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What I’ve been reading

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This blog’s silence lately has been partly due to the fact I’ve been more interested in reading than blogging this year. Here’s a list of books I’ve read so far:

Breezeway and Three Poems by John Ashbery.

Report from the Interior by Paul Auster. I’m sorry to report that I did not enjoy this book very much. I love Auster and his language is always beautifully clear, but I couldn’t help but expect more from a memoir that purported to take me inside the author’s child mind.

Improvisation: Its nature and Practice in Music by Derek Bailey. (second reading) I couldn’t think of anyone more qualified than Derek Bailey to write this book. I read it a second time for research purposes (I intend to write something on Bailey).

The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge by Georges Bataille. This is not actually a book that Bataille wrote. It is a collection of notes, essays and lectures assembled by translator Stuart Kendall and published in 2001. Kendall seems to have been working very hard in recent years to establish himself as an authority on Bataille. And while I’ve enjoyed his translations and essays, I’m not convinced his new translation of Inner Experience is indispensable–not enough to pay the hefty price. It’s primary virtue seems to be that it contains two texts not included in Leslie Anne Boldt’s version. Those texts appear in The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge.

The Collected Poems of Samuel Beckett and The Letters of Samuel Beckett: 1941-1956. I’ve written about the first book. It’s taking me a long time to get through the three volumes of letters, but when I’m done I plan to write something about them.

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter. Oh, how I enjoyed this book! If this is feminist literature give me more. It should be considered a classic. Highly recommended.

In the Circus of You: poems by Nicelle Davis and artwork by Cheryl Gross. The book is described as “an illustrated novel-in-poems”, with poet and artist sharing equal billing. My problem is I don’t enjoy Gross’s work nearly as much as Davis’s and rather than creating an artistic whole, I think the combination of poems with images creates a less than perfect echo chamber. Seeing the line, “You taught your hands to move softly as thieving mice” translated into image (literally as a hand with a mouse’s head for an index finger) does not enrich the experience for me. On the contrary, it blunts the work of imagination for me. Besides, here as elsewhere a powerful poetic image becomes crude when realized so literally as a drawing. Davis’s poems are so good on their own they don’t require such distractions. On the strength of those poems alone I must recommend this book.

Four Novels by Marguerite Duras. One thing you notice reading Beckett’s letters is he is almost never heavy-handed on the praise. So when he went apeshit over the radio adaptation of a short novel by Duras I had to check it out. I’m glad I did.

The Road to Los Angeles, 1933 Was a Bad Year, Wait Until Spring, Bandini and West of Rome by John Fante. I’ve written about Fante.

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. This is my fourth reading of the novel. Or my fifth. I’ve lost count. Really. I like it that much.

Hyperion by Friedrich Hölderlin. “Crashingly beautiful” people on the internets used to say not long ago. That describes this book. Stunning.

Dean and Me: A Love Story and The Total Film-Maker by Jerry Lewis. Also: Jerry Lewis by Chris Fujiwara, Enfant Terrible!: Jerry Lewis in American Film edited by Murray Pomerance and King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis by Shawn Levy. Dean and Me is a  raconteur’s account of the relationship, of interest primarily to Lewis fans. The Total Film-Maker is fascinating and a must-read for Lewis fans. Fujiwara’s book is outstanding and highly recommended. There is much of interest in the essays of Enfant Terrible! Levy’s book is another matter. It’s deeply researched and deserves to be read. However, Levy’s disturbing lack of understanding of Lewis’s art–indeed, his apparent lack of feeling for it altogether–results in some ugly assessments of Lewis the man. I’m mortified by the way Americans turn on their cultural icons, and Levy’s book is in many respects a more highbrow version of the media bashing we’ve seen of many stars–think Michael Jackson. I’ve written about Lewis.

The Crossing and Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. I admire McCarthy so much that I question every fucking comma I write and I have a mortal fear of semicolons. Quotation marks? Only when I have to, man. Seriously, he’s all that and a bag of chips. OK I’ll stop. I liked The Crossing more than Blood Meridian. The latter is just so horrifying, so disturbingly violent. And I really don’t need to be told in such detail how evil men are. It’s a long prose poem of violence. Go ahead and read it if that’s what you’re into. But The Crossing offers more. One of the most amazing parts of the book is when I had the uncanny feeling that the wolf’s spirit had entered Billy’s body. It’s an outstanding novel.

Cabot Wright Begins by James Purdy. (second reading) James Purdy is one of the greatest of nearly unsung heroes in American literature. Cabot Wright Begins was published in 1964. At that time Andy Warhol, the Pop movement and so much that continues to inform our culture was just cranking up. This novel is at the cusp, a new world budding out of the ashes of an old one. Just look at the plot: a woman prods her would-be writer husband to go to New York to write the story of a notorious serial rapist. While he’s gone she fucks another man. Meanwhile a hotshot editor desperate to hold on to his status seizes the project for purely commercial purposes. Just who is being raped at any given time, in what way and by whom, propels this great book. It should be as well known as Warhol’s soup can. read it.

Beyond Psychology, Ether, God and Devil, Cosmic Superimposition and Passion of Youth by Wilhelm Reich. I’m a Reichian. There, I’ve said it. I’ve written about Reich this year.

The Philosophy of Andy Warhol by Andy Warhol. Anyone who wants to understand contemporary art must read this book. Warhol is the single most important figure, purely in terms of influence, in American culture of the past fifty years.

The Waves by Virginia Woolf. I read The Waves and The Sun Also Rises back to back purely by chance. And if I hadn’t I never would have thought of comparing them. Yet it is fascinating to do so. Woolf gives the reader disembodied voices, swelling and receding, one after the other, distinctive yet connected to one another like waves in the sea. Hemingway gives you bodies in action in physical space. What they say seems to be just another aspect of their physical presence. Yet, as in The Waves, the individuals are connected to one another. These are novels about inter-humanity. It’s curious, but while I find myself admiring Woolf’s mind, I admire Hemingway’s artistry more. I think his novel is every bit as mysterious and deep as Woolf’s, simply because I think the body is as mysterious and deep as the mind. Rather, I think body and mind are one. In a way, both Woolf and Hemingway say that.

What I’m currently reading:

Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. I don’t find it as enjoyable as V or Mason & Dixon, but I certainly see what the fuss is all about.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. I found a nice copy in a thrift store and decided to give it a go, cause it’s so famous and all. It’s a much lighter read than I had thought it would be, and while I find it amusing, I’m not laughing my head off.

The Marquis de Sade by Gilbert Lely. I’ve read this once before. Currently I like to read a few pages while my lover drives us to the beach, once or twice a week. Sade is simply one of the most fascinating people in history, and one of the most important writers of all time. Just one man’s opinion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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