

FLATTERY My feeling when I reread the stories recently was a lot of sympathy for my younger self, like, “Oh, it’s not so bad.” I feel like with your first book, you’re very conscious that you have to be impressive. I’m not as interested in impressing anyone, which I think just comes with age.

i read an old penguin english library edition of shandy which has copious (& very handy) notes and intro. also have one by some american univeristy imprint which was much less comprehensive in that regard. no idea how the norton compares.

currently reading new worlds 3. some good stories, also some not so good stories.

not sure about dilatory epiphanic (which i just googled in quotes and the only result was this thread) but i'm also an ocean vuong hater

Dow I liked your review! I think we have some overlap though for obvious reasons I felt more kinship with the characters.

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

I should read some of these again. That’s the beauty of short stories.

Thanks! o hell yes check this yall:

Show Them A Good Time - Nicole Flattery

These stories - eight in all, dark and complex, were easy to read but not so easy to grasp. Is that a compliment? Maybe. I liked this collection very much though. Like me, Flattery is from the Irish midlands and the landscapes she draws on in some of the stories - flat land, dead light, still suffocating air - are familiar to me, as is the mood of depression saturating everything. There’s a lot of dark humour in this collection, almost always unsettling, like hearing someone laugh behind you on a dark path. Her prose is precise in execution, with short sharp sentences, but the stories themselves are almost the opposite. They are woven in almost dreamlike ways. The title story, Show Them A Good Time, is about an almost-revealed service station that seems like purgatory and the atmosphere is very much like that of a nightmare you experience on the edge of waking up. I read it once but I want to read it again.

The main characters in these stories are all women - varying ages and backgrounds. Sometimes they are brutal, sometimes they are adrift, but they are always strangely compelling. Track, I thought, was very interesting, about a directionless woman in a relationship with a famous comedian. There are nightmarish details sprinkled casually throughout the stories, the horror of modern life is mundane and fades with time except to those who experience it directly. “The missing women of the midlands,” the 13 year old’s miscarriage, the slipping ladder - these are all details that haunted the corners of their various stories and hooked into me. She has a very strong sense of who she is and where she’s from and it’s a real pleasure to read that in a young woman’s work.

I would need to read this again, I think, but overall I enjoyed it. It’s not for everyone, but then most things aren’t.

― mardheamac (gyac), Sunday, March 27, 2022 2:54 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

Looks like it is for me, thanks!

― dow, Sunday, March 27, 2022 3:23 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

You don’t live over here, do you? I’d lend it to you if you came to an ILB FAP.

― mardheamac (gyac), Sunday, March 27, 2022 3:24 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'll look around over here, thanks for offer.

― dow, Sunday, March 27, 2022

FLATTERY My life throughout the period of writing this novel was a lot more stable than it was in my 20s, when I was writing the stories, which just felt chaotic. The move for me was just being like: I have to do this every single day. It felt way more like a job to me than the stories did.

Recently read:

Pat Long - The History of the NME (Pretty basic biography of the magazine, not really anything particularly illuminating in here)
John Rogers - This Other London (Sinclair-lite written by a guy who does really enjoyable YT videos about...walking around London. Think ley-lines only get mentioned once or twice which is impressive for A Book About Walking London)
Susannah Dickey - Common Decency (Fairly enjoyable novel about two neighbours in a Belfast block of flats - one gets obsessed with the other)
Claire Keegan - Small Things Like These (Loved this novella about an Irish coal seller's Christmas in the mid-80s, would love to read more Keegan now).

Currently rotating between:

Michael McGee - Close to Home
Megan Nolan - Ordinary Human Failings
Gerald Murnane - Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs

I finished Norman Cohn's Warrant for Genocide and had realised it had been around all my life since it was first published the year I was born.
It's an interesting pretty quick read. Odd to see how much damage a pretty obvious hoax can do. But it needed to find a receptive audience which it did in the wake of the First World War. It was already having books refuting it and pointing the flaws in argument etc being printed in the 1920s. But it does seem that some people do still believe in the Protocols. There have even been supposedly supporting arguments using tnh idea that Maurice Joly who wrote Dialogue aux Enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu, ou la Politique au XIXe siècle par un contemporain, was Jewish and therefore intended his work to further the conspiracy which is just absurd.

Geza Csath - Opium and Other Stories

Don't read many short stories but this is a keeper. Early 20th century Hungarian fiction has a particular vibe, a fluidity in storytelling with incredible concision, all of its own. The story of the orchestra goes through so much disappointment and a screaming sadness tinged with humour in less than 10 pages.

Elsewhere there is something akin to Poe; some very nasty, macabre tales, and as the title implies a hallucinatory quality.

The Tale Of The Fat Woodworker, Antonio Manetti - A novelized account of a supposedly true story, in which a group of friends (including Donatello and leader of the pack Brunelleschi) get angry that the titular woodworker failed to show up to one of their dinners and, as punishment, decide to gaslight him into believing that he's been Freaky Fridayed into some other bloke. This is achieved with the collaboration of many a member of Venice's upper class, including a judge who sentences him to prison for debts accrued by the other guy. Real Bullingdon Club stuff, a big part of the animus clearly being that the lowly woodworker failed to show up at a dinner featuring so many of his social Betters. The poor guy ends up moving to Hungary in shame once he finds out the truth. Manetti was a biographer of Brunelleschi; the translator's introduction suggests this was Brunelleschi's attempt to show himself a master of perspective in human as well as artistic terms and also points out the similarities to Kafka.

There's a strong sense of cruelty in a lot of Italian comedy, I've seen enough spaghetti westerns to know this, but here it's really difficult to laugh along with the poshos torturing this poor dude. Still, an interesting experience to read a 15th century Italian text that often feels like a 90's magic realist comedy (Groundhog's Day, Liar Liar, etc.)

William Shakespeare - Macbeth
Marguerite Duras - Hiroshima Mon Amour (the script for this was published as a book)

Good Lord Bird by James McBride (looking forward to the other novels based on this one)
before that, Martin Dressler by Steven Millhauser (rich, promising start but enough -- contrast -- The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith)

The Writing In The Stone Irving Finkel
Story about an Assyrian official looking for a treasure source in Ancient Mesopotamia.an attempt by a historian of the era to portray how people of the time viewed their world. A touch of the Jim Thompson in the narrator or protagonist's viewpoint on the disposabili6y of other people's human life possibly.
& trying to think if the depth of field of the narrative is similar to that in The Graduate the original novel cos it reminds me of that. Found that book to have a distinctive one like scenes seen in a snowglobe or something.
Quite a nice read I guess and a fast one.
I was a little thrown off by The complete absence of page numbers so unable to tell how far into the book I was.
I was trying to think what had directed me to this and was surprised to find out it was only a few years old cos I had thought it was from earlier before I started reading it.

Neil Gaiman View From The Cheap Seats
A set of shorter previously published pieces by the fantasy author. Several reviews and introductions to other people's works and things.
Very readable and makes me want to check out the material referenced.

Frederick Douglass is not a hero. Is changing number of verbs indiscriminately to indicate the South vs. the North rather than black vs. white a tactic or a tic? Or is it West vs. East? Or are there no vs. but just a family (un)happy in its own way?

I don’t understand your post, youn.

I finished a re-read of Guy Hocquenghem’s Homosexual Desire. Astonishing how prescient and present its analysis remains.

As told in The Good Lord Bird, the Civil War and the abolitionist movement were complicated ... North vs. South (culture), East vs. West (property), Black vs. White (slavery, history, ethnicity). The novel is a fictional account of John Brown's rebellion at Harper's Ferry.

All the verb numbers are switched, and I don't know if that is an accurate representation of how people spoke much less the pattern for different dialects.

Frederick Douglass has big hair and does not come off too well.

oh i see— yeah that’s strange about the verb conjugations!

The family (un)happy in its own way was my attempt to characterize the unique legacy of slavery in the United States; it seems to have a powerful grip even for those who want to claim a fresh start and to forget.

A couple of Hatha yoga texts:

Anon - The Shiva Samhita, tr. by James Mallinson
Shandor Remete - Shadow Yoga

i don't know if this is a relevant point abt verb numbers but someone (lol i forget who)* argued that the civil war is when "the united states are ___" became "the united states is ___"

*(i think i encountered it in garry wills's book on the gettysburg address but i don't think he came up with it and anyway it's currently in a box so i can't check)

And if slavery and racism (which I hesitate to name on account of lack of verifiability of human races as fundamentally different but is real otherwise) have carried over on a global scale exacerbated by finance and climate disasters, then is the American Dream as an extension of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and the Protestant Reformation untenable?

Think you're unlikely to get any defenses of the viability of the American dream in this particular forum (thankfully).

But what I meant was trying to give up a certain notion of progress. I am not certain everyone on ILX would be willing to do so unless prepared to offer or to accept or to have confidence in a cogent alternative.

I'm reading The Bachelors, Muriel Spark. It's one of her early novels. It has many of the elements that characterize her complete body of work, such as main characters engaged in fraudulent or criminal behavior, excellent pacing and deft use of dialogue, but it doesn't quite feel like she'd hit her full stride, yet. She's still assembling her materials. Which isn't to say it's not a good novel. I don't think she was capable of writing a bad novel.

Isn’t that her very first novel? I never bothered with it since I heard she wasn’t fully formed yet as you said.

But now I am intrigued

I love reading embryonic fiction and poetry.

I finished John MacGahern's The Barracks and am about to begin Kate Masur's Until Justice Be Done.

According to Wikipedia, The Bachelors was published in 1960 as her fourth novel. As for where it stands in order of when it was originally written or at least existed in an advanced draft, I can't say. Order of publishing isn't always accurate in that way.

Oh sorry I was getting confused with The Comforters. She had already written a few good books before that one so maybe I should (re)read it. Don’t you mean her fifth novel?

Right. Fifth novel.

xxxxxxxpost youn, I would not like to give up on the ideal or idea of progress re better vaccines, for instance. Also if it means better anti-fascism, whatever that might consist of.

"better" better mean "keeping up with the bad stuff."

Finally reading Left Hand of Darkness, which, not news, is very good.

dow - Thank you for taking the time to read my incoherent hopelessly generalizing (throwing in the kitchen sink) posts. I agree with your point and hope that science and human belief in progress will be humbler and more aware of its limitations and open to a wider range of possibility while not as eager to draw conclusions and profit.

correction: belief in human progress

I finished Patricia Highsmith's Those Who Walk Away. I was wondering about the title. Apparently it's a reference to those who walk away from a crime in progress rather than getting involved or trying to help. I guess it could also have a secondary meaning as those who walk away from a fight (as opposed to those who have to be carried away). It made me want to visit Venice. Her control is superb. The prose is unassuming. You never get the sense that she is showing off or trying to sound "literary", but you often stop to marvel at how economically and precisely she describes something rather subtle. Her recurring subject is human psychology under highly stressful circumstances, within a social milieu of midcentury American wealth, a wealth that insulates them from lots of unpleasant things, but which fails to protect them from their most critical vulnerabilities. Her characters often seem to be caught in a trap which is at least partially of their own devising, and which ratchets tighter and tighter around them.

correction: a wider range of possibilities

yes indeed.

Diana Wynne Jones Dogsbody
Nell Gaiman wrote a foreword to an edition of this which is included in the anthology of his shorter pieces which I just finished. I think he has a more general piece on her too. I hadn't realised she also wrote a series that included Howl's Moving Castle which I know from the Studio Gibli animation.
So this is a children's or YA book on a star system being sentenced to a lifetime as a terrestrial dog during which he also needs to find an element of the reason he was sentenced.
Seems quite good so far. Mid 70s book for children that mentions the troubles in Ireland as a backstory for one of the supporting characters. Interesting detail that must have been a semi controversial personal choice at the time. This character us seen to be good I think when Irish were vilified in UK media at the time and still being discriminated against when it came to housing/accommodation.
Well have it part read so going to get through the rest of it.

Neil Gaiman Welcome To The Cheap Seats
Collection of short pieces including reviews, forewords, speeches etc.
I'm going back through to copy the worksvhe mentions for future reference.
Thought it quite interesting. Think it has turned me onto some new work.
Diana Wynne Jones most immediately.
I picked it up because of a piece on Samuel Delaney who I'd just read about in Graham Lock or Paul Gilroy or somewhere.

I have been reading THE COLLECTED STORIES OF ELIZABETH BOWEN. Mostly I have read her first volume, ENCOUNTERS (1923), contained in it. These stories are very short. They are often very Jamesian, especially in dialogue. But they also carry a strong charge of eccentricity, perversity, mischief. I can see the youthful talent here, but most of the stories aren't substantial enough to be so satisfactory.

When she gets on to a couple of slightly longer stories just a couple of years later - 'The Parrot', 'The Visitor' - a change emerges. The stories have more resonance. 'The Parrot', describing a young woman trying to retrieve a lost parrot, is striking. 'The Visitor' is poignant.

In theory I would like to read this whole book but it' nearly 800pp long and I have over 650pp to go. So likely I'll put it back on the shelf till another time.

Having finished The Bachelors I will modify one part of my earlier appraisal. The pacing suffers in the second half as she tries to manage a large cast of characters with a multifarious web of connections and the pace loses momentum. Not quite up to the usual Spark standard, but still very readable.

xp ha I enjoy kid Bowen's mischief etc., but yeah her POV gets wider and deeper as she goes along through the century (b. 1899-d. 1972). Seems to get a bit depressed sometimes during the Depression, but WWII homefires get her going again, and---can you be "on a roll" if it pretty much lasts 30 years? (thinks of Willie Nelson's catalog) Yes.
So I hope you'll come back to this collection now and then. Where should I start with her novels?

I confuse the Elizabeths' short fiction. Taylor's are wryer, piquant.

The Death of the Heart. xpost

Dow: Bowen's early novel THE LAST SEPTEMBER is outstandingly interesting.

I return to a book of which I've read parts more than once and parts never: R.F. Foster's MODERN IRELAND (1988). Ireland in 1600, where he begins. is something I've never known about before.

Tony Russell's Country music originals : the legends and the lost
I think I need to get myself a personal copy of this and work through it dilligently. Descriptions sound really enticing.
& I could do with a better knowledge of teh area. Same wioth prewar blues I guess, I know some artists who I've come acros over the years but there is a lot more I could know and some variety ion styles etc.
THis comes with suggested listening and a decent bibliography for further research. THink there may be other music from similar era that I could do with a similarly in depth resource on.

The hidden treasures of Timbuktu : historic city of Islamic Africa John Hunwick,
coffee table sized book looking into the history of Timbuktu and what is there. It is a town that was established in 1100 that was for years used in tropes about faraway unknown places but was a source of learning for most of teh time it has existed
HUnwick looked into the papers taht are stored there and found things apparently lost prior to him doing so. So I need to avoid simply seeing things from a white saviourism perspective. What's here looks good and nice to have access to books on this and related subjects, would just prefer more indigenous perspectives I guess.

Michael Ingantieff Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry
Essays and responses from talks given in 2000 at a conference in Princeton in the wake of the 50th anniversary of teh Declaration of Human Rights. Quite interesting and a reasonably quick read.

Not So Black and White Kenan Malik
a look into the history of the idea of white supremacy.
Quite interesting, covers a lot of ground I have read about elsewhere.
Picked this up off teh new books shelf in the local library. So glad to see they are buying things like this in.
Nice long bibliography to turn me onto new things i haven't read yet.

What I read this summer:

Clive Barker - The Great and Secret Show
Enrique Vila-Matas - Bartleby and Co.
Patricia Highsmith - The Talented Mr. Ripley
Elena Ferrante - The Story of a New Name
Ursula K. Le Guin - The Dispossessed
Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
Herman Melville - Bartleby the Scrivener

Hell of a run. Sinking into term-time senescence with a Reacher novel.

R.F. Foster's MODERN IRELAND (1988).

I read this about 20 years ago. It took me . . . well, it felt like forever. I probably should have read some other works on the period first; he assumes a fair amount of background knowledge, if memory serves.