Teju Cole: Open City (ILX Book Club #3, starts 27 June)

I was reading a long section about the fall of Paris last night in Alan Furst's The Polish Officer. One of the recurring themes was rumours about Paris being declared an 'open city', not a concept with which I was familiar but means that the city will put up no defence to invasion, and in return the occupiers are expected to spare its buildings and inhabitants. The book didn't resolve the rumours, but the declaration appears to have been made on 13 June 1940.

Anyway, this morning I open The New Yorker to find a review of Teju Cole's novel Open City. I've learned to pay heed to such synchronicities, and the book looks interesting. So here we are.

In one typical scene, Julius is in Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan, where “the Tetris-like line of buildings sat in the still afternoon air.” While women watch their children enjoy the playground there, Julius recounts the history of the slave trade that operated out of the city’s ports, bringing riches to the city’s bankers and merchants even well after slave trading became unlawful. Although it takes place predominantly in New York, Open City also follows Julius on an extended trip to Brussels during a half-hearted attempt to locate his maternal grandmother. And it is there – not in New York – that Cole uses the phrase “open city.”

…there had been no firebombing of Bruges, or Ghent, or Brussels. Surrender, of course, played a role in this form of survival, as did negotiation with invading powers. Had Brussels’s rulers not opted to declare it an open city and thereby exempt it from bombardment during the Second World War, it might have been reduced to rubble.

reading this book right now -- liking it a lot. maybe more for the descriptions of the narrator's walks around NYC than any plot elements at the moment.

Yes! Open City will be subject of our third ILX Book Club, commencing 27 June. I'm flagging this up now because it appears it's not been released outside the US yet - so British and other unamericans should order it now, there's just about time.

We'll be reading in two parts:

• week beginning 27 June: Part 1 Death is a perfection of the eye (start to page 146)
• week beginning 4 July: Part 2 I have searched myself (page 147 to end (page 259))

Thanks, IK.

ILX Book Club Nominations (Rolling thread)

^Please keep recommending for the next poll.

Was balking at the shipping charged involved in ordering this from the US, but it proved pathetically easy to find as a mobi download. RIP publishing industry :(

sounds like my kind of book, but i always wait for paperbacks and didn't see the noms thread. will check back when it's out in pb next year.

Did I miss what the second book was? Or was that Goon Squad?

It was. The Last Samurai was first.

I'm not happy at having a role in the-death-of-books now. I saw something suggesting it was out in the UK in August, which is a bit unfortunate.

I must be missing something but it's on Amazon in hardback for like £2.50 posting.

Also available Abebooks for around £10 + £2.75 posting.

$13 for the ebook? i don't know if i'll be reading this one.

Ah I was looking at Amazon US which was quoting me at least £8 shipping if I wanted it within two weeks. Still was very surprised at how easy it already seems to find illegal d/ls of relatively obscure new literary novels and how publishers don't seem to have learned anything from the last 10 years in the music industry: looks like there is a 3 month lag between the UK and US publishing dates of the new Hollinghurst novel.

Yes, I downloaded it too. I haven't checked if it's in good nick yet. Many of my downloads have been "serves you right" bad.

It is in good nick. I have started it.

It is about record shops closing down.

Who the hell is going to be interested in that? ~

Can't imagine.

i'm probably not going to be actively contributing to this thread due to time constraints and because i'm not a very analytical reader but I finished this book last night and I think I liked it. it seemed really different from the kinds of books I normally read so I'm still processing it mentally.

here's a book club question for everyone to discuss once they finish the book. i guess it could be construed as a SPOILER but it isn't really: he meets all these characters that have names, including random people he just meets on the street. but his (seemingly best) friend is just referred to as "my friend" throughout. this seemed significant but I'm not sure what it means exactly. thoughts?

I think I've kind of given up, at least for the moment.

So - are we kicking off today?

I've just finished chapter 4. I'm enjoying it, but I suppose my overwhelming impression so far is how Sebaldian it feels. Almost parodically so: the way a subway commuter dressed in black reminds the narrator of certain paintings by Velasquez, how a museum guard puts him in mind of Pnin (despite being West Indian?!). I have to say it sometimes feels a little bit affected and even precious - I groaned a bit when the narrator seemed to find the lurid, lycraed mass of the New York marathon physically painful to behold. Sebald was a 50something European emigré academic, so you could understand his frame of reference, but it seems pretty counterintuitive for a young Nigerian student to be so fogeyish. Maybe this is to be welcomed... but it stretches my credulity a little.

The lack of plot may prove more irritating as it goes on, but for now I'm happy to follow the flaneurie, film reviews, meditations on photography.

So it stops being about record shops closing down? Gah.

Yes, he goes on to draw parallels with a Blockbuster suffering a similar fate.

I got wired in this morning, two chapters down. I really like it, the voice suggesting extreme detachment while actually being capable of great, though unshowy, empathy is something I (think I) can relate to. It reminds me so much of Netherland in this.

I also admire the craft very much. I'm barely conscious that I'm reading, it's more akin to following an internal monologue. Again, Netherland is the model here.

found this at oxfam for £1.99!

A couple of oddities this morning:

• there are strange gaps appearing in the narrative. For example, at one point during a walk he takes a seat. A moment later he stands up, apparently recovering from a bout of sobbing. Yet the sobbing hasn't been described, nor any reason given as to why it happened.
• meanwhile events are being described which haven't happened. He meets a bootblack who describes in detail having bought his freedom from servitude, seemingly within the last twenty years. Then he witnesses a lynching. The lynching is explained a moment later; the bootblack's story is not, it's left in confusion which may simply be in that story's telling, but passes without any comment.

yeah, lapses in memory/narratives are (i think) pretty intentional here? ends up playing a big part in the novel.
anyhoo, i read this a few weeks ago, but am eager to talk about it. a haunting novel that's sticking with me. as everyone's noted, huge sebald influence (to the point where it sometimes seems imitative) but i didn't really mind.

I finished part 1 last night. Really enjoying it. I like how Cole gradually reveals more and more about Julius but plenty of gaps still remain (at least until the end of pt1). That plus the narrator's voice and fluid style are really drawing me in. There's definitely a tension in Julius between the analytical and the emotional especially regarding the identity/immigration/colonialism/imperialism/etc .....
And it's informative (!) but never feels dry or guidebook-y, and that seems like a hard thing to pull off.
Gonna try to finish before my vacation on Friday and am excited to discuss it in full in a week or so.

^ I agree with all of this. I'm confused about the whole Brussels digression though; it seems like the most half-assed plot development ever.

OK, just finished this today. Really enjoyed it.
Ismael, good point. I could see how the Brussels section might seem like an all-too-convenient way for Cole to discuss Europe vs America. Is that what you're objecting to?
I really liked the character of Farouq and maybe that's why his trip to Brussels didn't bother me. Plus Julius just seems so lonely and pent-up that the trip seems plausible for his character, an attempt at a temporary geographic cure. And he has such an ambivalent relationship towards his past/heritage -- he wants to explore it but also doesn't -- and the trip plays into that especially since his quest to finds his grandmother seems hopeless from the get-go.
I just re-read the New Yorker review by ILB's favorite (whipping boy) James Wood and Wood actually singles out the Brussels section as one of his favorite parts of the book. He calls it "the best, and longest, episode in the book ... Cole’s subtlest portrait of alienation and affection." I'm not sure I agree but I do like another point Wood makes about the Farouq/Julius conversations: "This is one of the very few scenes I have encountered in contemporary fiction in which critical and literary theory is not satirized, or flourished to exhibit the author’s credentials, but is simply and naturally part of the whole context of a person."
The whole Wood review is here:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2011/02/28/110228crbo_books_wood?currentPage=1

It doesn't bother me particularly, I liked it too and those are also good points you cite - especially about it being the best section, because that basically makes my criticism redundant (I was trying hard yesterday to write something similar in mood, and it's hard not to make it just boring).

No, it was more genuine confusion, less as to why he's chosen that basis for the visit when it prompts almost no action once he's there, and specifically nothing that couldn't have been done from New York. Things do happen in Brussels, it just seems like they could've happened anywhere. In Netherland the transatlantic hops are necessary for both theme and character; so far that's not so for Open City.

The Brussels section does seem thematically contrived, motivated by structural reasons rather than anything plot or character-driven - Brussels representing the once open city now closing down, just as New York/US is closing after 9/11. Seems a bit pat. Though I enjoyed the Farouq conversations, didn't really understand why Julius suddenly turned against him on the second meeting where they barely spoke, deciding that his philosophy was driven by rage or whatever.

2/3 through, so far really enjoying it. Trying not to read thread yet in case of spoilers or just so I can let my own thoughts warm up in the cerebral vacuum tubes. Two random notes

Think I saw a trailer at the Film Forum last week for a French movie about the kidnapping incident described in the Brussels section.

definition of a NIgerian slang word Julius uses
http://neologisms.rice.edu/index.php?a=term&d=1&t=2891

Half way through this now and I'm really enjoying it but I find the flatness of the narrative voice a bit odd when another character is telling his story - maybe it's because it's all filtered through Julius. Also I think Julius is maybe kind of a supercilious prick and I'm wondering if the slow revelation of his past is building up to anything that might shed light on that.

It reminds me of Netherland as well but, well, much better. NB I hate the narrator in Netherland.

The missus is also reading this and she also finds him a supercilious prick. I suppose his military schooling might contribute to this? Think I am a bit more impatient with the lonely-guy-just-thinking-baout-things narrative indirection.

Just finished section 1 last night - the concluding conversation with Farouq feels incredibly timely, post-Arab Spring.

I thought that as well (midway through Brussells at the moment). As a construction of ideas, and as a debate about immigration, I'm finding it fascinating. As a novel I'm not entirely convinced yet - I like the coolness of Cole/Julius's prose, and how he resists over-egging the pudding and going for more violence or drama in the character's experiences, but some of these stories feel a bit shoehorned in.

Re: supercilious prick, I'm not sure what the point of talking about his sexual liaison in Brussells was, if not to ostentatiously show off his unconventional taste in women. He does things like this a lot, usually about things he dislikes.

But this might all be leading somewhere. Curious to find out where the thing with his mother is going.

Stevie, please say "Jasmine Revolution" instead of "Arab Spring".

I might have another go at reading this book.

That is all.

Thought Jasmine Revolution was the new Thai eaterie in Crystal Palace. :/

Did he really want to find his oma? Or was dining with the grandmotherly Annette enough of a substitute?

Wonder what to read next after this in this vein? Netherland is obvious choice but thinking about going the Chinua Achebe route.

Second part doesn't seem to have any of the "oddities" mentioned upthread, does it?

Are we allowed to say yet FIRST HALF SPOILERS******* that in the first many of the people he meets and even the events he goes to are from the past or dead-obviously the bootblack and the Draft Riots, but also Farouq, because Julius pays him in centimes and the other phone guy in Euros. Dr. Annette Maillotte's age doesn't seem to add up and he meets her on plane after napping, even Polish poetry reading after Central Park nap seems from earlier era, the naps being like wavy heat shimmers before flashbacks. Another clue being that when it snows you can't tell what era it is. That part of meaning of title Open City is opening up doors and windows (wounds?) into the past?

D'oh! It's obvious when you say it now - though I'd assumed centimes was just an error. I was reading in a bit of a haze last night and the snow's presence was very confusing.

Some of the things are smaller shifts, like the centimes or the eighty year old doctor whose eldest son was 36

Not looking forward to The Sixth Sense-style movie version

A hundredth of a euro is a centime, no?

A cent, I think - still not convinced it's not just a typo

Like to think that given his art historian's photographic eye for detail that there are no typos. teju cole otm

OK, don't think Dr. Maillotte was an actual ghost like some others, given that she was reading a Joan Didion book that came out in 2005- her only method of time travel was being long-lived and still vital and able to tell her tale, like the guy from Berlin at the photo exhibit who looked in his sixties but was actually eighty-four.

And Wikipedia has the skinny on the centime:

In the European community cent is the official name for one hundredth of a euro. However, in French-speaking countries the word centime is the preferred term.

Someone else say something please.

what sticks out to me is all the temporal dislocation (or maybe discontinuity between reader's view and Cole/Julius's view of time), the way time seems to slow down or jump or pause ... but it's all done with a ton of control. he's so artful that he can transition around so smoothly but still gives the sense that he is avoiding, hiding, withholding

I've slowed down markedly. I'm nearing the end but I feel like the density and complexity has crept up on me unawares; I now fear that I've missed a lot, and that unfortunately reading at night saps the attention that's really needed. The last few day's comments have changed my outlook too.

Also, it feels like a completely different book in the second half. The narrative has just gone; I'm left with the feeling of unrelated, nebulous yet somehow interconnected events, any of which may not even be happening, and lacking the key to make sense of the whole.

Think I saw a trailer at the Film Forum last week for a French movie about the kidnapping incident described in the Brussels section.

So nobody else read this book? Or is it that they just haven't finished it?

I sure wouldn't want Julius to be my shrink (although I did actually find dark humor in the book ending with him becoming a fully trained and practicing doctor). J is pretty damn solipsistic. He'd probably look down on my tastes (I never got into classical and was a bit annoyed by "Elizabeth Costello" ... although I did a little googling on John Brewster and those paintings are pretty cool and creepy.) And aren't shrinks expected to evaluate their own lives instead of concealing/selectively remembering? I.e. The more events are not talked about, the more power they hold.
But I really liked the book, especially how Cole slowly reveals Julius to be an unreliable narrator. The big shocker revelation was pretty devastating (his silence and nonchalance ... jeez ugh), especially in light of the love/hate I had going for Julius, but the rape definitely ties in with his childhood traumas -- mom abandoning him, militiary school hell, dad's death. Kinda came out of the blue but makes sense.

Julius's reaction to the post office guy was funny too. I don't think the book is humorless.

Just finished it over lunch. I thought it was impressive, but I didn't particularly like it. Ultimately I found myself wondering "why is this a novel, rather than a collection of essays or whatever?" Actually, the bits where the drift was intended to have some emotional motive felt the most contrived to me: the trip to Brussels to supposedly search for his grandma and the revelation in the penultimate chapter. They seemed to be there purely to be "novelistic", to make it feel like there was some suspense or story or final revelation. Without them I could imagine the book existing as an exceptionally refined blog - went to the cinema, went to a gallery, had a picnic, went on holiday, listened to some Mahler and thought about things. I think I would almost prefer it that way! When I said the book was humourless I was really complaining about a lack of any kind of emotional engagement, and I think that is something I want from fiction - something that quickens the pulse in whichever way. I finished this thinking... well, that is interesting about Yoruba cosmology, or the slave history of Manhattan or pattern of bird collisions with the Statue of Liberty. But it didn't really move beyond the interesting.

I found myself wondering "why is this a novel, rather than a collection of essays or whatever?"
i kind of thought this too while reading it, but i guess the revelation at the end made me want to go back and re-read -- i think that the explicit knowledge of julius as an extremely unreliable narrator would maybe inform every page the second time around, in a way that it doesn't when you're first reading it.

It reminded me in a general way of the late David Markson, where there is a lot of interesting factual material presented but you still can feel the pull of the emotional undertow beneath the surface, related to that sense of avoiding or hiding Romeo Jones was talking about.

That's pretty close to my response, Stevie, except that I'd say highly impressive. It does irk me, though, that a high order or layering and allegory should nearly always be at the expense of plot. It can be done - the Hollinghurst book I read a couple of months back had more than Open City, but it was hardly Steven King.

I found the narrator very off-putting, and yes, a "supercilious prick," but not in an entertaining way. I didn't buy that a fairly young man was lugubriously walking around NYC, sounding like the ghost of Henry James and yearning for nothing more than to spend time with an elderly Japanese professor. I thought the segment with the Haitian shoeshiner who turns into a historical bootblack was interesting, but I don't think Cole set this up convincingly enough.

In the Brussels section, the narrator's interactions with Dr. Maillotte were fairly interesting, but the dialogue between Julius and Farouq read like an embarrassing college seminar. I thought the part where Julius seduces a woman who in his mind has the misfortune be fifty, wants to tell her it can't happen again, but somehow stops himself, and then goes home to bed and reads Camera Lucida was sort of ridiculous.

The big reveal toward the end from Moji seemed incongruous. I guess I could go back and read the whole book again with this in mind, and try to ferret out the hidden meanings . . . but I think that Cole relies too much on sprinkling his work with cultural references without really doing enough for the reader. If I'm being generous I could say that Julius's reading of Barthes above is a commentary on the "Death is a perfection of the eye" lead-in to Part 1, but I don't really want to work that hard.

Julius is Nobody's Fool

I didn't buy that a fairly young man was lugubriously walking around NYC, sounding like the ghost of Henry James and yearning for nothing more than to spend time with an elderly Japanese professor.

"The ghost of Henry James" ...ha, yes! that's it exactly. But I found his manner to be funny--it's such a put-on--like when he makes pains to distinguish himself from people who "antiscientiffically" think that all hot weather is direct evidence of global warming.

It's kind of a deadpan Adam West-style performance.

^^^good blurb for the paperback edition

He is like a grad student who has OD-ed on Sebald I think - and this could have been made funnier, if there were really some interesting narratorial unreliability going on, like in Pnin or something.

I did wonder whether his penchant for classical music stations from Europe, Dutch painting, etc etc, was some kind of wry comment on contrary Occidentalism - as opposed to the Orientalism that Julius and Farouq discuss.

I thought it's maybe a bulwark against his drives that he seems to have submerged? Also maybe some commentary on the primacy of Africa versus the erudition of Europe, which would be really creepy.

Um,...

Julius has definitely made a break. The American/Western Julius and his younger African self are like 2 different identities and I guess his taste is a reflection of his allegiance to the former and repression of the latter (and Saito is a kind of corrollary) ... but seems to be more to it than that

I keep thinking about V. He picks up V's book to try to get to know her better, get a sense of her mindset, but the book is just a piece of dry and impersonal academic history so he's left grasping for straws which is comparable to what I felt like was doing while reading OC. AND ... at some point, he talks about V's obituary but he just mentions it in passing. How'd she die?! Another lapse/omission that's tied to a heavy emotional moment.

Yeah, the thing with V. is weird. I had forgotten about her until he all of a sudden brings her up again at the end.

I thought that the quotes at the beginning of parts 1 and 2 were supposed to guide or inform the reading somehow. "Death is a perfection of the eye": we see what we want to see, and then "I have searched myself": some sort of Julius's coming to terms with himself. Also I think this plays into Julius's mentioning of Freud's theories of incorporation versus introjection.

I thought the references to other things were the most interesting part of this book . . . but I think they should have gone a lot farther, rather than serving as just cultural markers. Dr. Maillotte reads "The Year of Magical Thinking" on the plane . . . but this only warrants about a one sentence explication. The Heliopolis part was interesting, but didn't really go anywhere. I guess it's just like the title of the book--a tangential reference that requires the reader to fill in the gaps.

Speculated that V. had committed suicide while under Julius's care or while he was away in Belgium. Obviously I'll never know, since Julius doesn't tell and no other character came to tell us. I'd ask Julius's friend, but I don't even know his name.

Ha, good call. This is turning out to be like the "Tree of Life" of books--so many mysteries.

hm, i think i just assumed that V had committed suicide? maybe it's not spelled out, but that outcome is certainly foreshadowed, isn't it?

Yeah, I assumed suicide too with V ... which goes along with my theory of emotional block/omission since she was one of the main characters, and the only one of his patients, that had a big affect on him (I imagine he'd feel lots of pain and guilt if it was on his watch). And I don't believe that V or really anyone would commit suicide because of historical atrocities that she has no control over. Which is another missing piece. I'm imagining them just talking about history during a session, nerding out on the details while never getting to the root of V's issues.

My take on "death is a perfection of the eye" ... brought to mind the talk of September 11th and the "perfect" spectacle that was created. There was the mention of no bodies being seen, except for a few jumpers you could hardly make out. Also, the layers of NYC. One layer--the graveyard--dies and another layer--"perfect" skyscrapers-- appears and no trace of the former layer is left.

The part 2 quotation: "I have searched myself" ... I don't know about that one. Just struck me as ironic.

one "funny" part of this book was Julius forgetting his pin number. but mainly because that had just happened to me, and set off a tiny existential crisis of my own.

^^ oh yeah, that was funny (see!) and he thinks of himself as a pathetic old man. I thought J was a little obsessed with aging. and he keeps misreading people's ages too.

I thought how he acted after forgetting the PIN was so stupid ... He doesn't even contact anyone to make a new PIN or anything ... He just goes around blindly waiting until he remembers it.

Yeah, he was kind of obsessed with hanging out with older people.

I did read this but haven't sufficiently gathered my thoughts to post a response. Stylisically impressive, for sure, and on the whole an enjoyable and interesting read, but it didn't cohere as a work of fiction for me. Even as a novel of ideas it seemed to fail the test of having something fresh to say.

I was intrigued by Julius's(and I think by reasonable inference Cole's) attitude to Western art. Nowadays hostility to Western political/economic imperialism is usually accompanied by rejection of the "cultural imperialism", but Julius's seems to more or less swallow the claims of Western "high" art whole. What he resents is being unable to feel like an insider even though he is something of a connoisseur. There is something quirky about the the way that cuts across the current orthodoxy, and I'd have liked to understand his position better.

Finished this a couple of weeks ago but I've been away and haven't had time to post my thoughts. I didn't like the second half (everything post-Brussels) very much at all. The twist was unbelievably clunky and I didn't buy either the drama of that moment or the girl's reasoning for hanging out with Julius at all. By the end it was starting to read like a collection of Wikipedia entries, with all the unreliability that implies.

Also Julius is dead by the end, right?

I did wonder whether his penchant for classical music stations from Europe, Dutch painting, etc etc, was some kind of wry comment on contrary Occidentalism - as opposed to the Orientalism that Julius and Farouq discuss

I'm not sure, I read this as the novelist pushing back against aesthetic choices the reader might be tempted to ascribe to Julius. I don't think his tastes would be especially uncommon for a middle class mixed-race academic, even one who isn't as pretentious and self-regarding as Julius.

Julius is dead by the end, right?

How so?

He's musing about Mahler's final work, and then standing on a precarious fire escape in a storm, and then being invited on a strange boat sailing away by strangers, and leaves us with an story of disoriented birds flying to their death. Not that that last bit couldn't mean all number of things, but combined it certainly felt like a surrealistic death sequence to me.

It had passed me by, but the moment you mentioned it I thought of the climb onto the George Washington Bridge at the end of the penultimate chapter, and the climb down, with the bit in the middle left unsaid like every other transition in the book.

Thought he might be dead too, but then he seemed to live on. Then thought it might be some Jacob's Ladder or Life On Mars stuff going on.

Presumably Julius's interest in classical music/Dutch painting are a reflection of Cole's own. Cole has a professional interest in Dutch art and you don't write as knowledgeably about classical music as he does unless you have a deep interest.

There's nothing necessarily inconsistent about detesting Western colonialism and (apparently) buying into its claims to superiority in the arts. I guess it would have been a more or less orthodox position for black liberals a generation or so ago. But it seems out of synch with the times now, and I'd have thought Cole would have ruffled some feathers. I'd be interested in what he had to say. It's almost impossible to know what he thinks about anything from the novel itself, except that he's broadly liberal.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/10/perplexed-perplexed-on-mob-justice-in-nigeria/264006/

This thread is really good; dunno if pride is the right emotion, but I am proud we managed to put it together.

didn't realize there was a thread about this book. strange how people are reading much more plot into it than i did -- i suppose its flatness and digressiveness sort of invites this need to impose a more coherent structure.

i read it more as a series of moods, and the core theme as someone who wants to believe in this essentially liberal vision of a broad cross-cultural community, and can read the traces of history around him but even so he's constantly trying to reduce them to just history, and the story is not so much of an open city, as someone wanting to open themselves to the city, to feel like they can melt into its layers of accreted meaning and diverse milieux, be loved, accepted, and also to some degree ignored everywhere they go. and the tension is that this is a uniquely personal, dreamlike, trancelike vision/state that is both alluring and impossible. so for me the mugging was the most thematically blunt/revealing scene in terms of the whole thematic content of the book, and more than anything else it related to the arguments at the internet cafe.

the sections on just neighborhoods in new york felt very strange to me, because i recognized them so well. it felt like it wasn't doing any work at all, even though i saw that there was more than just walking around and describing stuff.

But as a whole the particular skein not of locations but dislocated that he pulls together did feel fresh to me, and important.

Even though the book would have functioned perfectly fine without it, I still feel like the rape accusation is the pivotal moment. Totally changed my view of Julius and the reliability of his narration (which I'd been wondering about all through the book anyway). In retrospect how like how flatly it's handled and that there is zero internal monologue about it (in a novel that's like 99% internal monologue), and lets you draw your own conclusions.

teju cole, internet troll

https://twitter.com/tejucole/status/351742607635910656

How can people not get that?!

by not knowing who teju cole is to have a set of assumptions to begin with i imagine

this guy is kind of the nabisco of twitter and of 'being actually well known'

This book is good because it seems plotless until the disturbing plot twist at the end. And the last chapter when he just reverts back to his guileless droning on about Mahler as if nothing has changed just made me feel nauseous.

http://www.okayafrica.com/news/teju-cole-mixtape-africa-in-your-earbuds-64/

nice

Yeah this was a bit too much lonely guy thinking baout things, though very nicely written. I will probably never read it again but if I were to, given the revelation at the end and some of the other gaps in his commentary (e.g. the suicide of V which perhaps happened during his lengthy vacation, and if it did would surely trigger a modicum of guilt in a normal person) I'd see if he ever treats a single person with more than a basic level of humanity, or if he ever displays a shred of personal psychological insight - or does he behave like a robot throughout?

what happened to Klata? Was there any drama or did he just silently vanish one day?

Looks like he drifted away in 2016, did a farewell lap with an entire George Michael tracks poll, and then popped up once in June 2020 to cheer the Liverpool premier league win.

Ismael Klata wrote this on thread Ilxors u miss on board I Love Everything on Jun 10, 2016

Hello everyone. I'm doing alright, and more touched than I probably really should be by the mention - but it does mean something to me, particularly when I probably haven't posted since the last World Cup.

I can't really remember why I drifted away. I got busy I guess, and had to cut some things out and get on with real life. I barely have an online presence in any respect now. I ran out of puff I suppose; I remember not really enjoying it, I don't really remember why. It certainly wasn't the creative writing thing - that went really well I thought. But writing is another thing I've had to leave behind.

Plus I'd been here a long time and was starting to repeat myself too often. As if to prove the point, I just had a read of Nick's 'best first listen' thread and was tempted to make a double return by adding another voice for Discovery, among others - but I had a vague feeling, checked back and found I'd made an identical post about five years ago. Nobody needs that.

Anyway much <3 to all. I do still have the occasional lurk from time to time - I've even put in the odd ballot when there's a poll I dig.

Otherwise I'm exactly as you'd expect, sitting on my couch enjoying my man Giroud ripping it up at the Euros. Aren't ITV's Art Deco credits lovely?