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

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.

Yes. The oddity of the book is that it looks like an introduction that will tell you the facts on each period, but its actual method tends to be eg "contrary to much that has been written since, Catholicism did not at the time imply disloyalty to the Crown" or "Accounts of the famine have tended to overemphasise national factors" - leaving you wonder: who has written that, when and why? And what is the basic statement here, outside of controversies? The whole book is more Meta than it looks.

On the other hand, he's a fabulously well informed historian and an unusually fine writer.

Diana Wynne Jones Howl's Moving Castle
pretty well written children's book . I'm realising that I'm picturing Spirited Away when I was thinking of teh Studio Ghibli animated version. Though I think I must have seen this.
I don't remember having read tyhe author before Dogsbody last week. Some of her work was around when I was the target age but I don't remember coming across her. She can write really well and subtly introduce themes that are somewhat leftist. Characters in this talking about being exploited etc. Think I may read some more in future but definitely wanted to read the source of the animation's story even if it isn't the thing I was thinking of. Think I've seen a bunch of the Studio Ghibli films so now going to look up the source for Spirited Away

Augusto Boal Legislative theatre
Brazilian radical theatre theorist writes an experimental beta version book about the chance happening that had him in elected power and applying his theatre techniques to governing.
I want to read through all of teh author's work to see what he actually stood for since I think the group that semi introduced me to him whitewashed him heavily. Wound up with a really reactionary take on his work and I think a deep weakening of what he stood for. Very very white liberal BS group who I wish could be kept away from teh subject of race since tehy seem to be absolutely tone deaf on it.
Boal and Freire seem to be writers I think have a great deal of value. Freire has complained about his process having become popular and tehn having its application watered down heavily in teh process which I think is also true of Boal's work.

I’ve read Charmed Life and Archer’s Goon recently, both by Wynne Jones, both excellent, especially Archer, which has very lefty 1980s children’s TV vibes. I love how predictable her stories are - you realise, reading them, how much other adventure fiction leans on tired Hero’s Journey/Save the Cat templates.

Whoops I mean UNpredictable

I finished Poems of the Late T'ang, A.C. Graham. The introductory essay and notes on the translations I found very helpful in understanding how much is, by necessity, lost when translating these poems into English. The translations themselves were better as poetry than some of the attempts I've read, but seldom invoked that sense of excitement one gets from good poems.

Now I've started on The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family, Joshua Cohen. The distinct personality of the narrator's voice is strongly established from the first and it carried me forward swiftly and easily into the story. It remains to be seen if the features that make it so distinct eventually wear on me, which is a danger when so much depends on that voice. I hope not.

I am reading Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson and again wondering about class in the UK and the meaning of provincialism and ties to land (and what will replace it). As an outlook, provincialism has come to mean familiarity: one could imagine a lifetime resident of NYC being presumptive about knowledge of that city but as restricted in movement as a person from a one stop gas station apple pie diner passing through rest stop exurban locale: sophistication has been tied to place but will it continue to represent barriers to experience (tied to wealth)?

So looking forward to this thread title receding into the distance
</jerk>

Hi. If that was meant for me (or about what I just posted), I am curious about what provoked it.

Sorry no it’s just a knock at the thread title, every time it pops up on SNA I suppress a flare of irritation. Hence the jerk tag.