what are you reading now?

[Corpsey]

Niceto have you back

Even if it means pain and humiliation for me

 

[Benny Bunter]

Been caning Wallace Stevens the last few weeks cos I got the big Collected poems, but I'm halfway through and I think I've overdosed now - the middle period is much more austere compared to the gaudy Harmonium material. So I've put it down for now and started A Farewell to Arms cos it's sort of the anti-Stevens in a lot of ways. What a contrast.

Also ordered the first four Earthsea books so that's my Xmas reading sorted. I'll come back to the modernist poetry again in the new year, sometimes you just need a palate cleanser.

 

[jenks]

Got three big re-reading projects on the go:
It’d been 30 years since I read all of E M Forster, doing them chronologically and am on Howard’s End and he’s a lot odder than those Merchant Ivory films give him credit for; just finished volume 4 of Proust which I’m really enjoyed much more than when I last read it and Sebald, I’d re-read Austerlitz before but Vertigo and Rings of Saturn have proved to be equally powerful.

Also reading all of Claire Keegan now. Total opposite of Proust - a miniaturist, telling details.

 

[borzoi]

i'm reading austerlitz right now as well -- good stuff

 

[woops]

i just finish a big biography of Clarice Lispector and most of the road to LA John fante

 

[Benny Bunter]

Love John Fante, you read the other LA/Bandini novels? The short stories and Brotherhood of the grape are really good as well, better than Bukowski I reckon. He's one of them where he just rewrites the same book over and over again but it's so readable you don't care.

 

[woops]

Love John Fante, you read the other LA/Bandini novels? The short stories and Brotherhood of the grape are really good as well, better than Bukowski I reckon. He's one of them where he just rewrites the same book over and over again but it's so readable you don't care.

no i haven't but i really enjoyed the road one, well silly so i will probably read more

 

[Benny Bunter]

Yeah Bandini is ridiculous and embarrassing, but I love all that Italian American family stuff with the tyrannical drunk father and all the dumb, selfish brothers and the Catholic guilt. Can't remember but I don't think road to la is one of his best, but like I said you just get variations on the same deal with every book, if you like one you'll probably like them all. He's really good at writing from the perspective of a kid in a lot of the short stories too.

I'm reading a farewell to arms at the moment and I love all the ridiculous Italians in that too

 

[woops]

Yeah Bandini is ridiculous and embarrassing,

he's hilarious

 

[you]

Got three big re-reading projects on the go:
It’d been 30 years since I read all of E M Forster, doing them chronologically and am on Howard’s End and he’s a lot odder than those Merchant Ivory films give him credit for; just finished volume 4 of Proust which I’m really enjoyed much more than when I last read it and Sebald, I’d re-read Austerlitz before but Vertigo and Rings of Saturn have proved to be equally powerful.

Also reading all of Claire Keegan now. Total opposite of Proust - a miniaturist, telling details.

Have you picked up the Carole Angier biography Speak, SIlence: In Search of W. G. Sebald? It's fascinating but clunky. Sebald's home town, particularly at that time, and his peers'—writers, artists, etc— progressive, class of 68 reaction to that atmosphere are evoked well. The forensic analysis of his work, how little he fictioned, and the choices he made when transposing other's lives into 'his stories' is also fascinating... but there is a drive of the book that feels a little off.

 

[jenks]

Have you picked up the Carole Angier biography Speak, SIlence: In Search of W. G. Sebald? It's fascinating but clunky. Sebald's home town, particularly at that time, and his peers'—writers, artists, etc— progressive, class of 68 reaction to that atmosphere are evoked well. The forensic analysis of his work, how little he fictioned, and the choices he made when transposing other's lives into 'his stories' is also fascinating... but there is a drive of the book that feels a little off.

It’s partly why I’m re-reading his stuff - I thought I’d read the biog once I was properly refamiliar with his stuff. Really loving Vertigo - much more than I did the first time.

Oh and I’ve got that pain book you goaded me into reading. It’s up to be read shortly.

 

[jenks]

LaCava's I Fear My Pain Interests You did not get much better. The narrator, Margot, is uninteresting, uninterested in her own life, and cool with those around her. The french word ressasser is used 4, maybe 5, times. It felt pretentious and lazy. She fakes a bad essay to avoid going to Brown University (her family name is one of the campus auditoriums) and—oh! the woe!—is accepted. She indulges in that very teenage humblebrag of rebellion anecdotes, being expelled from schools etc, deliberately underachieving etc. Margot is the daughter of a famous actress and a rockstar. Being recognised is a worry. She also cannot feel physical pain. She is an actress. She fucks a director and recognises a South American author he is reading for his next film because she wrote a book review when she 'needed money'... yeah..... right..... There are terrible icy non-sequitur dialogues, like DeLillo except nothing is happening in the world, profundity folds into inanity. She gets into a strange man's pick up truck in rural Montana because 'it's more interesting than Benadryl'. Seriously? That glib. Later, when flirting she writes '—such opportune timing, Mr. Graves.' Retching at this nudge wink indelicacy. Please. She talks about her naked body (a lot), her thin legs (she wasn't eating), she talks about her clothes a lot, telling us about her lace underwear. Non-plussed, hun.

@jenks , I want you to read this.

Margot gets a taxi from the airport and comments on the driver:

'Either way, she was repelled by how ostentatious or debased I was, sitting there in her backseat. As if all of it was communicable through the space of the car. I was the city descending, with my clothes, systems, ideas. She didn't want to chat. But when she did it was as if she'd been holding it inside for too long.'

I persevered with this, but it still feels like a hollow gimmick.

I’m about forty pages away from finishing. It feels like another affectless twenty something- that anhedonia thing. Goes all the way back to people Mary Gaitskill and AL Kennedy but now with a sprinkle of nepo money and glamour. Very flat writing which only works if you’ve got something gripping to tell. Also puts me in mind of Ben Lerner and Tao Lin - wanting to write about now but somehow focussing on the vapid nature of online life.

 

[you]

I’m about forty pages away from finishing. It feels like another affectless twenty something- that anhedonia thing. Goes all the way back to people Mary Gaitskill and AL Kennedy but now with a sprinkle of nepo money and glamour. Very flat writing which only works if you’ve got something gripping to tell. Also puts me in mind of Ben Lerner and Tao Lin - wanting to write about now but somehow focussing on the vapid nature of online life.

Ben Lerner certainly. I thought of Lin too when I read it, but there was something in Lin, a vibrant grey. Whereas LaCava's prose just feels lacklustre and careless and if it doesn't feel like that it feels smug. Also - the premise of the book takes a backseat, so much of the foci are around the protagonist's view and upbringing - the metropolitan snobbery, the introspective neuroses of privilege, the bottomless contemplation of family influences not the 1 in 10 million condition she 'suffers' from. I can see this condition is supposed to resonate with the dissociative anhedonia, but there is nothing given, it's a void. LaCava should've put effort into conveying this lack, rather than simply not. Because all we are left with is this empty apathetic woman that cares about no one, including herself. So why should a reader care?

 

[you]

Also... sexuality is handled with the delicacy of gonzo porn. 'Such opportune timing Mr. Graves...', essentially elbowing the reader in the ribs. The constant references to her thin legs and black lace underwear, the catchings of oneself in the mirror. These passages in particular came across as blunt and lazily contrived.

 

[jenks]

I’ve seen it described as a ‘feel bad’ story but really it’s a ‘written bad’ story. It doesn’t know what it wants to be - it could’ve been like a Brett Easton Ellis rich girl/ trust fund update or it could’ve been been some wry take on growing up with a couple of punks for parents, or a novel about the yawning emptiness and meaningless of modern life. Instead it was all a bit vain - I see she wrote for Vogue and there’s an element where the surface of long legged beauty is more significant than any actual insight. It’s like she’s read a digest of pomo theory, thrown in some allusions to 68 radical chic with some frankly laughable plotting and characterisation. I feel a bit mean saying all this cos she started following me on Twitter yesterday!

 

[you]

Certainly, there are tangents that could've been explored more. I agree with the three you mention, I too felt these were development opportunities not taken up when I read it. A further glaring theme not emphasised or explored with any depth is the mediation angle, the CCTV reference in the ending... dissociation and online self yadadada. I thought this could've gone to a very Cronenberg place, but it didn't.

I'm not surprised LaCava follows you. I am surprised you read as much as you do and have a Twitter account.

 

[shakahislop]

I’m about forty pages away from finishing. It feels like another affectless twenty something- that anhedonia thing. Goes all the way back to people Mary Gaitskill and AL Kennedy but now with a sprinkle of nepo money and glamour. Very flat writing which only works if you’ve got something gripping to tell. Also puts me in mind of Ben Lerner and Tao Lin - wanting to write about now but somehow focussing on the vapid nature of online life.

of the four or five things i've read recently along those lines (broadly the current autofiction thing), rachel cusk stands head and shoulders above the rest. i think she's the only one that says anything much about what it's like to be a human being, and not unrelatedly, the prose is much more precise and arty. thought ben lerners stuff was a nice description of what it's like to live in new york but not much more than that, and the tao lin book i read provoked a feeling not unlike that of scrolling through reddit for too long.

 

[catalog]

the tao lin book i read provoked a feeling not unlike that of scrolling through reddit for too long.

Leave society? I just read it a few weeks ago and really liked it. I think it's well constructed. Seemingly about not much and ultra mundane on one level, but enough bits in there to keep you going and found it quite affecting, the relationship with his mum and then the romance.

I like the voice he's found for himself.

But, you do wonder about him. Like, weird health preoccupations but is microdosing cannabis and lsd. I listened to a podcast with him and he sounds so weird and ill.

It trumped Jack of jumps by David Seabrook which my friend gave me, and I'm now back on.

It's good but he's so callous towards these murder victims. Which I knew was the case before I started reading it, but I'm surprised at the extent of it. It's good though, slowly getting a good sense of the time, place, people. And his placing himself inside it is good too, its just so vicious.

I finished the rainbow by dh Lawrence a few weeks back. OK but I was disappointed. I like how you don't know where its going and some of the writing is excellent, with a strong ending, but the content was a bit too mundane/workaday on the whole.

Maybe at the time it was groundbreaking to write a novel about fairly ordinary people, dunno. I liked it enough to maybe pick up another soon, perhaps sons and lovers, although might watch the film first.

I've also been reading this Trevor hoyle book called "the man who travelled on motorways". I got it for the title and cos he's from my neck of the woods, it's a 70s Calder book. Very sexually explicit but also some good descriptions of city centre design, odd encounters in pubs, but with a story that I still don't know where its going.

I got this bunch of short stories on the go aswell, it's a collection called "cosmogony", cannot remember the author, but I got it for the title cos I like that word. I've only read the first one so far, was ok but seems a bit like what @you and @jenks are talking about, somewhat overeducated woman moaning in a clever way.

And I picked up a few scans of old Dennis p eichhorn comics, "real stuff" and "real smut". Very readable in short chunks.

Probably best of all, and I breezed through it in 2 days, has been "cinema speculation" by quentin tarantino, I think @rubberdingyrapids mentioned it on here.

Lots of films described in his own idiosyncratic way that I never heard of that sound excellent (paradise alley, stallones directorial debut, sisters by de palma, escape from alcatraz, rolling thunder (which might be one for @version as its a schrader script, although apparently massively rewritten).

And also some really good description of his growing up/formative years especially the scene of him being taken to see a blaxploitation film by his mum's then boyfriend, with people shouting "suck my dick" at the screen while the film plays, and a 10 year old quentin joining in.

I think @woops has read "once upon a time in Hollywood" and said it was better than the film so might pick up that at some point.

 

[shakahislop]

Leave society? I just read it a few weeks ago and really liked it. I think it's well constructed. Seemingly about not much and ultra mundane on one level, but enough bits in there to keep you going and found it quite affecting, the relationship with his mum and then the romance.

I like the voice he's found for himself.

But, you do wonder about him. Like, weird health preoccupations but is microdosing cannabis and lsd. I listened to a podcast with him and he sounds so weird and ill.

personally speaking i didn't think it was shit, i just didn't want to read any more of it about halfway through. the most interesting part for me was for sure the internet-informed health obsession combined with the blind spot about microdosing, which i assumed was something he was using to make a deliberate point through the character, not something that he was doing himself in real life. that internet-health thing, the way a lot of people i know have very strong opinions on what to eat and what's healthy and unhealthy based on whatever they've read on the internet is something i bump into a lot in real life and it was good to see it on paper.

 

[shakahislop]

the worst book i read this year was Luster by Raven Leilani. i thought it was terrible. couldn't relate to the themes at all (american racial tension, i think) and I thought the writing was both ugly and hard to read. probably most importantly in terms of my own enjoyment, none of the people in it seemed to behave in a way which resembled how actual human beings behave, which is something i find really offputting.