I'm in Love With Books and I Feel Fine! What Are You Reading in Autumn 2023?

Lucio Cardoso - Chronicle of a Murdered House. A Brazilian novel from the early 60s, released on Open Letter.

It's a Faulkner-esque design. Multiple viewpoints on a house's scandalous goings on, leading to a decline in fortunes. All centered around a beautiful woman.

It's the first time I've read an account of an incestuous affair in a realistic-ish setting. Really well done, and very Latin.

I'm reading The Fire Within, reissued by NYR Books. I like novels whose narrative approach vacillates from free indirect to directly addressing the reader.

just finished Hardy's Trumpet Major, just started Hardy's A Group Of Noble Dames

The only "minor" Hardy novels I've read are Under the Greenwood Tree and Two on a Tower.

robert gluck - about ed

i'm about to run out of hardys to read, just a couple of the minor novels to go... but then there's always the poetry i guess.

currently reading the english (by way of czechoslovakia) novelist edith templeton's the island of desire, starts out as a comedy of haut-bourgeois manners which then turns into a satire/critique of english social mores in the second half.

that'll leave me with two hardy's to read, bott of which would probably be Pointless answers

Desperate Remedies: A Novel (1871)
The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters (1876)
and 100000000 poems

i also have the recent biography by the same woman who did the the dickens biography and i think it might be even longer

(hardy's, hardys?)

wikipedia says there are probably 50 short stories that i should go through and check - i've read a bunch in various collections. penguin has various anthologies of them, probably the same things in a different order.

Distinguishing a mediocre from a good or great Hardy poem is hard -- and part of the fun.

Got my bundle from the Sublunary editions sale.

Osvaldo Lamborghini - Two Stories
Horacio Quiroga - Beyond

Really good to go much much deeper into Latin American writing with these two short translations.

I finished American Poetry Wax Museum, which truly is the most important book to understanding the US poetry canon. (Returning to discussions of yesteryear, it also does a handy job of explaining why a mediocre poet like Robert Lowell continues to be so ‘popular’). Highly recommended for those interested in that kind of thing.

Have since plowed through:
- Wendy Lotterman, A Reaction to Someone Coming In: a fine if a little too neat book of poems by young psychoanalytic theorist and queer scholar. Honestly was a little bored reading it.

- Zan de Parry, Put It In See What It Does: de Parry is one of my favorite living poets, and the way this large chap absolutely nails the cadences and verbiage of middle America in an earnest and not-mocking way is incredible. Can’t wait for this guy’s first larger-press book this year.

- Oswell Blakeston, The Cobra King: A collection of pithy queer erotic poems from this legend of the 20th century. Excellent small book.

Like others, I am currently reading About Ed. Per usual, Bob’s prose is incredible, though I expect things to get more messy as I am only two sections in.

It will -- in the best sense.

I read Lawrence Block's *Sins of the Fathers*. I loved how stripped back it was (even for a noir) but the central theme was kind of on the nose.

Now reading Barbara Pym's *Quartet in Autumn* (my first Pym). It's essentially a comedic miniature about the 'grey lives, thinly led' of four characters approaching retirement but there is something savage about it, almost existential. The comedy comes from how straight Pym plays it: there is no attempt to ennoble the characters, no vast secret visionary interiority (take your pick: Ford, Updike, Salter etc); equally there is no accumulative undertow, no sense of something being 'held back', like *Remains of the Day* or whatever. There's lots of Larkin here, some Patrick Hamilton. The author she most reminds me of is Elizabeth Taylor, although there is a sense that at least love can save us in Taylor's books. Maybe it's just the shitty December weather but dang, it's hitting quite hard.

I love the Scudder books but haven't read that one - my local charity shop has a copy so might pick it up. Yes, Block's recognisable stamp (for me) is that strange combination of subtlety and sudden over-on-the-noseness (as well as his meticulous but nigh-invisble mystery plotting).

I like reading old kids books at Christmas and this year its "The Dark is Rising", which I didn't read as a child because there's no anthropomorphic animals as main characters. It's very good on atmosphere in a way that I appreciate as an adult but probably would've bored me as a child. Incredible sound design.

The early Scudder books (Sins of the Fathers is the first) are thinner, more straightforward mystery novels. There's a three-year publication gap between the third (Time to Murder and Create (1977)) and fourth (A Stab in the Dark (1981)) books, and you could almost say the series doesn't really start until then.

I really enjoyed "Eight Million Ways to Die" but "Ginmill" (four years later) is a whole other, spectacular thing

The book version of 'it gets good in S9'!

It will -- in the best sense.

Osvaldo Lamborghini - Two Stories

Please let me know what you make of this one. I'm a big big fan of Sublunary, and I have pretty decent exposure to experimental writing, but I thought this was genuinely complete nonsense, a chaotic surface with nothing underneath.

Didn't think much of the first story, but the second held some interest with it's exploration of different relationships and sexualities in that period of oppression in Argentina's history. It reminded me a little of Hilda Hilst's writing though yeah a lot more chaotic (or modernist lol)

Would probably get hold of another book of his, were it to be translated, which I am not sure it will.

Osvaldo Lamborghini sounds like a mysterious author from a Bolano novel.

There is a quote by him in the PR for the book:

"It scares me."

I am guessing we should begin a new thread for winter, yes? I will do so later today.

Glück’s About Ed seems to find me weeping over my oatmeal every morning, an image just bathetic enough that I have to question why I am crying— is it for Bob? For Ed? For all of my dead friends? Past loves? Who knows. It’s an incredible book.

A new WAYR thread has been hatched:

Nothing Doting Living Loving: What Are You Reading In The Winter of 2023?