what are you reading now?

[catalog]

As well as Monument Maker mentioned previously (which I’m enjoying even if it is a formless mess.) I’m also reading the latest Percival Everrett - his I am Not Sidney Poitier was one of my favourites last year - this is similarly a mix of playful narrative styling with much to say about identity and racism in the US. As well as these, I’ve got the Patrick Wright biog of East German writer Uwe Johnson - more like an act of psychogeography than a straight life of the artist. There’s Laura Elkin’s book on Paris on the go and I’m re-reading Dance to the Music of Time (up to 5th volume.) it seems like a lot but I don’t watch much telly and my kids have left home. (I’m not far off finishing the Cantos which I started in January.)

is the patrick wright bio of uwe johnson any good?

this article makes it sound pretty decent

German author's 'secret' life in county

A new book tries to unravel the mystery of why celebrated east German author Uwe Johnson ended up spending his final years in a Kent seaside town.

www.kentonline.co.uk

has anyone read any uwe johnson?

 

[jenks]

is the patrick wright bio of uwe johnson any good?

this article makes it sound pretty decent

German author's 'secret' life in county

A new book tries to unravel the mystery of why celebrated east German author Uwe Johnson ended up spending his final years in a Kent seaside town.

www.kentonline.co.uk

has anyone read any uwe johnson?

I really enjoyed it. It’s a big bugger but it moves along well. It has made me want to read the Anniversaries when I clear the decks a bit and I reckon he’s probably someone that quite a few on here would enjoy.

 

[jenks]

T J Clark’s Heaven on Earth: Painting and the Life to Come - he’s one of my favourite art writers, here he takes five paintings which straddle depictions of the interaction between the heavenly and this world. It is all rooted in his determination to really dwell on what exceptionally close observation reveals.
Mayflies by Andrew O’Hagan - a group of lads travel south for the Manchester G Max festival in 86. Catnip for a bloke in his 50s - second half of the novel is set in present day - essentially a novel about male friendship.
Vol8 of Dance to the Music of Time - third read of this series. Not really the British Proust but someone who can corral a vast cast of characters and track and trace the patterns of their relationships over time - ultimate big canvas writing.
Exteriors: Annie Ernaux - French non fiction published by Fitzcarraldo. Heir to Simone de Beauvoir in her ruthless interrogation of a woman’s life in modern France (The Years is her best.)

 

[Benny Bunter]

Larry Eigner - wow!

 

[catalog]

Bunny Hausen sent me woops' book which I dipped into and it's a corker. Some great writing

 

[woops]

Thank you @catalog

 

[Slothrop]

Recently finished the collected Viriconium stories by M John Harrison. Now kicking about for something to read next.

 

[IdleRich]

What did you think?

 

[mvuent]

the other day i got Pierre Shaeffer's Treatise on Musical Objects, which is sort of the Das Kapital of musique concrete/acousmatic music. it's THE big book, the one you're not just supposed to read--but consult. for example, when he was composing De Natura Sonorum Parmegiani organized his sound materials according to principles it lays out.

i have to admit that in everything i've read from him, Shaeffer's perspective is a bit alien. he's obviously a very interesting and erudite voice, but not only is he writing from an incomprehensibly early vantage point in the history of electronic music, he's also coming from a different cultural milieau; his intellectual outlook is one that i can't quite align with and that's probably been lost to time. plus, while he's very sympathetic to artists and good at anticipating what they'll find interesting and what they won't, he's still clearly a different sort of person. by contrast, i always get a strong sense of his successor Francois Bayle being a kindred spirit, a mentor.

so all that is to say, I think pouring over this thing is going to be worth it, but i'm not sure. anyone else read it?

 

[woops]

Vol8 of Dance to the Music of Time - third read of this series. Not really the British Proust but someone who can corral a vast cast of characters and track and trace the patterns of their relationships over time - ultimate big canvas writing.

The Soldier's Art. I've got books 7-9 in one volume from Anthony P's own library with his bookplate in the front

 

[catalog]

the other day i got Pierre Shaeffer's Treatise on Musical Objects, which is sort of the Das Kapital of musique concrete/acousmatic music. it's THE big book, the one you're not just supposed to read--but consult. for example, when he was composing De Natura Sonorum Parmegiani organized his sound materials according to principles it lays out.

i have to admit that in everything i've read from him, Shaeffer's perspective is a bit alien. he's obviously a very interesting and erudite voice, but not only is he writing from an incomprehensibly early vantage point in the history of electronic music, he's also coming from a different cultural milieau; his intellectual outlook is one that i can't quite align with and that's probably been lost to time. plus, while he's very sympathetic to artists and good at anticipating what they'll find interesting and what they won't, he's still clearly a different sort of person. by contrast, i always get a strong sense of his successor Francois Bayle being a kindred spirit, a mentor.

so all that is to say, I think pouring over this thing is going to be worth it, but i'm not sure. anyone else read it?

No, but the guy who organised a Dean blunt seminar a couple of years ago is, I think, doing his PhD on him and said that a lot of his biographical details have been deliberately obscured, cos he was a massive Vichy sympathiser during the war.

 

[mvuent]

No, but the guy who organised a Dean blunt seminar a couple of years ago is, I think, doing his PhD on him and said that a lot of his biographical details have been deliberately obscured, cos he was a massive Vichy sympathiser during the war.

he also spent a bunch of time in the 50s training radio technicians in africa through a french colonial institution, an activity that's depicted in a more flattering light on his wikipedia page than it is here, for example.

 

[woops]

i've done quite well recently since last thursday i read the end of the affair, mangarelli's to those gods beyond, alvarez's beckett and eric de maré's Wren's London.

 

[Slothrop]

What did you think?

(Re Viriconium...)

I enjoyed it, I think. I like the way that he uses the fantasy genre while simultaneously subverting a lot of it's expectations - so the worldbuilding is quite vague and deliberately inconsistent between novels, the heroes are not so much reluctant as sort-of resignedly playing a part, everything's just gradually falling into disorder and paralysis. But he still gets to play with these really fun settings and images and set pieces like backstreet swordfights and toxic wastelands and scalphunting automata.

 

[woops]

(Re Viriconium...)

I enjoyed it, I think. I like the way that he uses the fantasy genre while simultaneously subverting a lot of it's expectations - so the worldbuilding is quite vague and deliberately inconsistent between novels, the heroes are not so much reluctant as sort-of resignedly playing a part, everything's just gradually falling into disorder and paralysis. But he still gets to play with these really fun settings and images and set pieces like backstreet swordfights and toxic wastelands and scalphunting automata.

i should give his fantasy stuff another go

 

[thirdform]

re-reading Marquis De Sade's Juliette. All 1200 pages of it. He doesn't half waffle, he really needed an editor in Jail, even libertineage requires virtuous discipline.

 

[thirdform]

the other day i got Pierre Shaeffer's Treatise on Musical Objects, which is sort of the Das Kapital of musique concrete/acousmatic music. it's THE big book, the one you're not just supposed to read--but consult. for example, when he was composing De Natura Sonorum Parmegiani organized his sound materials according to principles it lays out.

i have to admit that in everything i've read from him, Shaeffer's perspective is a bit alien. he's obviously a very interesting and erudite voice, but not only is he writing from an incomprehensibly early vantage point in the history of electronic music, he's also coming from a different cultural milieau; his intellectual outlook is one that i can't quite align with and that's probably been lost to time. plus, while he's very sympathetic to artists and good at anticipating what they'll find interesting and what they won't, he's still clearly a different sort of person. by contrast, i always get a strong sense of his successor Francois Bayle being a kindred spirit, a mentor.

so all that is to say, I think pouring over this thing is going to be worth it, but i'm not sure. anyone else read it?

He's a pious catholic, and we're heathens. It's ultimately what it comes down to.

 

[woops]

re-reading Marquis De Sade's Juliette. All 1200 pages of it. He doesn't half waffle, he really needed an editor in Jail, even libertineage requires virtuous discipline.

Pleasures of vice: the third form cut

 

[IdleRich]

(Re Viriconium...)

I enjoyed it, I think. I like the way that he uses the fantasy genre while simultaneously subverting a lot of it's expectations - so the worldbuilding is quite vague and deliberately inconsistent between novels, the heroes are not so much reluctant as sort-of resignedly playing a part, everything's just gradually falling into disorder and paralysis. But he still gets to play with these really fun settings and images and set pieces like backstreet swordfights and toxic wastelands and scalphunting automata.

I found it quite depressing though. That resignedness that you mention permeated the entire thing and made me feel tired and sad by the end.

 

[Slothrop]

I found it quite depressing though. That resignedness that you mention permeated the entire thing and made me feel tired and sad by the end.

Agree, but that's kind of a mood right now...