i read pretty

introductions & (pre-pre-)pre-introduction materials.

2010-12-18T14:35:00.000-08:00

clearly, the penguin classics are all about giving you your money's worth in pre-reading material. whew. reading all these seriously took about as long as it took to get through the first two-chapters-times-three... i won't get too bogged down in describing the pre- material, but here's a breakdown, a first pgh comparison and some notes/thoughts.

davis:
1. Index
2. Translator's Introduction
3. Suggested Reading
4. Chronology

steegmuller:
1. Translator's Introduction
(then right into to the book. blammo. not even an index!)

wall:
1. Contents
2. Preface by Michele Roberts
3. Acknowledgments
4. Chronology
5. Introduction
6. Further Reading
7. A Note on the Translation

there are things you come to understand about the translators and translations, right off the bat. for instance, out of all the introductions, only davis' began in the voice of flaubert. which isn't to say the other translators are more callous to flaubert's voice, but their priorities are more about revelation, than davis who seems immediately dead-set on establishing a super-high degree of transparency.

davis:
is quote-heavy and talks about the story through flaubert's letters to louise colet. describes flaubert, his working conditions right down to the time of day his mother would leave the house... it's an assessment more than a theory, which, much like "story" in her fiction, is something that colors itself in, in the background, while you're absorbing her collected, organized data.

steegmuller:
honestly, it just reads like a pretty standard intro/essay? illuminating, but with a very scholarly mouth-feel.

wall:
i read last and it was definitely a sock in the gut, compared to the crispness of s & d's. he is one, dark motherfucker. like he mentions flaubert saw his father working on dead bodies. and it gets darker from there. while davis opts for translucency, wall is very... visceral.

phrases like:
"The grotesque conjunction of the sacred and the profane pleased him."

"He had promised himself and his friends that his first book would be a thunderclap."

"It was to be a luxury item, gratuitously crafted and minutely detailed. His mother remarked, judiciously, that the pursuit of the perfect phrase had desiccated his heart." (BURN!)

worth noting:
both wall and davis include steegmuller in their recommended reading lists.
wall is the first to point out in his breakdown of characters that there are three Madame Bovarys in the novel. also the first to draw a connection between emma/femme and hommais/homme. uh. he is also the only one to break down every single character.

a cool discrepancy also worth noting:
wall edition, in the introduction by roberts, flaubert was "crying" as he wrote the final lines ("Closing the novel, you might be crying your eyes out as Flaubert himself was when he wrote the final, tragic scenes.")--but wall says flaubert was "vomiting repeatedly as he wrote the closing scenes."

---

but don't take my word for it!-- the three openings:

davis:
"'Yesterday evening, I started my novel. Now I begin to see stylistic difficulties that horrify me. To be simple is no small matter.' This is what Flaubert wrote to his friend, lover, and to fellow writer Louise Colet on the evening of September 20, 1851, and the novel he was referring to was Madame Bovary. He was just under thirty years old."

(flaubert-y! also, i guess that means he started three days before my birthday. well--three days and about a hundred thirty-one years...)

steegmuller:
"Scholars with a calendrical turn of mind have computed that the first scene of Madame Bovary--Charles's entry into the classroom--takes place in October, 1827, and the last scene--Charles's death--in August, 1846. The married life of Charles and Emma extends over a period of nine years, beginning in 1837."

(fact-y!)

wall:
"Born in 1821, Flaubert was the son of a highly successful provincial doctor, the director and chief surgeon of the municipal hospital in the town of Rouen. His family lived in the gloomy residential wing of the hospital, in the midst of blood and death, as Flaubert always remembered it. Just over the wall of the garden where he played as a child, there were corpses laid out in the dissecting-room. He and his sister would peep over the wall to observe their father, with his sleeves rolled up, probing and slicing, pausing to wave them angrily away from the forbidden spectacle."

(see what i mean about viscera? actual viscera.)

hot madame bovary on madame bovary on madame bovary action.

2010-10-16T21:28:00.000-07:00

i have the wicked lady-hots for lydia davis('s brain). this is news to absolutely no one who knows me or has seen me clutch to my bosom the gargantuan maurice blanchot reader, wherein davis' translations cozy-up ever-so-neatly in the same volume with paul auster's. like baby cats. sexy, deconstructivist baby cats.

when davis' translation of "swann's way" came out, i spent a good year, year and a half carting around two translations of "remembrance of things past" to read side by side. mainly because i couldn't remember many of the details the first run-through. (first time with proust i was sixteen and didn't know exactly what i was getting into before it was too late. all i knew was: nin was cool and sure seemed to like proust.) sure, it was heavy (actually heavy) but it was an excellent way of reading, where the two versions created between themselves a spectrum for the original french to make itself clear as it could be to a girl who doesn't read french. which is fantastic. because i don't read french.

as there are upwards of 15(,000,000,000....) translations of "madame bovary" and as there are less volumes (only one! it's all in one book!), i figured carting around three wouldn't be obscene.

so, folks, that is what i am doing. i am reading "madame bovary" for the first, the second and the third time -- at um... the same time. and revive this old lit blog of mine/ours to house whatever thoughts/progress come of all that. for what it's worth. (for science?)

madame bovary / flaubert (trans. by lydia davis)
madame bovary / flaubert (trans. by francis steegmuller)
madame bovary / flaubert (trans. by geoffrey wall)

i briefly thought of adding a fourth translation, so i'd have an even ratio of dude translators to lady translators... but i think i'm going to hold off on that. how i chose them was random, pretty much. steegmuller's had the best cover on the fiction shelves, and i plucked wall's from the penguin classics. the girl behind the counter recommended ajac's translation but of course that one is out of print. it is also worth noting that the hardcover lydia davis was sold out and stefan of unabridged books, chicago so, so kindly let me buy the special back-room staff copy. god fucking bless. seriously.

my main issue with The Golden Compass

2008-01-22T22:15:00.000-08:00

>>A fresh seal lay on the snow. The bear sliced it open with a claw and showed Lyra where to find the kidneys. She ate one raw: it was warm and soft and delicious beyond imagining.
"Eat the blubber too," said the bear, and tore off a piece for her. It tasted of cream flavoured with hazelnuts.<<

I know it's a fantasy book. But is anyone here fooled into thinking raw seal sounds really really good? Cream flavoured with hazelnuts? C'mon, Phillip Pullman.

the best of 2007 (as supposed by kaylen)

2007-12-12T12:13:00.000-08:00

top ten favourite things read this year
10. the crying of lot 49 thomas pynchon

9. kafka on the shore & the elephant vanishesharuki murakami

8. here is where we meet john berger

7. murphy samuel beckett

6. the body artist don delillo

5. no one belongs here more than you short stories by miranda july

4. mere anarchy short stories by woody allen

3. new york trilogy paul auster

2. cosmicomics italo calvino

1. moby dick herman melville

honorable mentions: only revolutions mark danielewski; the object stares back: on the nature of seeing by james elkins; varieties of disturbance by lydia davis.

worst/most disappointing of 2007:
the brooklyn follies by paul auster (just disappointing...)
the copwriter's handbook
neverwhere neil gaiman
white noise don delillo
pale fire nabokov (just not what i was expecting)

favourite places to read 2007:
. originally, higher ground
. for a stretch of time, i really enjoyed reading on our front step (back when the pear tree was still lovely)
. my bed
. standing at the kitchen counter on saturday morning (if you haven't tried reading and standing in the kitchen: it feels wonderful)

* catch up *

acquired:
new copy of swann's way (lydia davis translation)
the stranger albert camus
invisible cities italo calvino
cosmicomics italo calvino
consider the lobster david foster wallace
selected essays john berger
+
handfull of mcsweeny's collections.
handfull of chapbooks from jonathan.

{i'm sure there's more to it than that, but i forget...}

read:
beowulf (re-read before seeing hte awful awful movie in 3D IMAX)
pig earth john berger
murphy samuel beckett
exile & the kingom & the plague albert camus
selected essays john berger
cosmicomics, invisible cities , numbers in the dark
& six memos for the next millenium italo calvino
how to make love to a negro dany laferrière
the insanity defense collection by woody allen
to begin (+ many more) by jonathan ball.
thumbscrews natalie walschots

plan to read, but who knows for certain:
satanic verses
wind-up bird chronicles
consider the lobster
re-read swann's way (lydia davis translation)
lilac & flag

a banville a day

2007-11-27T11:22:00.000-08:00

i've never read a book as slowly as i have john banville's 'the sea.' if you knew me, or at least were familiar with my frequently visited places, you'd see me read a few pages - in some cases, a paragraph, or even a single sentence - and throw the book down in a sort of lingering, jealous disgust. banville's prose is thick. ridiculously thick. i haven't read most of his work.

it's really more like eating an incredibly sumptuous meal - i feel full after each time i sit down to read a piece of it, and i can go no further. loosen the belt a notch, sit back, look out the window, and sigh.

it's ridiculous how good this book is.

boxer's fracture

2007-11-20T23:16:00.001-08:00

i sallied forth on november first, intent on writing 50,000 words.

on the fourth, i gave up.

on the sixth or seventh, i retreated into a rabbit-hole of total depression, got insanely drunk, and ended up fracturing my right hand on the side of my friend & roommate's face. he wouldn't leave me alone, you see. so now i have a cast on. makes it difficult to write. (point of order: he also broke his hand on my face - same injury! - though i'm sure he would like it elucidated that he hit me three times whereas i only hit him once.) plus, i have to find a new place to live. so i haven't had much time to read, but in the throaty interim, i've acquired:

the mysterious flame of queen loana (umberto eco)
the wooden sea (jonathan carroll)
blood meridian (cormac mccarthy)

& today:

the sea (john banville) - JUST because of the random line i read:

The past beats inside me like a second heart.

i'm nearly done with the wooden sea. nice little sarcastic, humor-y bit of scifi surrealism.

dying to read the new pynchon, since it's out in paperback. also dying to read the gunslinger graphic novel. there's also a new clive barker (mr b gone?) & a new alan lightman (ghost).

I HAVE NO TIME

(books i plan to read soon:

half-life (shelley jackson)
suttree (cormac mccarthy)
ghostwritten & cloud atlas (david mitchell)
the possibility of an island (michel houllebecq)
riddley walker (russell hoban)
god is dead (ron currie, jr)
varieties of disturbance (lydia davis)
against the day (pynchon)

)

a new personal record...

2007-11-01T20:05:00.000-07:00

because i am a deeply disturbed girl with an unhealthy relationship with books (or maybe it is just my relationship to money that is so unhealthy)i have purchased more than $200 worth of books today. in under 15 minutes.

the booty

haruki murakami's the wind-up bird chronicles & my own edition of kafka on the shore

albert camus's the plague & exile and the kingdom

nabokov's pale fire

truman capote's music for chameleons, other voices, other rooms & breakfast at tiffany's (not a book i'd normally read, but i've watched the movie more than enough to warrant giving it a go-round. plus, obviously i was feeling indulgent.)

there are also others that will remain unmentioned, as they are gifts. and don't bother poking about in my room either, rhianna, they're not here.

death of a copywriter.

2007-10-23T19:36:00.000-07:00

barring my ruthless love affair with doing laundry, i was likened to peg bracken by an ex today. he points me by way of her obits andd i had to admit to a degree of overlap. besides being bitter as widows and judgmental to boot, we're both ad copywriters. the difference? she's an ad writer who also wrote several books including THE I HATE TO COOK BOOK and an etiquette book, I TRY TO BEHAVE MYSELF.

Start cooking those noodles, first dropping a bouillon cube into the noodle water. Brown the garlic, onion and crumbled beef in the oil. Add the flour, salt, paprika and mushrooms, stir, and let it cook five minutes while you light a cigarette and stare sullenly at the sink.

— Recipe for “Skid Road Stroganoff"

The I HATE TO COOK BOOK has about 200 recipes, divided into chapters with headings like Potluck Suppers, or How to Bring the Water for the Lemonade and Desserts, or People are Too Fat Anyway.

of course her books are all out of print, but if you would happen across one, let me know. even though she uses some pretty hideous ingredients like crushed frosted flakes and embraces anything tinned, there's some charming reading to be had. so don't be a stranger to the cookbook section next time you're in a secondhand shop–you may just find my christmas present.

auster, calvino, auster, calvino, (borges?), cervantes

2007-10-22T11:18:00.000-07:00

i have never read "don quixote." there are some things which i feel i have absorbed on a cultural level, or feel i know enough about in order to understand them without having read them. or, at least, this is how i used to feel. i don't know, so much, anymore. after having read borges' "labyrinths," and now, auster's "new york trilogy," i feel as though i'm missing something. but wandering into my favourite used book store yesterday & picking up a copy of the cervantes left me baffled. it's one of those books that just requires more effort than i have to invest in anything right now.

but i keep reading books that make me: A) never want to write again, and B) want to die. the latter feeling is nice around the edges - it's like total admiration, the kind of idolatry for the craft of words that makes me abase myself in front of it. some phrase from Auster - "he thought he would find himself in the words" - made me question why i even read books, or why i wrote, or why i really did anything. bastard.

so, next, then, and already a few in, a book of italo calvino's short stories - "numbers in the dark," which is already making me slightly crazy. i have no idea what's next.

also, i seem to have become oddly obsessed with the i ching.

waking up from pynchon, etc

2007-10-20T09:35:00.000-07:00

so i just finished 'the crying of lot 49'. pynchon. no, i'd never read it before. don't you just love/hate when someone asks you if you've read something & you know you SHOULD have, but you just haven't yet, for whatever reason? that makes me climb the walls. in any case, i finally picked up a cheap paperback edition of the book & devoured it in the space of a day. finished it about ten, fifteen minutes into my shift at work (i do the maitre'd-thing at a local bar/grille, it's pretty slow in there until about seven or eight), on a monday night. monday is one of my least favourite nights of the week to work, because i share the shift with a retarded elf-woman waitress who is lazy and stupid. in any case. so i finish the book, stare around dreamily, and then realize i have about three hours left to go and no caffeine in my system.

which is when the rush hits. having only ever read one other pynchon (gravity's rainbow, and only half), i had no idea the power of his concluded narrative. i waded around in the dim restaurant, totally fuzzed out of it, completely useless in my employment. i had a small "app-slip" pad in my pocket (appetizer slip, used for making orders in the kitchen) & a pen, but my thoughts whizzed by. pynchon made me want to write. i was hungry to write. i was also despairing, because there's no way in hell i can ever aspire to write like he does. genius. total genius. i have never experienced anything like 'the crying of lot 49'.

i found a copy of durrell's 'black book' (i'm looking at you, kay) & a copy of an interview with him, conducted by marc alyn - entitled 'the big supposer.' so far, it is worth the fifteen dollars i spent - however, in the midst of this weird, bleak fall, i have decided (FINALLY) to pick up paul auster's 'new york trilogy' & am obsessing over it, now, too.

this is a time for reading, and i couldn't be more thrilled. has anyone read any of anne enright's 'the gathering' - which just won the man booker? i read an excerpt over at the telegraph.co.uk, and at first was a little disgusted at what seemed like facile writing, but there's something there. i'm curious to read what beat out mcewan's latest, though i haven't read it. also, has anyone read 'christine falls' by john banville's pseudonym? a co-worker was just reading 'the world without us' by alan weisman ... fascinating excerpts, from what i read. portland - and maine - is such a small town, though, and we don't get what we should for reading material. it's limited to the small estuaries just off the mainstream. i never hear about the things i'd like to. oh well. west coast, here i come (or bust)

short story shorts.

2007-10-03T12:23:00.000-07:00

general update

currently reading: murphy by samuel beckett

purchased: the book of illusions & the brooklyn follies by paul auster; anna karenina by tolstoy; waiting for jake by china mieville; fragile things by neil gaiman

haruki murakami the elephant vanishes
it seems to be the most subtle tweaks and turns he takes into the fantastical. plots stripped down to the luscious, evocative story-meat. i've thought about more than one of these stories after reading, and even bought a new copy of anna karenina because of one. do i recommend it? you bet.

tatyana tolstaya white walls
amazing what the right translator can do. unlike the slynx (which was engaging enough but lacked the visceral phrasing to sink my teeth into) many of the short stories were fluid and lovely and i guess it's some of the best writing i've let into my head for awhile now. hard to ignore the familiar russian depression. to sum it up i finished her stories, terrified of getting old but really, very enchanted.

raymond carver call if you need me
i tend to have a difficult time appreciating stories with carver's domestic theme. if murakami is subtle, carver is ten times as subtle with his quirks. it is a lot of adultery, a lot of divorce. however, all of his stories are consistently, solidly well-written, and well-crafted. plenty thuds of disappointment in people. very real, very gentle storytelling.

lydia davis varieties of disturbance
this lady's brain sets my jealousy meter off big time. one my favourite translators when it comes to most french lit (especially anything blanchot), married to paul auster, and tied to a number of incredible accomplishments. i've admired her for many moon. i didn't realize, until rhianna read and then seethed, that lydia davis's book wasn't really a collection of "short stories". like proust and blanchot, her writing is extremely observational. the story is composed of her, describing or breaking things down while a story colours itself in, in the background. honestly, your enjoyment depends on how much you enjoy kicking back and reading archived detail and analysis.

for example: she breaks down, in staggering detail, a collection of letters sent from a 3rd grade class to a fellow student in the hospital. for pages she organizes her labours, discussing and comparing their grammar, their sentence structures, the level of sensitivity or aggression in their vocabulary... to me? oh, boy, do i like it. but if organization and description alone don't do it for you, trust me (or rhianna) that you're bound to think it's a frustratingly boring wad of words that go nowhere interesting (if they go anywhere at all).

woody allen mere anarchy
all i can really say is that it's insane how much humour this man can pack into a handful of words. the way he writes plots may get formulaic after awhile, but the detail, the characters and the way he lines up elements like dominoes for the length of the story and sets them off in a chain reaction in the last gasp...it all works to pull his stories off in interesting ways.

i love banville but hate blogger

2007-09-20T10:05:00.000-07:00

hi friends

it is easier for me this way:

'the book of evidence'
'ghosts'
--- john banville

'the spooky art'
--- norman mailer

'the sea came in at midnight'
--- steve erickson

i am sure there were others but i can't remember now.

+ banville is exquisite. i am sure that i join the ranks of many a lit critic when i say that i find his prose to be absolutely astonishing. he has vaulted to the forefront of my favourite writers. when i read his books i wish i wrote them. that's all, really. he inspires in me this deep, writhing jealousy that i think is my writerly self going "WRITE, DAMMIT, WRITE" and being all impatient, which is never really all that good for a state of mind about to write ... anyway.

i've only ever read one other book by banville, which is 'nightspawn,' something i picked up largely at random and having read mark sarvas go on & on about 'the sea,'i've been in love with the man's style ever since. in any case. 'ghosts' left me completely confused, and 'the book of evidence' destroyed me. i can't wait to get my hands on his other works.

+ steve erickson confuses me. i love his ideas. i love his mind. i love sentences he writes. but goddamn if sometimes i just don't understand what the hell is going on, what he's trying to say. i can't adequately describe how reading him makes me feel. i enjoy it, but i never feel totally satisfied.

+ norman mailer is an eighty-year old prick. i suppose, though, being eighty, he's kind of earned that privilege. in 'the spooky art', which i highly recommend, mailer spends a bunch of time talking about the books he's written and the books others have written. he writes gorgeous prose about marijuana, oddly enough, some of which is quoted on 'the wall' at my apartment (a big piece of paper with sharpies hanging from it), discourses at length about truman capote and et cetera. the man is a force of nature. his strength in writing is undeniable. i have never read anything by norman mailer other than this book. but now i kind of want to. god, he's SUCH a prick. but its a great book.

okay, that's all. next: amnesiascope, by steve erickson ... maybe also only revolutions, which i'm about three chapters into ... i don't know.

also, i hate blogger but wish i had a blog that was cool.

short story gluttony.

2007-09-12T14:08:00.000-07:00

these days i cannot sit still. i cannot sit still, i cannot pay attention, maintain interest in lengthy plots... honestly, writing for dell 8 hours a day is enough to make any girl ADD. and because of this compromised attention span, i've taken to reading short stories. besides a handfull of chekhov, miranda july, kelly link, paul auster, and dave eggers, this is a section of my personal library that's severely lacking.

so, i went on a book safari the last couple weeks to get recommendations and bulk up.

purchased:
white walls by tatyana tolstoya

the elephant vanishes by haruki murakami

call if you need me by raymond carver

(noteable but not a short story collection: the brooklyn follies by paul auster)

ordered:
looking for jake by china mieville

i also have a number of recommendations not acted on yet, but if you've anything you feel strongly about, please feel free to contribute to the lump.

* murakami- it's noteworthy that i enjoy his short stories tremendously. his novels? not so far...

* raymond carver- unexpectedly domestic.

authors, artists, characters, buses.

2007-08-22T08:38:00.000-07:00

i spend an awful lot of time on the bus. i spend an awful lot of time on the bus, avoiding eye contact and conversation with other people on the bus. i spend a lot of time avoiding offending people on the bus, unknowingly. it’s a chunk of my day dedicated to books over people. and yet, i haven't written anything in here. it's incredible how many people one person is capable of ignoring at the same time.

i feel blocked up with potential reviews of books. it has been so long since i wrote anything... i was thinking all week how i could string them all into one. i came up with a few solutions but dear lord, tedious…

so i’ll break this down into 3
contents:
- no one belongs here more than you: stories by miranda july – miranda july
- the body artist – don delillo
- after dark – haruki murakami

if it were possible for books to transform people into slightly better people... i would put miranda july near the top of the list of authors who have that potential. in her craft (‘craft’ just she’s a lady of so many hats) there's no targeted cause for generosity—like environmentalism or some niche of community you could hone your better-person lasers on. it's just the level of all-encompassing attentiveness you're exposed to in her material... whether or not that wears off or strikes you as being indulgently “cutesie”.

i am not much for cutesie writing, but there is attentiveness (even if i don't always jive with adorableness, sensitivity, or whimsy–i can appreciate attentiveness) and crassness and inappropriateness which makes her not entirely attractive. just when you think it's darling enough to fall in love with a character, she says or does something so impulsively crass or obsessive it is off-putting. she isn't out to make people fall in love with her characters, if you pay attention she disfigures them with honesty. and i appreciate that.

while i read her short stories i was certainly more attentive to the people around me. there seemed to be more interesting details, more significance… maybe it softened my edges for a week or so, before i returned to “raging jerk” status. in other words, if i were concerned with becoming a slightly better person, i might read more miranda july. not that i won't, anyway.

reading don delillo's the body artist a month or so after no one belongs here more than you , it's easy to compare/contrast the characters. miranda july’s characters are often...well, her, and it is surprising when she suddenly reveals a physical description of a woman that’s the opposite of herself. you just know it's autobiography, wrapped in detail. in the body artist the main character, lauren, has characteristics similar to miranda july's characters–similar to miranda july herself. it was difficult to remember the author was not only not miranda july... but also a man.

the authors went off in two directions. their dialogue was similar. the characters' phrasing, the curious, sporadic, impulsive natures... inquisitiveness they share. how darling lauren is, is never really that certain. and i'm not sure how to feel about the moments when she takes sexual liberties with the almost incapacitated stranger in her house.

it's difficult to tell where they break on physical characteristics. delillo doesn't offer character description. you have dialogue, you have internal dialogue, you have observations other characters make out loud to give you a nudge–but there is nothing stated. you get to know a character like you would a real person, and it takes a whole story to form any conclusive idea. or at least, at that point you're left with your conclusions.

all this made reading haruki murakami's after dark somewhat trying. it was difficult to suddenly enjoy the abundance of preparation, of description... every detail of room, character, setting, personality, background laid out for you. i found it a little unlikeable. i would like to borrow someone's wind-up-bird chronicle or something else from him, so i know if it is just the juxtaposition of one to the other in that instance that makes me less than "in love"...

actually, tell me. what do i concentrate on? with murakami, what do i try to enjoy? the descriptions were tiring, the characters were more than a little forced... there were a few moments where he described things in beautiful ways, sensations he turned around and made unusual comparisons... enlightening. but sparse. and is that all?

if anyone has any thoughts on what they love or enjoy about murakami, i'd be interested.

*
books read:
no one belongs here more than you: stories by miranda july
the robber
the brand gap
copywriter's handbook
here is where we meet
coming through slaughter
cosmopolis
white noise
the body artist
the music of chance
people of paper
divisadero

still reading:
only revolutions

books bought:
john berger trilogy
danielewski only revolutions
paul auster the music of chance
john bainville the sea
woody allen mere anarchy

to get:
first print of kerouac's on the road
some more kelly link (if anyone has recommendations)
lydia davis's translation of swann's way

*

One-Sentence Book Reviews

2007-06-21T21:45:00.000-07:00

Okay, I never post on this blog, but I am still reading a lot of books. So, in an effort to participate, I present my "One-Sentence Book Reviews" --- designed to be almost worthless, but nevertheless in existence. These are all books I've read in the last month or two:

Poetry

Avatar by Sharon Harris --- About 1/3 of this book, the "Fun with 'Pataphysics" section, is worth the cover price, but overall it's not very impressive and the concrete poems are far from noteworthy.

Camber by Don McKay --- This is McKay's "best-of" and it's a solid collection of poems but it's disheartening to see how McKay doesn't really evolve that much over a very long period --- his more recent books, starting with Vis a Vis, are much, much better --- but he's one of the better lyric poets and has a great sense of humour, rare for a "serious poet" (especially in Canada).

As Elected by bpNichol --- Again, a "best-of" but a rather solid one which is far more adventurous than most, owing to Nichol's range --- many of the "standards" and a good introduction.

Shakti’s Words: An Anthology of South Asian Canadian Women’s Poetry by Various --- This book is fucking terrible, with a few exceptions to that rule... a pathetic collection, and poorly collected, with some poets getting about 15 pages, some getting a single page.

Waiting for Saskatchewan by Fred Wah --- A classic set of long poems, very affecting lyrics with some stylistic experimentation, exploring Wah's relationship with his father.

Fiction

The Double Hook by Sheila Watson --- Easily the finest modernist novel by a Canadian, if you haven't read this (or reread it lately) then pick it up again.

Bear by Marian Engel --- My friend Erin Wunker affectionately referred to this as "bear porn," and it is that but so much more... a thin slip of a book which is much riskier and more well-written than a lot of more recent work.

The Clockmaker; or, The Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick, of Slickville by Thomas Chandler Haliburton --- A weird collection of short sketches regarding a Yankee in Bluenose country, an old CanLit classic which reads very weirdly now, the book exists mainly because Haliburton was a prominent politician who wrote sketches to spread his opinion that there should be a railway between Windsor and Halifax --- more interesting and quirky than enjoyable.

The Wars by Timothy Findley --- Findley is an exceptional writer and this book is astounding, a slim volume which is incredibly rich, rewarding, and readable.

Not Wanted on the Voyage by Timothy Findley --- I liked this better than The Wars, which I loved, it's lighter but also more complex and serious, a strange magic realist comedy/gothic about the biblical Noah.

The Insanity Defense by Woody Allen --- This is really a compilation of Allen's prose, his first three prose books (3 books for the price of 1!) and it's very, very funny... if you like silly humour you'll love Allen's little "essays" (although they tend to get repetitive after a while, in terms of tone).

Drama

Leaving Home by David French --- I am a sucker for father/son relationship stories that aren't boring, and this fits the bill... one of the better realist plays I've read, and I don't like realist plays much.

Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature fio Love by Brad Fraser --- This is overhyped but it's still very good, worth reading for sure, dark and clever.

Non-Fiction

Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat --- This book is hilarious, Mowat is not a great writer but he's a very competent writer and has a nice ear for deadpan satire, better than you'd expect overall.

The Perilous Trade: Book Publishing in Canada 1946-2006 by Roy MacSkimming --- A fascinating overview of the publishing industry in this country, although relatively depressing... guess the plot... yep, it was sold to the Americans....

I've read a ton of other stuff lately, but this popped into my head or is near my desk. More later, kiddies....

how a hamster reads palahniuk

2007-06-18T21:16:00.000-07:00

so, i joined a gym and it only makes sense to me that a person (a person planning to sink 45minutes running this way or cycling on this machine for another hour) should plan ahead. it's a lot of time to spend in a room covered in mirrors–any direction you look in, you're going to get some unflattering, hamster-on-wheel version of yourself. to keep up morale on the voyage, and avoid looking at myself for two hours straight, i brought my book with me.

most treadmills, elliptical cross-trainers etc come with measly plastic ledges–what else could they be for, besides reading material? sure, it blocks all the big important numbers, but it only makes sense.it would make more sense, however, if it only worked with books that didn't have the dimensions of a large colouring book. the ledge isn't very wide, and there's nothing to clip your book in place.

my previous gym had a bin full of handy book clips. this gym is not my friendly downtown business-people-on-break gym. this gym is a gym for trainers. very tan trainers. i can't approach the front counter for juice or a question, without being asked "scheduling a tan?".

so, when i asked the bronzed goddess at the front counter if they had things to clip books to the machines... i sent her eyelids into hyper-overdrive. blink, blink, blink. more silence, before she she says, "i've worked here 8 years and no one has ever asked that". and after a precarious "no hands" workout, i went back with some bull clips.

two awkward, gigantic black clips; 'don't tip too far this way' balancing; blowing on a page to keep it from flying over the one i'm reading; and sticking out like a pale, sore thumb in a gallery of tanned "we eat lots of protein" thumbs–this is how i finished the new palahniuk novel (rant: an oral biography of buster casey) .

you can argue that all palahniuk books are the same. people have different favourites, and it's not because some are better quality than others: all it relies on is story preference, character preference, or just how much you done learned from all that man's research. it's true, palahniuk's tone doesn't change book to book. his lead characters have the same personality squeezed into different cirucumstances, different employments, statstics... but i think it's fair to say he's ripened in subtle ways.

some of his sentences, they're really well-crafted sentences. a few tiny bits make me jealous. i think his writing has improved, but he keeps it really low under the radar. some of them are such good sentences you don't really notice they're there.

it's less preachy, which god knows helps me through it. there's more focus on the story than on creating catch phrases, which are there, granted, but they're a bit better concealed. not so likely to be scratched on an angsty teen's locker.

it maintains the same organized appeal, the same amount of research that his former books have. palahniuk's stories have a lot of meat on their bones, which makes them some of the most satisfying summer reads in the summer reading genre. it's an interesting enough book, but that's what i'd recommend it for. if you've got some extra cash, you can buy it and then probably trade it in later for other books you want to have around permanently. if you can borrow it from someone, even better. it's nothing you'll ever brag about having in your collection, but you'd probably enjoy the read for what it is.

the cover design also makes me hot. just sayin'.

-
* recently purchased: no one belongs here more than you. stories by miranda july; against the day thomas pynchon; nasty bits anthony bourdain (yes, more summer reading); the slynx tatyana tolstaya; love in the time of cholera marquez (needed my own copy as the ex still has mine...)

* currently reading the slynx in bed & no one belongs here more than you is my gym book for tomorrow.

worst thing you can hear, after coming home from a thorough bookstore plundering.

2007-05-29T16:05:00.000-07:00

"i'm glad you're back! listen, you need to get this book..."

no one belongs here more than you (miranda july)

Digital Filmmaking by Mike Figgis

2007-05-10T20:11:00.000-07:00

Mike Figgis recently released a short book called Digital Filmmaking which I just read, it's quite excellent. I haven't done a lot of digital filmmaking myself, although my last film was shot digitally (supervising the final edits now). I wish I had read this book two years ago when I shot the film. Figgis is a real artist amongst beasts. But it's a real no-bullshit book too, no touchy-feely artist stuff, just "here's some good advice about digital filmmaking" — no-nonsense advice and a general overview of why digital video is worth using, how it differs from film, etc. Figgis is best known for the feature film Leaving Las Vegas, for which he received two Academy Award nominations, but in recent years he's become a digital convert, since he quickly grew sick of Hollywood. the great advantage of video, as Figgis points out, is that it allows you to do things professionally yet cheaply. the fact of filmmaking is that the less money you need, the less you need to raise, and maybe you can even bankroll the film yourself. The advantages of paying for your film out-of-pocket are manifold, but Figgis points out the main one, control:

There are many ways to finance a film. The conventional way is to raise a lot of money, shoot on some form of film, probably 35mm, and with the kind of equipment that requires shooting over a period of five or six weeks. The minute you have committed yourself to spending that much money on the equipment and format of the film, you are dealing with people who are giving a disproportionate amount of money to what, at this point, is an abstract idea — a script. You've crossed into a territory where you are inviting them to comment on the script, because it's their money. Therefore they feel they have a right to control elements of the film and that their taste should influence the story. Which is a disaster, because it's never been proved that the fact that you have money means that you have taste, or any concept of the way film works. (47)

I'm not about to become a digital convert, but this book is a great buy for anybody who ever intends to shoot anything digitally. It's only 158 pages and is very readable, intelligent yet down-to-earth, and affordable (I paid about $16). I disagree that you can't shoot film for cheap. Rodriguez and Carruths have both proven this, with 16mm features in-the-can for $7000 US. And the great disadvantage of digital film is that (for bizarre, complex, and utterly incomprehensible reasons) you need to convert your video to film anyway, which is expensive, if you want to get a distributor. Plus, you can use experimental processing techniques (such as hand-processing) or cheap film stocks like Super 8mm. However, it's still cheaper to shoot video. Figgis points out the pitfalls that people bring, attitude-wise, to video (I'm sad to realize, now, that I'm guilty of a few). Anyway, definitely worth your time and money if you're at all planning to film something, ever.

Digital video, like it or not, is the future. I just saw my first film projected on a HD projector and it was amazing quality, I was stunned. The technology, in many respects, is already there — but, as Figgis points out, the industry is (typically) lagging behind by miles.

cutting edge advertising II

2007-05-03T23:06:00.000-07:00

"Being creative is about why we're here. The primary directive of existence must be growth. The moment that stops, we die. Either physically, intellectually or spiritually." Souder draws an analogy with water. "Running water promotes life, stagnant water suffocates it. We can continue to grow by being like running water, through experience and assimilation of new things. By going where we haven't gone before. That could be the execution of an ad, finding a new way home from work, or selling everything you have to live with an isolated tribe on a remote tributary on the Amazon for three years. Because the more things we see, the more things we taste, the more things we try, the more accurate our personal model of the universe is, and the closer we get to ultimate truth."

and you thought advertising was evil, didn't you. say advertisers have no soul around me and i will a) be baffled beyond comprehension and b) probably slug you for being such a idiot.

ultimate truth? i kid you not, this profession borders on raging taoism, sometimes. as does this book (cutting edge advertising II). it's not some obsolete, sugary book i just happened on, either. it's been recommended to me by every creative director and copywriter ever to instruct us, lecture us, or put up with me and in an interview.

and it's not a bad book. if you're interested in sparking some creative juices of your own go ahead and pick up a copy. it might dispel some mths that advertisers are the soulless lawyers of the marketing industry. that is, pick it up if you can stomach a spattering of empassioned italics and the naughty, naughty word that is "advertising" being nestled deep in rants of "creativity", "honesty", "insight", and "deep connection".

who knew.

ps

2007-04-27T20:52:00.001-07:00

it strikes me now that my last post can be read as being a bit pretentious... the point is not to say "i'm great" but just that i know first-hand what rodriguez is talking about, with people wasting money trying to do it "the 'right' way" instead of being creative and spending your budget where it counts (in my case, on editing and buying lunch for my awesome actors --- the editor and actors are the real stars of those films of mine). rodriguez has this great story in the book where the studio he ends up selling his film to pays him a per diem of $2000 per week to come to LA and supervise a transfer to 35mm.... they also gave him an office, so he just slept in his office and pocketed the $2000 per week. in a month they had spent more money to cover his (non-existent) hotel and meals than he had spent on his entire feature film. now THAT guy (not so much me) knows how to direct!!

Rebel Without a Crew

2007-04-27T00:51:00.000-07:00

Cross-posting this because I haven't written on here for a while, and my last personal blog entry (this) was about a book...

I just read Robert Rodriguez's Rebel Without a Crew, which details him making his first film El Mariachi for $7000 (with no crew) and his subsequent rise to Hollywood stardom. It's a great book. Rodriguez really has his head screwed on. No nonsense, just a "here's what I did" approach, and he's not afraid to talk numbers, which most books don't. His common mantra is that Hollywood is wasteful and uncreative because it just throws money at problems instead of coming up with creative ways to solve them. Indeed.

I made my first short, Spoony B, for about $300. (I spent another $300 just prior, taking a few classes in how to develop film, use a camera, etc.) It's 7min, which conventional wisdom says should cost about $7000 (as much as Rodriguez's whole feature film debut). I developed the film in buckets so that I could save on lab costs, I transferred it to video by projecting it onto my kitchen wall and shooting it with a video camera, I didn't record any dialogue, I did all manner of other things "wrong"... and then I sold the thing for a little under $2000, almost 7x its cost. Other filmmakers have to turn down offers like that because they are too low. You might say I could have milked the film more and tried to "make a name" with it. Well, who cares? It's my first film, ever, as a director. I just shot it for practice, and more because I wanted some film I could develop to make sure I was developing the film correctly than for any other reason. And it's better than half the films I see by people who have gone to film school and spent thousands with a proper crew, etc. (I have no formal training other than a few one- or two-day workshops).

Filmmakers need to stop wasting money. I shot a second film which should be edited and ready for distribution in June. It also cost about $300. It would be less but I paid my editor/star $150 because he is the man. Even if I don't make a dime off of it, I've made two films for less than what most people spend on ONE MINUTE of screen time. And they don't suck, which is more than I can say for most minutes of screen time. I was watching Movieola while home for Easter... HOLY CRAP!! DIRECTORS WHO ARE NOT WRITERS!!! STOP WRITING YOUR OWN FILMS!!!!

Rodriguez, you da man!!! Everybody with ANY interest in making films, read this book!

don't do this

2007-04-11T12:08:00.000-07:00

I've been reading this book called Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. It's actually kind of interesting...it's semi-autobiographical and he had a crazy life; escaping prison, working for the mafia in Bombay, setting up a free clinic in a slum. Anyway, it's an interesting book but I'm not sure he's a writer, per say. Whenever he tries to get descriptive, it's disaster. I nominate the following sentences for being the most gay/least sexy ones I've ever read:

"We kissed. Our lips made thoughts, somehow, without words: the kind of thoughts that feelings have. Our tounges writhed, and slithered in their caves of pleasure. "

I feel sick.

Not the Usual Scoundrels

2007-03-20T18:17:00.000-07:00

While reading a book about Tom Paine's Rights of Man, I discovered that Samuel Johnson's oft-repeated quip, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," isn't as progressive as it sounds. I guess back then, people who supported democratic and radical causes in England were known as 'Patriots' and it is only to this group that Johnson was directing his barb.

Just a little tid-bit that might come in handy the next time you need to out know-it-all a smarty-pants at a dinner party.

Leeches Leave Behind a Scar Shaped Like the Mercedes Benz Symbol

2007-03-11T22:30:00.000-07:00

I learned it from Tom Waits, so I assume it's true...

Dr. Vincent Lam gave a reading at the U of A a few months back, put on jointly by the Humanities and Medicine Faculties. I had expected the crowd to be separated by faculty allegiances, with an awkward silence between them, much like a junior high dance, so I was surprised that the med students/doctors and the art students/hobos moved among each other without incident.

There is a now-famous story about how Lam got his big break by meeting Margaret Atwood on an Alaskan cruise and showing her his manuscript, which led to Atwood's email reply: "Congratulations. You can write." As encouraging as that tale is (I advise all writers to keep that manuscript at the ready, in case you see Guy Vanderhaeghe in line at Tim Horton's or Michael Ondaatje riding the bus), I don't think it's the whole story.

Consider my made-up, yet more plausible version (given Atwood's reputation as being rather prickly when handed a manuscript from a stranger): Atwood, sea-sick on an endless cruise through the arctic wastelands, asks the ship's doctor (Lam) for a prescription for anti-nauseants. Lam, plucky young writer that he is, refuses to hand over the drugs until Atwood agrees to read his manuscript. Atwood's reply: "Congratulations. You can write. Now will you please give me some drugs?" Much more likely, you'll agree.

Oh, right...the book. Not bad. Lam's a good writer, and he tells interesting stories about medical students and young doctors. I think the best story in the collection is the one about a psychiatric patient who starts to make his doctor question his own sanity. However, I found that most of the stories didn't keep me thinking once I put the book down. My favourite short stories are those that demand to be read again and again and won't leave my brain alone. I'm not denying that Lam can write, but I don't feel the need to read his stories again.

probably the most shallow thoughts ever, on david foster wallace

2007-03-09T10:30:00.000-08:00

funnily enough, the day i brought home infinite jest was the day david foster wallace (my fish) started jumping for food. it may just be, he got a real set of 'brass ones' since i put him in the bigger bowl by accident, but i like to think it's his internal author flushing with appreciation at me finally owning a whole book by his namesake.

having my own copy of the novel also means i have, in my posession, the inside author bio picture of david foster wallace. what a pretty, itchy face he has! so i decided for my next illustration project (author portraits for store displays), i would put his delightfully scratchy mug up in lights...

browsing photos online, i came to the sighing realization that there just isn't that much photographic interest in authors. they get shots done for book covers, maybe one or two press shots over the next decade, and that's about it. even hemmingway has only so many pictures around. and once there's a nice picture out there, it tends to be used for absolutely everything. like the scruffy david foster wallace picture, which turns out to be older than i ever expected.

(on every book cover)

vs. (now-- reading at UCLA or something)

my dreams? in shambles.

to those writers out there: 1) get many photos taken, otherwise illustrators have nothing to work with and then all your illustrations wind up looking about the same... many photos = interesting art with your face in it. also, 2) stop teasing us with how attractive you were before. and/or keep up with yourself better. david foster wallace, man, you let yourself go. i now have to love you for your mind alone.

avoidance & acquisition

2007-03-02T16:18:00.000-08:00

i generally brave all forms of impending doom & looming project completion dates in the same manner: i buy books & read them like i'm ...well, like i'm not tying up my bachelor of design degree.

yeah, i do. on the way to a partner project meeting, i innocently slip into Pages & ask for a book they likely have in stock. today? moby dick. while they drag it off the shelf i: stuff my hands in my pockets; lean to peek at the 'new books' table; rock back & forth on my heels & lift my chin to see the way-up-high books on the 'staff recommendations' shelf; pull in my lower lip & poke around the fiction shelves...the anthologies... before you know it, i have an armload of literary bid-ness.

my handles on the little plastic Pages bag actually started ripping right off, halfway to my apartment.

also, i had to sit through aforementioned partner project, which was interrupted by me constantly stopping him and saying, "hey look what else i got!" while pulling out another book from the bag he started referring to as, "the clown car bag". it was more appropriate than funny.

. moby dick / herman melville
(see that jonathan? oh, it happened. i snuck in 5 pages of reading &, oh boy, i am excited.)
. the people of paper / salvador plascencia
. dharma bums / jack kerouac
(if you're wondering why–it's because penguin has started a classic deluxe edition, where their classic novels are illustrated by graphic novelists. hooray! it is the most unpretentious, nice cover for a kerouac novel i've ever seen. also, no portrait.)
. infinite jest / david foster wallace
(i am a big beautiful book fanatic & hey, rhianna liked it more than not...is $17.oo too much to drop for a brick of d.f.w. goodness? i named my fish after him, so i should have something of my own.)
. bloodletting & miraculous cures / vincent lam
(i was the only kid to ever go through my school's 5th grade PE class & do a report on bloodletting.)

Improve Your Word Power with David Foster Wallace

2007-02-27T22:02:00.000-08:00

So, my New Year's resolution was to finally read Infinite Jest, and it took me about a month. Which makes me even with Dave Eggers, who says it took him the same amount of time, in his introduction.

Of course I also didn't really have that much time to read, or else I would have kicked his ass.

I'm finding it kind of hard to solidfy my opinion about this book. My favorite thing about Mr. Wallace is his piercing observations about human behavior, and clever turns of phrase, which are evident throughout. I like most of the characters and most of the things he's structured the novel around. However sometimes I really get the feeling he's being weird just for the sake of being weird, which is annoying. (Does Quebec Seperatism really need a splinter group of wheelchair assassins? And herds of feral hamsters? Seriously) Also, I have never read a book with less denouement. All you get is to go back to the very first chapter and gain some illumination on what the hell is going on with Hal....pretty much every other character is left frozen in a moment of crisis.

Speaking of Hal, if anyone can explain to me exactly what goes on with the DMZ. I get that he takes it and that explains what happens at the end (and the start) of the book. But I have flipped through many times trying to find WHEN he takes it...it's hard for me to believe that Wallace would not have written that scene...and by hard I mean infuriating. I keep getting the feeling with this book that someone ripped out a whole bunch of pages before I got it. Chris, any help?

Anyway, the one thing I am clear on is that Wallace uses bigger words than pretty much anyone in the world. Halfway through the book I started writing down the ones I needed to look up:

eschatology
teratoid
aphonia (in retrospect this was obvious)
phielyism
amanuensis
micturate
coprolaliac
coruscant
ephebic
obstreperous

This is only a partial list, and I am not often someone who has to look up words....so basically, I'm pretty impressed.

henry miller's "black spring"

2007-02-15T10:59:00.000-08:00

so last night i tore through "black spring" by henry miller, one of his lesser-knowns (or so i believe) & found it to be intensely gratifying. as always, miller uses prose that makes me reticent to call it "prose," because of the intense lyricism of it. i've forced two copies of "tropic of cancer" onto unsuspecting friends this week (along with "justine," the curse continues, haha), and "black spring" sure doesn't compare to either 'cancer' or 'capricorn,' but i have to, right now, recommend to everyone in this little group of devouts, the short story "The Angel is My Watermark!"

henry miller never really speaks about his desire to paint (or maybe mentions it in passing in 'cancer,' i can't be sure), although he does speak frequently about the appearance of the "muse" in his life, which he refers to as "receiving dictation." one of my favourite lines in this short is when miller's been writing for three hours, then decides to go out for lunch. he then says,

"...and if the dictation starts again, tant pis. I'm out to lunch!"

his happiness is like Whitman's. he's not careful about his feelings. they just happen. everything just happens to him. he frequently speaks about the 'moment,' and the idea of the 'present' not existing. there's a gem of a line about that, too, but i can't remember it well enough to quote it. but back to my thought ... "The Angel is My Watermark!" is the piece which will stick with you, from this collection of thoughts & ruminations. i went back & read it again after i'd finished totally with the book. that, and this other piece about him being put in charge of delivering a half-crazy woman to the sanitarium, and to make sure they didn't know that the family could have afforded her admittance.

anyway. god, i can't write for crap today. you should read it. it's good. worthwhile.

next up!

swann's way, the moncrieff translation!

john fowles' "mantissa"

2007-02-14T09:27:00.000-08:00

i have a terrible time relegating books to a "top five" category. this is mostly because i have a hard time saying that anything is my favourite book other than danielewski's "house of leaves." however, if i had a top five, john fowles' opus "the magus" would definitely be toward the top.

with that in mind, and having devoured most of the rest of his collection (and found it lacking in comparison to 'the magus',) i found a copy of "mantissa," a book of his i had not yet encountered. it's a quick read, and it is fairly satisfying (if a bit obfuscated), but it in no way compares to 'the magus.' it leaves you with this .. hor d'oeuvre feeling, as though 'mantissa' were simply the first draft.

in brief: a man wakes up in a hospital bed with amnesia. and some other kinds of -nesia. after a very bizarre encounter with a sexual nurse & doctor providing some very unique therapy, the scene abruptly shifts and a new character is introduced ... well, i can't tell you how, or what, because it spoils the plot, the most interesting thing about the book.

lots of writers have written about the theory of the muse, that elusive spirit who seems to grace us with her presence when we're getting into the groove of something, when we reach that near-Dionysian state of total abandonment & immersion into our craft. fowles likes to inject equal does of myth & social commentary in his writing, and 'mantissa' is like the K2 of this exhibition ('magus,' obviously, being Everest.) for those who don't wish to slog through an enormous novel (i can't imagine any on this blog feeling that way, but you never know), 'mantissa' is an adequate little treat for you. i'd recommend it over 'the ebony tower' and maybe even 'the french lieutenant's woman', but really, just read 'the magus,' dammit.

next up!:

'black spring' by henry miller
'rebel without a cause' by robert lindner
'swann's way' by marcel proust (trans. moncrieff)

neil gaiman's neverwhere

2007-02-13T15:19:00.000-08:00

i'm glad to see people have been keeping up with their book bid-nez better than i have been keeping up with my book bid-nez.

if you love me and pay me due attention, you might recall a few entries ago when i was worried i'd pinched neil gaiman's neverwhere from mark hopkins's apartment. mark reassures me i was invited (aka: he somewhat fuzzily remembers telling someone, "no! taaaaake it! take it! do it!" and waving his delicate hands about drunkenly–we all assume this was directed to me and the novel).

along with polishing off some real nuthin' reading, i do have neverwhere completely read, digested, and prepped for the chopping block. why? well, sirs and ladies: when you write a novel based on a television series, you are just asking for it. i guess we all need paychecks, but really...

a premise for a show doesn't get much gayer than this. if you don't know, i'm tossing in wiki's little quip.

"The idea for the story came from a conversation between Gaiman and Henry about possible stories for inclusion in Comic Relief - Henry commenting that the public are so used to homeless people sleeping rough in London streets that they no longer "see" them.^[1] This became in integral part of the Neverwhere plot. "

oh wow, you mean pedestrians don't stop and pay homeless people a lot of attention? whew! i had no idea we'd let ourselves slip like that. oh my dear, sweet blood-of-the-lamb, how could we be so blind to–yeah. i think we all had that epiphany when we were ten. some of us, late bloomers, wrote huge urban-issues essays in jr.high on saving owls and whales and homeless people. we care, then we either a) move on b) become green peace volunteers with clipboards, braids, and adult acne. what a completely homosexual bleeding-heart unoriginal premise. for a show. which was turned into a book.

so there it is. mayhew, a bumbling, flustered spine-less geezer stumbles (literally) over someone who appears to be a bleeding homeless girl–is really a "lady door" from london below (it is london, and it is below...). in helping her, he falls through the cracks. in caring about her his world vanquishes him, he is literally invisible, his apartment is rented out, and everyone he ever knew disappears. he treks through the london below to find door, the girl he helped, and embark on a journey both serving door and the author's need to turn mayhew into a man.

the book was mildly entertaining at best and painfully plunky at worst. plunky, obnoxious, and telling of the struggle of one man to get through writing a paint-by-number novel. he probably figures the only way we as readers will get to the end is if, and only if, he lays down little snags and teasers. "what's that?" "oh i can't tell you...NOW...." with the hope that if you keep reading, you'll learn more about this mysterious world. blatant payoffs. well, it's about as tempting as having some woman on the train take an old tuna out of her pocket and wiggle it around to coax me over on her side. 1) i don't care for old tuna, and 2) condescending. it's really condescending.

as for his own struggles, what was once an attempt to switch up adjectives for interest's sake? no longer. after the first hundred pages, neil tosses his gloves down and gives up. for example, early on he takes the miserable adjectives used to describe door's head/face ("heart-shaped", "elfin", etc) and switches them up. if it is "heart-shaped" on one page, it is surely "elfin" on the next, and "heart-shaped" two pages later. but after so long her head ceased to oscillate through description. she's got one "elfin face" all the way. why bother? why not just say "face"? we know door's head is flipping elfin by now, if we know anything. also, the instance where he refers to the velvet character's eyes as being "foxglove-coloured eyes". not once. not twice over the spread of a chapter–we're talking a good handfull of times over a two-page spread. by then he's given up and we get one adjective per noun, and that's expected to last us the course of the novel. unless he's being paid by the word and simply lacks the energy to replace adjectives...

so, there's some condescending teasers, wince-inducing adjectives that just won't let go of the nouns, and all of it: holes in an already thinly-spun plot with poorly-spun characters. i won't even drag you through them all.

the main character, richard mayhew, is barely tolerable as a person. simpering, dense, and...well, weak & dense is really as faceted as the character gets. oh right, occasionally he is horny.

door is little and plucky and tortured by memories of her lovely family being murdered. lots of "oh daddy don't die" flashblacks and nightmares.

the minor characters all have ridiculously lame back stories. i tried, so help me. let me hold your hand through a sequence here...

rat girl. dirty little thing, sent to escort mayhew to the floating market.
details of her back story followed by my internal thoughts.
. mother crazy. "eh.... okayy....."
. foster home "...seems familiar..."
. abused physically by guy foster mother lived with "oh, lordy"
. abused...other ways. "oh just get on with it..."
. she ran away "...yeah yeah yeah..."
. slipped between the cracks of humanity. (at which point i just wait for her to die. not to be a spoiler? but she does. and thank god.)

it's like she walked across three lifetime (channel for paranoid women) movies and right into gaiman's plot.

in conclusion: american gods climbs up a notch in comparison. i couldn't even finish it without cracking my new paul auster new york trilogy for relief.

Double Occupancy Costs Extra

2007-02-06T10:50:00.000-08:00

I finished Guy Vanderhaeghe's The Last Crossing, a great book about journeying through the harsh moodswings of Canadian weather, where one character has to act quickly to escape a winter storm, something that most prairie dwellers can relate to, except, perhaps, for this part:

Simon scrambled to his knees, knife upraised. Drove the sixteen-inch blade into the horse's chest, sawed the belly down to the legs. Guts spilling, a thin stream sifting out of the lips of the incision. Plunged his hands into the mess of entrails. Tore away, scooping offal behind him, hacking with the knife at whatever resisted, whatever clung. Moaning, hunching his shoulders, drawing his knees up to his chest, wriggling away at the mouth of the wound, he burrowed into the balmy pocket.

I thought about starting a list of books I do not recommend that people read, but I didn't get very far. Mostly, I think people should steer clear of Yann Martel's first novel Self. I did all I could to find a compelling explanation for "what this book is about", but all I could come up with is that it's a book-length exercise in characterization. Nothing happens in this novel, which isn't to say that I demand that things happen in every book I read. But if nothing is going to happen, I think it should be an interesting nothing that I'm reading. Has anyone read Virginia Woolf's Orlando? I haven't read it, but I thought for a while that Martell was remaking and deconstructing Woolf's book. I don't want to reopen debate about Life of Pi (which I gather was rather heated), but I liked Pi, and it seems to me that Self was a practice run at writting a novel.

"Camus can do..."

2007-02-01T19:08:00.000-08:00

The Fall: Just read this one again after a friend gave it to me as a birthday gift. (Camus and birthdays are always a great match). This is one of my favourites by Camus, although choosing a favourite can be tough. I particularly like how it ends on a very uneasy note, with Clamence as "judge-penitent", pointing his finger at the reader in accusation, his confession no longer a personal narrative, but including all of us.

A great passage comes when Clamence describes how the memory of a drowning woman has haunted him, an event that encapsulates his feelings of regret and personal hypocrisy and sparked his descent into confronting the absurdity of life:

Then I realized, as calmly as you resign yourself to an idea the truth of which you have long known, that that cry which had sounded over the Seine behind me years before had never ceased, carried by the river to the waters of the Channel, to travel throughout the world, across the limitless expanses of the ocean, and that it had waited for me there until the day I had encountered it. I realized likewise that it would continue to await me on seas and rivers, everywhere, in short, where lies the bitter water of my baptism.

The next time you're out with some friends, why not try out this zinger from Clamence: "The more I accuse myself, the more I have a right to judge you."

I also recently finished Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus, a collection of essays that help define his existential philosophies, though, to be accurate, he never really considered himself an existentialist, referring more to the Absurd. The essay "An Absurd Reasoning" best explains the dialectical balance of living in awareness of the Absurd, a state defined by two certainties that cannot be reconciled: "my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle."

Arguing against suicide even when faced with the absurd, (in response to what seems like a natural conclusion given the bleakness of an existential outlook) Camus makes, what seems to me, an equivalence between faith in god and suicide, as both are unjustified escapes from the only authentic way to live, in full realization of the true nature of life. Hence Sisyphus as Camus' poster-boy for how to live: Sisyphus has no hope of ever being free of his rock, yet he perseveres in his pointless action, fully aware of his life and its absurdity. The point is that he is conscious of his state, and therefore, Camus argues, "stronger than his rock."

The final essay on Kafka is quite interesting, if for no other reason than that there are not many writers who criticize Kafka for being too hopeful.

A couple of months back, I read Camus' The Plague, and while it was his most popular novel during his lifetime, I don't think it his best work. Sometimes criticized as being overly allegorical, i.e. a plague as a symbol for fascist occupation, I think the failing of the novel is more to do with Camus' characters and their lack of depth (maybe that isn't so far removed from the criticisms of allegory). If anything, the allegory becomes less obvious as readers are more removed from World War II (if one had no knowledge of when it was written, a fascist analogy wouldn't be that apparent). My main objection is that the three main characters, who are all most likely extensions of Camus' experiences living in an occupied city, are too indistinguishable, and perhaps would have been more believable and compelling if they were combined into one person.

My favourite character in the book is the unassuming civil servant who spends all of his free time trying to craft the perfect opening sentence to his novel. He dreams that one day, when an editor reads his perfect sentence, the editor will be so moved he will announce to his staff of writers, "Hats off, gentlemen!" Mostly I like this idea because it assumes that all writers wear hats while they work.

As I'm sure you all guessed, the title for this post was inspired by Jay Sherman's witty quip on The Simpsons, which is followed by Homer's equally witty riposte of "Well, Scooby-Doo can doo-doo, but Jimmy Carter is smarter." The awkward silence that follows is relieved by a tumble-weed that blows through the living room.

Free Book!

2007-01-31T23:06:00.000-08:00

Hey kids! Want a book? For free? How about the best book ever written in English? I'm speaking, of course, about Moby Dick.

Naysayers, cease your naying!

snark

2007-01-30T17:22:00.000-08:00

i give to you, bits of the snarkiest review that the nytimes sunday book review has published in a long, long while:

Neither Here Nor There
Dead Man's Float by Nicholas Maes
Espianade, 438 pages, $22.95
Reviewed by the deliciously astute & bitey Thomas S. Woods

Third, and most important, Dead Man's Float ultimately sinks under the weight of artless writing. Few passages produce an "Alice Munro moment," that elusive aesthetic response that is immediate and visceral. Rather, the writing is strung from one end to the other with a daisy chain of cliches. Nathan refers repeatedly to himself as, "yours truly"; characters are "blind as bats"; they make a "beeline" here, then a "beeline" there, and have "delusions of grandeur."

...writing content that is derrivative, unsubtle and excessively laden with moral precepts that are not actually engaged by his narrative.

daisy chain! oh, mister thomas... that lemon you squeeze in your supple palms is my heart.

berger + music blog

2007-01-21T15:54:00.000-08:00

i am having issues reading, lately. the most i get done, is standing in the kitchen, reading through the paper while coffee finishes up its delicious business inside the maker. i just haven't been paying attention- is it still 'percolating'? or is that a thing of the past. emulsifying? do coffee grounds really count as a liquid?

i am distracted, and staying out far too late. my roommate also happens to come home and, if i'm lucky, he gives me a handfull of minutes where he puts a meal together. as soon as he sits down, he turns on the tv. even if i'm using the tv to route my i-tunes through the speakers, etc. obnoxious? yeah, you bet it is. and distracting. if the tv is on, i'm not necessarily entertained, but i certainly don't get much work done. i usually just bury my face behind my laptop and squint for hours on end...

in light of eye-wrinkle concerns/graduation concerns/concerns about looking like an ass with my instructors... i dedicated my headachey morning to clearing out the studio and setting books on the corner of my desk so i can actually grab at them between silent bits... hide out in there to avoid the ongoing stream of crappy tv shows as is his preference.

anyhow.

so sometimes i just have warm little moments where reading something amazing suddenly springs up and runs extra mileage. two bits of information collide to form a happy well-faceted moment for me. as in the case of music review + john berger.

i browsed through this music blog amidst the usuals and stumbled on an entry which listed a song called Sodade

8. "Sodade" Cesario Evora
This is another heartbreaker written in a language I don't know. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to translate this one. It makes me feel an intense, but beautiful sadness. Though all the elements of the song obviously work together and depend on one another, my two favorite parts are the very soft sounding shakers present throughout the song, and (of course) Cesario Evora's voice. For some reason, this is a song I enjoy very much in summer.

... immediately i jump to one of my favourite excerpts from john berger's Here is Where We Meet.

Lisboetas often talk of a feeling, a mood, which they call saudade, usually translated as nostalgia, which is incorrect. Nostalgia implies a comfort, even an indolence such as Lisboa has never enjoyed. Vienna is the capital of nostalgia. This city is still, and has always been, buffeted by too many winds to be nostalgic.

Saudade, I decided as I drank my second coffee and watched a drunk's hands carefully arranging the accurate story he was telling as if it were a pile of envelopes, saudade was the feeling of fury at having to hear the words too late pronounced too calmly.

what to say, other than it's a rare and lovely experience when music and favourite books compliment each other so "directly". especially when it's berger... you know how i am about that man.

Chandler Brossard’s Over the Rainbow? Hardly (collected short seizues)

2007-01-13T23:53:00.000-08:00

Recommended: nytimes sunday book review - many moon ago
Contains short story collections: the chimney sweep comes clean ; dirty books for little folks; raging joys, sublime violations; postcards: don’t you just wish you were here! ; closing the gap ; traditionally a place of banishment; shifty sacred songs

Chandler Brossard (1922-)

Consider me shocked and astounded to find another beat writer, only this time, a beat writer who’s still kicking. Kicking and not at all American. I have read neither of his “earliest beat novels” Who Walk in Darkness & The Bold Saboteurs but I would recommend them to you any day with very little hesitation.

You could accuse me of being biased to his writing, because a few of the stories were read under the unusual circumstance of being read a) out loud, b) by a boy with big eyes and really adorable side-cheek wrinkles that crop up when he grins, and c) being read in my favourite place in the universe: Bed. Snuggled up to my nose in blankets.

Don't get ideas... They aren’t romantic stories; they aren’t touching stories; they are on the contrary, sordid, frisky little minxes of tales with gutter-mouth elaborations, side-comments thrown smarmily into parenthetical asides, and raging inappropriateness busting out of every plot. Also busting out of every plot? Lines that I want to use everywhere, but probably won’t have any opportunity…

I think I’ll give you kids a sampling and if you don’t want to borrow this one from me, I am putting our friendship, as it is, on probation. Just so’s you know.

The Chimney Sweep Comes Clean:

(Summon up, if you dare, the fetid insolence of steaming sprouts.)

[that was the ending. Aren’t I a vicious spoiler…yes, well, here is the beginning…]

“The bird in the bed-sit next door blows her nose all the time. Is it a flooding, virus-victimized nose she is dealing with? A nose that should be delivered up to hydraulic engineers? Does she have a secret and unresolved thing with it? (A love of one’s nose, in other words.) Or is she trying to communicate with me through our shared walls and doors?

I lean toward the final suggestion, if you will permit me. I have examined her nose, at a thwarted distance, of course, and I can assure that: 1) it is dry as a bone; and 2) there is not a single sign of vice or corruption to it. Oh, it’s had its moments, I’m sure, as what nose hasn’t? But as for programmatic license, absolutely not.

Dear lord! There she goes again. She’s going to deviate her septum at this rate. And do you know what time it is? Two-thirty in the morning. She knows that I’m in bed, with not a stitch on. And I can tell you where she is: standing with her head against the wall that separates us. What exactly is she telling me? Is she waiting for me to make some delicate physical sounds in response? Shall I cough? Sneeze? Scratch on the wall like a starving mouse eating through eternity?”

The “peeker under perfectly decent scabs” that he is, he breaks down the door and engages in odd sexual congress with her on the floor, and simultaneously form an “appreciation” of Yorkshire pudding and brussel sprouts.

“Brussel sprouts and Yorkshire pudding can be loads of fun, it turns out, but only if you’re getting laid while eating them. Which is what happened, give or take a false notion or two.”

And possibly my favouite quote of the entire book:

“All I know is this: blowing one’s nose is one thing, but having it blown is something else again.”

Stories in Chimney Sweep tend to range from the obscene to the curious (but I can only speak for myself) to the familiar. Such as the brief bit about having his food stolen by his roommates.

“'vermin! Secret agents from another stomch! Assassins of gluttony! Stop stealing my bloody food. '

I pasted this perfectly understandable statememnt onto the door of the white refrigerator. Then I ate three pork chops I’d been saving for two future meals. For reasons thata are basically self-explanatory (if they are anything at all)"

“I stand weeping amidst the flagrant crumbs of their toast orgy.”

[Yes, well, I think we’ve all been there…]

Dirty Books for Little Folks:

Hansel ad Gretel: why should sleeping dogs be permitted to go on lying?
[...to let you know how silly/disturbing this gets...]

They had been into sibling incest fot a long time, ever since they had learned that their little friend Oedipus , who lived down the block and who knew a good thing when he saw it, was plowing his mother. “

…Hansel and Gretel were celebrating their little victory with a big joint of Lebanese red.
“Let’s play rape tonight” said Gretel, who was really getting turned on by the hash.
“OK,” said Hansel, letting out a little smoke. “I’ll be Nigger Jim and you can be Tricia Nixon."

[And in all the obscenity and spunk, a few more sensitive examples of craftsmanship…]

Postcards...:
[extremely brief descriptions of “towns”]

Vanishing Point, Florida:
Distance means nothing here. It is a nostalgic artifact.
“We know a lot more about density here than we’re going to let on,” the town mayor has said on more than one occasion.
Children race around the streets as though carrying secrets far beyond their years.
Lots of old-timers while away the daylight hours standing on the bluff staring off into infinity. That’s what it looks like anyway. They’re not fooling anybody. Actually, they’re trying to dope the past.
There is no unemployment problem here. “That’s our business,” folks will answer when questioned.

Lying Low, Virginia
1.Here in Lying Low the apples torture Newton by falling diagonally.
2.Children play cricket with crickets.
3.Boys say to girls, “I want to take your cherry and jump into a pit.” (Hence the town passion is cherry pit jam)
4.The traffic cop is a reformed skydiver and is called Our Boy Bunky the Muffler Diver.

Shifty Sacred Songs:
[a collection of breakdowns of word-entities like “silence” “sadness” “grief”…]

“Sadness:
One thing you’ve got to say for sadness. You don’t have to dress for it. Never.“

The New Kid

2007-01-12T18:52:00.000-08:00

Ah yes, the awkward greeting of the new guy. More awkward still, the new guy is rather green to this world of "blogging." Nevertheless, dear reader, our gentle correspondent has been known to read a book or two in his day, and perhaps may have some interesting comments to add to your discussion about the book learnin'.

Firstly, please don't think me a gate-crashing blogger: I was asked to join by Rhianna. So if my posts are boring or stupid, you can blame her.

Perhaps the best introduction would be a quick run-down of the books I have been holding in front of my face recently:

Grief Lessons by Anne Carson: translations of four plays by Euripides. If you like your classical Greek tragedies on the slightly more obscure side, especially those that lack any kind of closure or catharsis, this is a must-read. I quite like Carson's poetry, and she can be a good introduction to other poets like Sappho. If you're like me, and you prefer the Hercules that kills his family in a god-induced madness, rather than the conflict-free Hercules of Saturday morning cartoons and Disney movies, then you'll find the first play in the book, "Herakles", to be especially interesting. (I guess that should be a spoiler-alert)

Diamond Grill by Fred Wah: this is the tenth anniversary of Wah's collection of short fragments about his father and the cafe he owned. To be honest, a lot of Wah's poetry to me feels rather self-indulgent at times, but I really enjoyed this book, his most accessible collection by far. Wah describes this book as a biotext, a different way of thinking about the memoir that isn't bogged down in the expectations of life-writing and autobiography. Not exactly short stories, these prose fragments (or prose poems, if you prefer) add up to a very unified narrative, even though Wah is obviously not writing a traditional linear story. The afterword, added for the new edition, is an essay by Wah about the idea of biotexts, and, despite being quite interesting with ideas similar to those in his Faking It book, it felt like it was tacked on by Wah as a way of holding up his academic street cred. I think he has some reservations about writing in a more accessible way (compared to his poetry, in general). Anyway, small quibble. On a non-literary note, my grandparents knew Fred Wah's uncle, who ran a cafe in Swift Current, Saskatchewan. And if that doesn't make you want to read this book, nothing will.

The Mother Tongue: English and how it got that way by Bill Bryson: this is an old one by Bryson, and I must point out that the first time I was introduced to his work (a friend promised me I would "love" his writing), I couldn't stand him. I did enjoy this book, however, a collection of the interesting and quirky facts about English and language in general. The only strange part of this book is reading all of Bryson's stats: seventeen-year-old population numbers and references to the Soviet Union. Out-of-date facts aside, this book succeeds in making me rethink my hatred of Bill Bryson.

The Englishman's Boy by Guy Vanderhaeghe: I avoided reading this book for many years, mostly because it was so popular. I'm not sure why I did this, because it's a great book. My general attitude is to steer clear of what other people seem to really like, but perhaps I should rethink this.

Other books on the go:
The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgeman (Not only does this book have the funniest cover in the history of publishing, it is quite amusing on the inside as well. My favourite part so far: the list of seven hundred hobo names)
Moy Sand and Gravel by Paul Muldoon
The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe
Earth after Rain by Sherri Benning
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
Metamorphoses by Ovid (trans. by Allen Mandelbaum)

Well, that's all I will say for now. You may proceed in making fun of the new guy.

hark! a resolution

2007-01-01T22:12:00.000-08:00

Just in case you want to know, my New Year's resolution has been to buy and read Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace.

In case you don't know what it is, here is a blurb from when it was first published.

"IF YOU BELIEVE the hype, David Foster Wallace is about to be crowned the
next heavyweight of American fiction. And the accolade is probably deserved.
At the very least, "Infinite Jest," his new, 1,079-page novel (including 90
pages devoted to esoteric endnotes), gives a whole new twist to the word
"infinite." This huge volume will prop open even a castle's gates.
Of course, it's exhausting to read such a mega-book. This is the age of the
sound bite. But diving into the riches of "Infinite Jest" is also an
exhilarating, breathtaking experience. This book teems with so much life and
death, so much hilarity and pain, so much gusto in the face of despair that
one cheers for the future of our literature. "

Having only read short stories of his in the past ("The Girl with Curious Hair" being a lovely collection) I've been a little intimidated by the length and esoterica. But I shall triumph!

After all, who better to tackle the biggest and fattest of novels?

I will also read House of Leaves.

reviens

2006-12-16T21:05:00.000-08:00

hi!

i have the internet back now.

if you like 'the magus' by john fowles, read 'the ebony tower' which is also by him. the first story (it is a small collection of sort-of related work) is a novella about a painter-turned-writer who visits a renowned painter living in hermitude with two young women, also art students. sexual liaisons and other mischief abound.

but overall i'd really just give it a C-, because the writing's good (it's fowles, duh) but the plot and mise-en-scene just remind me of a first, less creepy draft of 'the magus.' which, if you haven't read, you should.

kaylen, as to your thoughts on danielewski's "novel," it does, and will, scar your fiction for life. take it from one who knows and has felt the stinging wrath.

my ex-roommate stole my copy of pessoa's 'the book of disquiet' & i have been rummaging, from mess to mess & room to room, for it when i finally gave up the ghost (as it were) and succumbed to despair. awful, awful, fat beast masquerading as a man. he stole a lot of my shit. mostly books. i hate him. it is good to hear, jonathan, that he has other work out there. surprising that it's not attributed to one of his heteronyms instead.

i haven't been reading a lot. mostly movies; old, classic movies i've never seen but have always wanted to. some revisiting to childhood with animated disney. my book club book last month was 'foucault's pendulum' by umberto eco ('da vinci code' for smart kids) & this month it's 'equus' by peter shaffer. i like the latter, but it's so short - and i've read it already. so it's kind of a let-down.

if you like crazy conspiracy novels with a lot of esoteric stuff (speaking of 'da vinci code') you should check out "flicker" by theodore roethke (i think his name is) ... its ending is one of the most amazing i've encountered recently. i lent this out to my friend and he said he can't stop reading it (between drinking heavily & tearing his hair out over his girlfriend-at-a-distance). that's nice to hear.

i also made my first book sale last week. $25 for a signed, first draft copy of my novel "MS." which is awful and terrible but someone wanted to pay me for it, so i sold her a copy and made nine dollars in profit (after binding it at kinko's.). that was fun. a little unnerving though. she seems to have liked it, and for that i am thankful - though i want to hear what she didn't like.

i actually need to find a new book. something interesting and original. everything i look at lately just seems ripped off from something else, or is boring subject matter. maybe i'm being too critical. i should read some more pynchon, though wading through 'gravity's rainbow' was a battle -

cheerio.

i don't like omelettes, but i like dan times a million

2006-12-13T13:15:00.000-08:00

rhianna, before i forget-- your guy-thing has nice poem tastes. weirdly lyrical for poems. though i will never forget laughing him off the stage in my head for the poem he recited, which began "rub-a-dub-dub, our love smells like vapour rub"...well, i give him "props" for taste. who knew? you did, probably.

anyhow. this is "writing". writing about music. how could that not be appropriate...

from saidthegramophone's individual top albums of '06:

3. Destroyer - Destroyer's Rubies
Ever eat an omelette and think, halfway through, "why do I like omelettes?" but then when you're finished, you just feel great? Yeah, me too.
-Dan

that just blows my little palpitating heart (end-of-fall-term-stress palpitating) to smithereens.

{ps- chandler brossard's over the rainbow? hardly just arrived, from Pages. i got the usual phonecall for "tomasina" telling me the good news. good and unexpected, considering i'd ordered it back in october, and forgotten... anyhow, tack that onto my christmas reading list. from what i know they're dirty, fucked-up fairy tales with lots of sex and gruesome bits. the review was pretty captivating. nytimes book review, however long ago...you know me and fairy tales.}

how i am nice

2006-12-11T22:56:00.000-08:00

sorry i haven't posted in so long- it's starting to feel like the jon and kaylen show. Most of my books come from kaylen though, and it seems wrong to be giving out sloppy seconds book reviews....

However I do now have Selected Poems by Alden Nowlan. I bought it for a friend online after he complained he could never find it in stores and would like it very much.

But before it passes into his hands I thought I'd post a poem from this old-school, obscure poet:

Canadian Love Song

Your body's a small word with many meanings.
Love. If. Yes. But. Death.
Surely I will love you a little while,
Perhaps as long as I have breath.

December is thirteen months long,
July's one afternoon; therefore,
Lovers must outwit wool,
Learn how to puncture fur.

To my love's bed, to keep her warm,
I'll carry wrapped and heated stones.
That which is comfort to the flesh,
Is sometimes torture to the bones.

i'll be hunchbacked for christmas...

2006-12-10T20:00:00.000-08:00

...lugging all these books on my reading list, around.

what i hope to cover over christmas:
the robber by robert walser

coming through slaughter by michael ondaatje

the crying of lot 49 by thomas pynchon

and the object stares back: on the nature of seeing by james elkins

neverwhere neil gaiman

misfortune wesley stace

G john berger

re-read
the dark labyrinthe lawrence durrell

+ lots of little essays etc by blanchot

pirates & if jonathan was pillaged, instead of willfully inclined to lend me books, these would be the "booty"

2006-12-10T19:38:00.000-08:00

first off:

is anyone else souring on pirates in general? i feel as though i've been rolling my eyes a lot more the last five years. i don't think i laughed out loud once at the last pirates of the carribean movie...

gideon defoe (author of pirates! in an adventure with [whaling/communists/scientists])is wonderful enough to enjoy, pirates or no pirates. his footnotes are charming, the book with all its nice illustrated covers, witty and tounge-in-cheek-weird etchings on the insides of the covers, and hidden amusements... is a delight. it will be a dark day if gideon ever defers from communists and scientists and pairs the pirates! up with something like ninjas. you'd be surprised how many people haven't caught on that it's no longer a novelty.

still, i would marry him.

second:
met for coffee & conversation with jonathan at higher ground. at a very tensy island table in the middle of the floor, "entirely too small for my knees" (mysterious island mis-quote) and my mammoth, bound, nytimes sunday. jonathan, you are pretty awesome company.

it doesn't hurt he hates frankenstein too and happens to agree on what's the best Poe story, the cask of amatillo. i mean, of course, the poe that doesn't mudwrestle–to my knowedge.

i gave away
days between stations & our ecstatic days by steve erickson

i got
the robber by robert walser
coming through slaughter by michael ondaatje
the crying of lot 49 by thomas pynchon
and the object stares back: on the nature of seeing by james elkins

also, i have wound up with a pay from charles bonjour, la, bonjour by michel tremblay.

more house of leaves narny narny nar.

2006-12-09T09:01:00.000-08:00

i'm about halfway through this house of leaves, and it has asserted itself as being rightfully on the Top Novels list.

my only complaintive observation at this half-point is:

i find myself skipping over the guy's novel about himself. everything down to his name (johnny) just smacks of chuck palahniuk. do i have qualms with palahniuk? since lullaby, yes. but previously, no. choke is one of my favourite novels, actually, and i enjoy the style here and there–but when the 'here' is interrupting the story about the hallway? i get prickly. listening to his dark and needy rampages; his spastic encounters with himself and the darkness; even his fantasies of the sexual nature are starting to pitch off into obnoxious. it reads more and more like some kind of "oh my god i'm peeing my pants with darkness!" (sometimes, literaly).

and it is only because the story interrupts the one with contrastingly mature characters who are concerned with the physical and not always going off on how much darkness they have inside themselves. if the hallway says that about them, it's a nice diffusion of angst. if it doesn't, all the better.

i skim over his hallucinations, his freakouts, and insert random, mental "yeah yeah, narnynarnynar"s. not because it isn't good writing. it is. but the character's issues are ones i feel i could get from a number of other sources.

we'll see how i feel at the end of this...

another thing about Danielewski

2006-12-06T19:33:00.000-08:00

this guy is crazy. and smart as a whip.

can you think of another writer who has had a reading from his book become a Top 40 hit, however briefly? the video is below (the reading from House of Leaves). it's a bit creepy though, because it's his sister singing and covered in mud (his sister is Poe)

the strangest thing about it all is that the book is such a bizarre, experimental work --- the kind of thing that seems doomed to obscurity on a normal day.

new danielewski, etc

2006-12-04T21:04:00.000-08:00

the "just-bought" pile:

Mark Z. Danielewski's new book Only Revolutions
Jorge Luis Borges Selected Non-Fictions
Eirin Moure Sheep's Vigil by a Fervent Person (translating Fernando Pessoa)

recently i read the massive 1085-page Pynchon novel Against the Day. I won't say anything about it here because I reviewed it for the Calgary Herald last Saturday. Subscribers can read the review online. It was glowing. Pynchon is a god.

(one thing i will say is that the novel concerns the Tunguska Event, which i am shocked more people do not know about)

post-bar bluestockings

2006-12-02T21:21:00.000-08:00

some girls get laid or makeout with random people when they're drunk. i? i take people's books. i don't remember if i asked him, but when i opened my bag this morning, looking for my pill box full of glorious pain meds to suppress the hangover... and found a copy of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere...i assumed (read:hoped) .. i asked for it.

mark, if you are reading this, please let me know...

in other news, i am also terrified house of leaves will scar any future attempts at fiction.

books recently thrust upon me

2006-11-27T22:14:00.000-08:00

house of leaves (proving creepier than anticipated)
sandman #1
sex drugs & cocoa puffs

fun times with alexander pope

2006-11-21T20:56:00.000-08:00

taking all but the last two words of each lines from Alexander Pope's "An Essay On Criticism (305-336)". i don't think i'm stepping on any toes, sniggering over this guy.

cares express,
for dress:
is excellent:
upon content.
most abound,
rarely found.
prismatic glass,
on every place;
more survey,
distinction gay:
unchanging sun,
shines upon,
alters none.
and still
more suitable;
words expressed,
purple dressed;
subjects sort,
and Court.
made pretense;
their sense!
a style,
learned smile.
the play,
vanity display
wore yesterday!
at best,
doublets dressed.
will hold;
or old;
are tried,
old aside.

survey says: distinction? gay.

extremey slow & incredibly tired

2006-11-20T22:12:00.000-08:00

i am reading slowly. very slowly. partially, because i want to be reading slowly. i avoided reading jonathan safran foer's book extremely loud & incredibly close because of the post-9/11 content. what american girl in her right mind wants anything fashioned with 9/11 drama in mind? it just brings to mind all the impossibly bad poetry read at memorials and funerals.

i like him and the further i get into the second novel i've read of his (everything is illuminated) the more he crawls up my ladder of favourite writers. he is maybe-possibly hugging the ankles of steve erickson. and i am reading it slowly, because i enjoy how it swings between something like:

She spent evenings with the art books Yankel had bought for her in Lutsk, and each morning sulked over breakfast, They were good and fine, but not beautiful. No, not if I'm being honest with myself. They are only the best of what exists. She spend an afternoon staring at their front door.
Waiting for someone? Yankel asked.
What color is this?
He stood very close to the door, letting the end of his nose touch the peephole. He licked the wood and joked, It certainly tastes like red.
Yes, it is red, isn't it?
Seems so.
She buried her head in her hands. But couldn't it be just a bit more red?
Brod's life was a slow realization that the world was not for her, and that for whatever reason, she would never be happy and honest at the same time. She felt as if she were brimming, always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release. Table, ivory elephant charm, rainbow, onion, hairdo, mollusk, Shabbos, violence, cuticle, melodrama, ditch, honey, doiley...None of it moved her. She addreessed her world honestly, searching for something deserving of the volumes of love she knew she had within her, but to each she would have to say, I don't love you. Bark-brown fence post: I don't love you. Poem too long: I don't love you. Lunch in a bowl: I don't love you. Nothing felt like anything more than what it actually was. Everything was just a thing, mired completely in thingness.

...and something like the second narrator (a self-obsessed ukranian translator with blue & replendant eyes, who makes a tramp of a thesarus in every way possible) fighting with the narrator about why shouldn't he say "I dig negroes"?

if there's anything i hate more than not being able to read as often as i like, i don't know what it is. i try before i sleep, but that usually winds up with me slipping off into some dream where i am still reading the book. of course i wake up and have to backtrack in the actual book to distinguish what i actually read and what i actually dreamed. sometimes this is disappointing...

other things keeping me from reading:
1. packaging design
2. information design
3. public design
4. sleeping
5. redesigning my personal website (here) -for when i take over and change the domain- and business cards (no you may not see yet)
6. advertising
7. making tacos
8. taco design

the very, very rough, very, very end of my novella:

2006-11-17T16:07:00.000-08:00

....

He dreams of being carried through tiers of leaves by a girl who is white as a hot poker, but not at all dead. She ties him to the limbs, pressing the pale white-pink of her mouth to the bulging moon that tries to push itself out from the center of his chest and the center of each, closed eye.

o

Andrew died and the rifts, where there were roots of tugging plants, communicated between the smoke and the moon (which had departed) telling Andrew,

you are alive, after all.

To which he had nothing to add.

The universe and everything in it was suddenly gone. The ending of the universe was not methodical. It was not a judgment, no hand of God: only a descending loneliness that pulled everything apart, took every particle and pulled each one so far away from every other that the resulting ache became the cry to announce
the end.

minute note:

2006-11-12T11:53:00.000-08:00

new to my shelves, from bookstore:
. my second (and i swear to god, final) copy of john berger's G. if any hipsters take this one? i am through.
. gideon defoe's pirates! in an adventure with communists. he has the best footnotes.

maybe doesn't belong

2006-11-12T11:40:00.000-08:00

Perhaps this doesn't belong here, but it IS book-related...

Have you ever written notes to yourself and then found the notes a long time later, at which point they made absolutely no sense, having lost their original context? I do this all the time -- but my notes are all related to various creative projects. Anyway, I just found this note/passage. It's apparently somehow related to a book project I was working on. However, the project is now a rather melancholy collection of short stories. How, then, did the following note have anything to do with it?

This is my book, and I can say whatever I want. Something true: I am the world's only champion Yak-binder. True, there were others, many better than myself, but these practiced in the days before Yak-binding became recognized as an Olympic event.

anything but that

2006-11-10T22:16:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut. I hadn't even known until monday night that there was a new Vonnegut book....surprise! I thought he had stopped publishing long ago. Anyway, it's an interesting book of essays. Downside? He seems almost stereotypically a curmudgeon. Not that Vonnegut was ever an optimist, it just seems trite to be old and believe that the world is going to hell and that the damn kids are too involved with computers. (That is not just because I am way, way too involved with my computer).

Best part? The plot graphs made of famous novels where the x is beginning to end and the y is good fortune and bad fortune. Kafka's Metamorphosis immediately rockets downward into an infinity symbol. Hamlet absolutely flatlines. Trust me, it's amusing.

One more point of interest. According to Kurt Vonnegut, if you have not read the following, you are a twerp.

"Occurence at Owl Ridge" by Ambrose Bierce.
Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville.

I'm going to get on reading these because I am sure that similar to I, you often have nightmares of finally meeting Kurt Vonnegut and having him call you a twerp.

to do: based on the first couple chapters of everything is illuminated

2006-11-10T10:07:00.000-08:00

1. start describing my eyes as "blue & resplendant".
2. insist on describing my eyes before i talk about anything else.
3. say, "i swear on my lily-white name".
4. make t-shirt that says "officious seeing-eye bitch"

savage for the sweep

2006-11-09T13:41:00.000-08:00

in light of the impressive democratic sweep this week, i thought i'd dust off an old recommendation. dan savage's skipping towards gomorrah: the seven deadly sins and the pursuit of happiness in america. you can't help but wonder if this guy managed to bring down santorum in a way no democratic campaign would (if there's anything democrats can't do, it's sell themselves).

if you're even remotely left-winged in nature, this book is kind of preaching to the choir. but once you get past the "who are you trying to win over, dude?", it's pumped full of the smarm, sass and obscene/factual material you'd expect from his sex columns (if you read his columns. if you don't, you can/should/definitely should. right here. besides the sass, there's generally everything you could possibly want in a couple hundred pages of amusement:

greed gamblers reveal secrets behind outrageous fortune (dan learns/wins/loses)
lust "we're swingers!" –you won't believe who's doing it
gluttony dan meets gluttons with attitude at a pro-fat conference (a skinny white guy gorging himself in a group of doting, obese women)
sloth leave it to dan to find a way to celebrate the sin that will get him in trouble with his mother. (not to spoil the surprise but- recreational drugs)
envy meet the rich–and then be glad you're not one of them.
pride you'll never look at a gay pride parade the same way again.
anger texans shoot off some rounds and then listen to dan fire off on his own about guns, gun control, and the second amendment.

because he writes such amusing, but brief, columns, i was worried it couldn't carry over so well into a more verbose genre...well, it does. if anything, the extra space ups the smarminess, the snarkiness, and the kind of cute-as-a-dirty-slut-button attitude of the savage love breed.

"but don't take my word for it!"

{note: also finished reading/enjoying/getting little goosebumps over coraline by neil gaiman & started on everything is illuminated by jonathan safran foer. liking it? oh, yes.}

what would a house-pi(e) look like?

2006-11-07T15:35:00.000-08:00

i love all this controversy regarding Life of Pi. I suppose when you get down to it, liking or not liking the book is a matter of personal taste. I didn't find the story boring at all. However, I will admit that the implicit questions about theology were much more interesting than the explicit ones. so perhaps i am projecting onto the book a little bit, thus heightening my enjoyment of it.

i own a copy of House of Leaves but have not yet read it. i will have to bump it up the list some. many many people have raved about the book and whenever i talk about my novel-to-come The Crow Murders people tell me that i should read House of Leaves (thus explaining why the book is lying on my bookshelf).

for the moment, i have just finished Beckett's Murphy which i will have to post on later, and am busy enjoying Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveller. the latter of which seems to be a favourite amongst this blog's bloggers.

two questions

2006-11-06T21:45:00.000-08:00

1. what is the earliest written work that you think is worth reading?

2. what is your favourite book and how much money would someone have to offer you in order for it to be stricken completely and forever from your memory?

hi, kids !

2006-11-06T20:59:00.000-08:00

so this is exciting! thank you for the invitation. i do so very much enjoy arguing about books.

so; to start, and to clarify:

house of leaves is my favourite book (and i say this with very little hesitation) because it fits all of the criteria that i have for enjoyment of a book (i should say 'artform' when it applies to this particular novel).

1) the subject should be interesting. a matter of subjective interpretation, sure, but i think we can all agree that if a book is about something that's been discussed ad nauseam, that no one is going to want to read more of it. although i guess that can be challenged by saying "what about reinvention, what about that one book that says it better than all the others?" so maybe that doesn't apply. i have to be encouraged, i guess i should say, to delve into the book. this encouragement comes from many things -

a - a visually interesting cover. i'm a geek. i have two copies of some books because i thought the revised cover was so much more evocative of the story.

b - the style of the writing on the first page: the "hook." usually this can be assessed by both the phrasing of the sentence & by the words used. sometimes i'll read the last page. i know, it's a sin. i'm trying to get myself out of it.

c - i guess these are more criteria i look for when i pick up a book at random from the bookstore, or the library. although one is different from the other - choosing a book to BUY as opposed to BORROWING one holds different importance & value. enough of that.

2) the style has to be original. i'm tired of reading the same sort of thing. i am interested in writers who show me, via their craft, that their brain works a little bit differently, who think in a new way, who aren't afraid to challenge the common notion of pulp.

3) it can't have ever been in oprah's book club. ... and i'm not sure if i'm kidding on this one or not.

house of leaves is such an interesting book to me because it is, essentially, a puzzle. i picked it up from the shelf at random years back, maybe, gosh, 5 years ago?, and was intrigued by the design on the spine of the book: photographs of houses. i noted the "of leaves" reference & i think drew a walt whitman parallel. i looked at the cover, found the 'labyrinth' design appealing, and then opened it to read the jacket. flipping through the pages had me encountering the bizarre pieces of danielewski's formidable novel, and the clincher was encountering, at the end of the book, an index. confused, i flipped back to the cover, where it clearly said: A NOVEL below the title. that's what did it for me. the index in a novel. that, and finding a random staff of music in pages of pages of blank space, somewhere within the book.

it's a puzzle is why i like it. i like things i can work at, things which get more solveable. i like using intellect & analysis to get at what things are doing. i like it even more when the book eludes me & triumphantly shows me what the truth was all along. i like it even more, i discovered, when the truth is never revealed, or is too deeply hidden, but i still find the narrative enjoyable.

danielewski brings something new to the visual structure of the novel: he transforms it, and perhaps caters to the ADD generation, but it complements both his style of writing & the content of his narrative. i've heard it, the typographical presentation that is, dismissed as 'gimmickry,' but i call bullshit on that claim because, technically, although it is pejoratively viewed, a gimmick is a 'an ingenious or novel device, scheme, or stratagem, esp. one designed to attract attention or increase appeal.' according to the dictionary. i don't think the typography is to attract attention. it's not jumping up & down for you to see it. danielewski could give a shit. it's there to enhance the reading experience, not try to ruin it. and i think it's lovely. it's confusing, it's immersive, it's incredibly conducive to re-reading ... i can't see a reason not to like it.

secondly, the structure is so complex and mysterious it's like reading three agatha christie novels in one setting, where everyone knows everyone and someone is the bad guy but no one knows who it is. layers of reality, stories within stories, another favourite of mine: meta-fiction (c.f. italo calvino's if on a winter's night a traveler) - and this does it quite well.

i'm sorry, i felt the need to explain myself because i've met so many people who count that book as their favourite, or one of their favourites, and they turn out to be pretentious little dimwits who've never even completed it or understood one-fourth the mythological references, or even really enjoyed it and just say they did because it's "cool."

i am not one of those.

SECONDLY -

life of pi.

there is one thing, and one thing only, that i loved about this book, and it was the fact that you will never know whether the story told is true or not. i love the 'torment' aspect of it, as you called it, mr. ball -

the only problem is have with the book is that the story told is boring. who cares if it's true or not? it was like watching a saturday morning cartoon trying to introduce one to the concept of theology. no thanks. i like my philosophy to be upfront with me. if there's words i don't know, i'll look them up. it's called learning. yann, your book doesn't do that - it suits up your parable in a nice little allegory tuxedo and marches it around. too bad that it had such an interesting conclusion. this is one of those books, like ishmael, and the celestine prophecy, that i just want to mash up into paste & feed back into the sapholes of the trees that suffered to make that dreck available to the public at large.

cheers!

submitted for approval of the midnight society:

2006-11-06T16:19:00.000-08:00

chris.

my darling, erudite friend (who i've known for almost a decade). the playwright, novelist, book enthusiast extraordinaire. if he's not too busy writing his damned novel, i am considering adding him to balance out the pi lovers/pi haters. here is his current Favourites List. as you'll notice, there's no winfrey-lovin' going on.

1. HOUSE OF LEAVES; mark z. danielewski
2. DHALGREN; samuel r. delany
3. GORMENGHAST TRILOGY; mervyn peake
4. THE MAGUS; john fowles
5. STILL LIFE WITH WOODPECKER; tom robbins
6. ON THE ROAD; jack kerouac
7. THE GREAT GATSBY; f. scott fitzgerald
8. A HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD; michael cunningham
9. TROPIC OF CANCER; henry miller
10. JUSTINE; lawrence durrell
11. IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER; italo calvino
12. SIDDHARTHA; hermann hesse
13. THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING; milan kundera
14. THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST; tom wolfe
15. NIGHTSPAWN; john banville

a delicious pie for rhianna & jonathan (beause i love you...

2006-11-06T15:57:00.000-08:00

...even if i don't love Life of Pi )

vegan pumpkin pie -- something we can all hate together.

One Last "woo hoo!" for the Pi

2006-11-06T00:21:00.000-08:00

I just feel a need to point out four things.

1. Aside from intelligent points made by Mr. Ball, this book also taught me a lot about which turtles are the easiest to eat, how to catch fish at sea, how to stream a sea anchor and the training and mangaement of large carniverous animals. This book may very well SAVE MY LIFE one of these days, and you don't want it on the Top 100 List.

2. On at least two occasions you have spelled it Life of Pie. I'd like to point out that that was a very different book, involving the adventures of a tasty Bumbleberry upon the high seas.

3. You, by your own admission, have not actually read the book. I really feel like the reading of a book is a prerequesite for hating it, unless of course it is a book on cover design with a really horrible cover.

4. That random guy you pulled off of blogger to support your twisted views also *loves* two books from Oprah's book club, one of which is She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb. I rest my case.

In Defense of Pi

2006-11-05T14:14:00.000-08:00

I've got to jump to the defense of Life of Pi. Though I would direct Pi-haters to Martel's first book, an outstanding collection of stories called The Last of the Helsinki Roccamatios which they may enjoy even if they persist in hating Pi.

The thing I love about Life of Pi is the implicit question of religious belief: Pi offers two stories and asks us to choose between them (to choose either belief in God or belief in No God). Either choices are considered respectable, while agnosticism (the refusal to choose) is abhorred.

What is interesting to me is not this choice, but the unspoken question of choice itself: is it even possible to make this choice?

What, for example, is left to the person who wants to believe in God but is not able to, after considering the world? There is a passage in the Koran which states something along the lines of "no man may believe unless God allows him to" which is to me a fascinating claim and a truly excruciating situation. Of course everybody wants to believe the amazing, magical story of survival that Pi tells. But it impossible to believe. The other story, that horrific yet plausible story, appears to be all that is left to us. Yet the true horror of this situation is not that Pi's story is untrue, but that it is impossible to believe — and thus its telling is merely a torment.

books that were so horrible, i couldn't even finish them

2006-11-05T11:32:00.000-08:00

it is a rare event that i start a book & just don't have the motivation to finish it. sometimes, sure, i'll pick up a book or three on the side to keep me going, but i have made my way through some really, really terrible books. some books, however, were so full of vomitous ho-hum-ness, i didn't think twice about chucking them over my shoulder.

1. Life of Pi ; Yann Martel

i know, people just love this book. intelligent people love this book! english majors, rhianna, more english majors... my brother (debatable reference. he also really likes C.S Lewis) love this book. i? i totally effing hate this book, yo.

while editing our list of top 100 novels, i wanted to strike Life of Pi altogether, but rhianna leaped to its defense with the same crazy-lady!, accusatory look i get from just about everyone. astounding, really. there are more people who are upset i don't like Life of Pie, than there are people who jump "all up in my grill" when i get frank about Harry Potter. Straight-up, yo, i even have qualms putting 'Harry Potter' in italics. it's such he bare minimum of literature...

but i digress... i consented to include Life of Pi in our Honourable Mentions section.

but dudes? i am not alone in my wrinkled-nose galaxy. chris (who has probably read more of the books on the Modern Library's list than rhianna and i put together) has got my back. it's been so long since i read those few chapters & discarded Life of Pi, that i don't remember anything other than just explicitly hating it. i sent the thus-far list to chris and he immediately picked out Life of Pi.

"there is no way life of pi should even be mentioned."
"it just seemed so condescending to the reader."
"awful awful awful book."

- chris

2. Harry Potter ; J.K. Rowling

in my 'hood? rowling bitches get smacked. times a thousand. or, i have to erase from my memory, the knowledge that people i love enjoy this bound bowel movement.

what to say that hasn't already be said (by me, usually after a couple pints)? miss rowling uses half-assed, bor-ring & not even remotely interesting writing as a catalyst for her ejaculatory messes of fantasy. time & time again. not even interesting messes. folks, coherently carrying a reader from point A to point Z in a plot is not an accomplishment. that's like praising an architect for rembering to put in floors or water pipes. if you think i'm going to call her a brilliant writer because she comes up with broomstick versions of soccer? balls to you. that is not gonna happen.

i do like soccer, though...

3. Open ; Lisa Moore

what could possibly ruin an interesting plot, an enjoyable author's tone, & what appears to be talented writing? housewives. swear to god, you could write the most interesting book ever: aliens!; unicorns!; gangsters!; incest!; but once you flip the main character into a towel-ringing housewife, my attention is gone & gone again.

especially where her major qualms revolve around really, quite boring sex. not un-sexy sex. just boring sex. if you know what i mean. & i believe i said it last night: sexy boring is almost worse than just plain ol' boring.

it makes me feel dirty & shameless in all the wrong ways.

(note: this also goes for her Degrees of Nakedness)

4. Fallen ; David Maine

survey says? this is an awesome cover, homeslices.

you, my aforementioned homeslices, know how much i dig reading books with smart design. but, however a-may-zing the cover is, the content is predictable and very plodding-along-ish. so and so does this, so and so does this, so and so feels like this because so and so did that... i kept drfting off- not to sleep. you know a book is pretty bad when i favour working on packaging design over reading.

there's not that much to say about it, really. just boring. disappointing. i got perhaps two chapters in.

they're coming in droves...

2006-11-04T09:03:00.000-08:00

...all the books i have leant out. it is a tidal wave, and with all the recent purchases, everything was in a state of complete anarchy. well, book-wise. books make quiet anarchists. but either way, i was doing some frustrated housekeeping last night (blogspot, you are on thin ice mister-- all these reapirs. what the crap?) & it wound up with me taking inventory &, consequently, attempting to fit all the books i really love on my Favourites Shelf.

i have three shelves in my bedroom. left over from a former roommate or courtesy of the landlord i do not know. while being fairly hefty, none of them are very large. & none of them are together: there are two rather high on the opposite wall from my bed, & one right over my bed, quite a bit lower, has been dubbed my Favourites Shelf.

unfortunately, having things arranged by preference is spurring a lot of compromises. the Favourites has a usual, library-style line of books, with towers of books at each end. towers have begun to form over top, though, with flimsy piles of slipping books between them. it looks like an urban city skyline full of leaning towers of piza... & i've been mildly worried about going to sleep every night with the overburdened shelf right over my head. my tombstone would read: died by books. but generally, very good books. her favourites. isn't it ironic? don't you think?

so here it is, my inventory:

books i shipped out to lesser shelf:
. advertising books (ogilvy on advertising, pick me, and some sample books by paper companies we always get...etc)
. lisa moore's yuck-o books. [degrees of nakedness &open]
. mark haddon curious incident of the dog in the night-time
[ it was never a favourite, really]
. cookbooks/food related books aside from anthony bourdain's kitchen confidential.

refugees and/or welcome guests to favourites shelf:
. flowers for algernon
. three men in a boat
. sicilian carousel * the dark labyrinth by lawrence durrel
[ to accompany the alexandria quartet ]
. lullabye, fight club, & survivor by chuck palahniuk [ for consistency. choke is actually a favourite...]
. chekhov short stories, the cherry orchard, three plays etc.

on thin ice & in danger of being shipped out at any given moment:
. poe (collection of short stories)
. dan savage's skipping towards gomorrah: the seven deadly sins and the pursuit of happiness in america
. gulag

recently returned to my collection:
. dead kid songs toby litt
. layer cake j. j. connolly
. another bullshit night in suck city nick flynn
. perdido st. station china mieville
. his dark materials [2 first books of the trilogy]
. coraline neil gaiman

books i know i still have, somewhere out there:
. justine lawrence durrell [ i have no idea who i leant it to...]
. pirates! on an adventure with whaling gideon defoe (i may have this around the apartment somewhere. who knows...)
. how we are hungry dave eggers
. and our faces, my heart, brief as photos john berger
. tours of the black clock steve erickson
. eats, shoots & leaves you know the one.
. anais nin's diaries (gone for good, i bet)

books that aren't mine:
. into the wild
. the contortionist's handbook
. girl with curious hair

books i wish weren't mine [but i'm too lazy to take to a secondhand shop]:
. snow falling on cedars
. white oleander
. open & degrees of nakedness
. fallen
. the fire thief
. the catastrophist

books i intend to lend out in the nearby future:
. amber spyglass (recently recovered from page-by-page spilled/dried gesso removal surgery) to rhianna
. it happened in boston? to rhianna and/or kathleen
. here is where we meet by john berger- to kathleen because she loves him too.
. three men in a boat (to say nothing of the dog) jerome k. jerome

books i know i want copies of, but am too sad to handle for sentimental reasons:
. gene wolfe's strange travelers
. rilke (collection)
. gabriel garcia marquez's love in the time of cholera
. voltaire's candide
. henry miller (almost anything)

reminded to order/get:
. the black book lawrence durrell

The Robber by Robert Walser

2006-11-03T10:44:00.000-08:00

I was reminded today of one of my all-time favourite books, The Robber. This is one of the most stunning books I've ever read, even though I've only been able to read it in translation. It is also a criminally neglected book by a criminially neglected author. Robert Walser is one of the most clever, funny, and intelligent of the Europeans. The Robber is an absolutely hilarious story about an unnamed Robber caught in a bizarre love triangle. The book is a wild collection of small sketches and non-sequiters that somehow coalesce into a witty and innovative novel that is as much about its narrator/author as it is about The Robber or any of the other characters.

It begins with one of the greatest first lines of any book:

Edith loves him. More on this later.

The introduction to my edition calls the novel a "quirky masterpiece of high modernism" and it's a good five-word description. The first lines (above) set the standard for the tone of the book, which endlessly promises and evades its own narrative. In many respects, you might consider the true story of the novel to be a tale of an author attempting to simultaneously tell and withhold his story. But in addition to being a very innovative, experimental narrative, it's very readable and humorous. A later quote where the narrator has once again begun speaking of himself, in an evasive move to avoid telling the story:

People might suppose I've a low opinion of myself. On my table lie magazines. How could someone they name as honorary subscriber be a person of little worth? Often I receive entire bundles of letters, which clearly demonstrates that here and there I'm very much in people's thoughts. If I ever make a visit where visits have significance, I'd do it quite cozily, with respect, and, as for the rest, as if I had one of my hands in my coat pocket, that is, a touch woodenly. For it's amusing to appear somewhat awkward, I mean to say, there's something beautiful about it. Poor Robber, I'm neglecting you completely. It's said he likes to eat semolina pudding, and worships anyone who fries him up some nice Rösti potatoes. Admittedly this is slander on my part, but with a person like this, why split hairs? Now something about that deceased widow. Across from me stands a house whose façade is quite simply a poem. French troops who marched into our city in 1798 beheld the countenance of this house, provided they took the trouble or had the time to notice it.

I love how everything in this story is so contingent on knowledge its author does not have, as in those final lines (which, you will notice, are offered as if they related somehow to a dead widow, more of this endless deferral of the story proper).

Every once in a while Walser attempts to summarize the events of the book. But his narrator-character fails miserably as an author, which in many respects is the source of much of the book's humour. Walser is working very hard to appear the clown, and a clever clown he makes:

The general state of affairs now appears to us as follows: Edith has behaved rather bunglingly toward "her" Robber. She committed noteworthy errors. I, for my part, have stated in these pages my wish to take him by the hand and lead him to her so he can stand before her like a sort of sinner and beg her forgiveness. But ought he to beg her forgiveness on account of her bungling? Really there wouldn't be any point to it. So now I find myself in a slight pickle, seeing these reconciliatory negotiations dangling once again in uncertainty. Though it's true I regard the indefinite, at times, as auspicious. For how am I to know what sort of welcome Edith will offer us in the event of our attempting a timid knock at her door? After all, it might well occur to her to slam the door on our, that is, my and my Robber's nose, perhaps saying to us: "Get lost, both of you." Assuredly she's still fuming at me. And at him as well? I couldn't say. In point of fact, she's a habitual fumer. For a time she appear to us, that is, to all those she encountered, with a brownish tinge to her.

Walser is a writer you need to read, whoever you may be. His work is very funny and has an air of innocence about it that is truly delightful yet tempered with a very sad and a very quiet underbelly of knowledge.

Besides, how can you not love a guy who describes himself as a "honorary subscriber" to various magazines?

things that need editing include.....

2006-10-31T23:34:00.000-08:00

POPULAR TOP 100 NOVEL LISTS

For some reason the other day as I was on my stoll through the green fields of the internet, stopping to pick metaphorical daisies, I found this list of the Modern Library's Top 100 Novels. Upon first glance this seems to be a super idea.....because then you know what kind of books are awesome and you might enjoy. However there are some obviously inherent problems with the selections. Being that whoever this "board" is has their priorities way out of whack.

The Board List- First of all, two James Joyce novels in the top 10 indicates a serious problem. Look, we all know he was a misunderstood genius. But mistaking "stylized" novels for "top" novels does no one any favors. No one actually enjoys trying to read James Joyce except people who have brought intellectual masturbation to a new refined level.
Secondly, there are many other books where I do not disagree that they are a great novel, but the ranking was chosen by drunk monkeys. For example:

9= Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence
93= The Magus by John Fowles

The Magus blows Sons and Lovers out of the water like hillbillies out fishin' with dynamite. DH Lawrence was a pantywaist. You know that's true.

And then! Then! Beside this list of novels is a list of the Top 100 as chosen by readers instead of aforementioned intellectual wankers. This list is good just for its humour value. Because it contains:
3 Ayn Rand novels in the top 10
3 L. Ron Hubbard novels in the top 10
IT by Stephen King
and other such choices that cause one to double over with laughter.

So I started searching the internet to see if there were any Top 100 Novel lists I could get behind.

Here is one created as a "rival" list to the Modern Library's. It is basically the same although it contains Charlotte's Web and Winnie the Pooh and may have had child jurors. Plus the biggest redeeming merit of the first list was that No. 4 was Lolita, and on this list it's been demoted. Boo.

This one is by Time Magazine. At first glance it seems to be a little more hip than others because it contains Ubik by Philip K. Dick and White Teeth by Zadie Smith. Which I can totally get behind. However, it is almost instantly ruined by the fact that it also contains, Are You There God, It's Me Margaret by Judy Blume. Seriously.

This list by the Guardian is a little more international. Also, FINALLY, someone had the sense to include One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez. Which is obviously one of the best novels ever. However I feel they've also neglected so many good books in favor of including things like Virgil and Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales weren't even meant to be a book, so much as an oral tradition. Duh.

Anyway. You get the point. I know that everyone has different tastes and so on. But I feel like of all the books that were ever written, the Top 100 list should contain things that almost anyone could read and find enjoyable. Book that are both engaging and thought provoking. Yet light and fruity with an essence of oak. You get me.

So. Anyone up for making a new and improved list? I think I might try it. Suggestions welcome.

quantum mediocrity

2006-10-29T19:55:00.000-08:00

{brief: novel; 300-ish pages}

Standing around at Jason Christie’s incredibly, mind-blowingly, well-attended book launch, Rhianna, Jonathan and I all agreed: Mobius Dick = Worth Reading (but just barely).

rating: If someone offers to lend it to you for the weekend, go ahead. If you go out and buy a copy for yourself? Well, I was not the one who sent you.

It started off in a way that reminded me of that abominable piece of spiritual lit. (yes, I’ve read it, embarrassingly enough…) The Celestine Prophecy. Stress and suspense are placed on coincidence after coincidence, though the narrator keeps reminding us: all is chaos and random and random again. Between the narrator’s own deluge of coincidences, we’re witness to a historical, chatty, whorish, mish-mosh of scientists, musicians, writers, etc and another contemporary storyline involving a man who has no memory (or no stable memory to speak of), locked up in a hospital for people who suffer from a particular “disease”, wherein they create and re-create their own memories. Time loops around, merges at points, and occasionally knocks the characters into one another.

I enjoyed:
a) quantum mechanic bits, because I am a highschool dropout and those things make me feel a little more secure around highly learned company.
b) if you know me, you know I enjoy interesting time frames, done right.
c) some of the characters were pleasant…
d) the cover art.

However:
a) ….sure, there was some quantum mechanics, and I learned. I just didn’t feel like I learned nearly enough.
b) …the interesting time splices were a little clumsy and predictable- gimmicky?
c) …in a watered-down, Catch-22 sort of way.
d) no, I stand firm in my position on the cover art. It’s totally nice cover art.

For similar-but-better, a slightly mis-guided but pretty neat-o blogger { Grumpy Old Bookman} recommends:
Alfred Bester’s Tiger, Tiger (aka: The Stars My Destination).

For a more “gushing review” of this book {and wow, do I mean “gushing”- ANDREW CRUMEY WRITES LIKE A dream and dreams like a writer inspired to make mischief about the difference between writing and dreaming.} I turn you over to:
The Scotsman

Erebus by Robert Hunter

2006-10-29T17:21:00.000-08:00

New to this blog, I thought I'd post about something old. I recently discovered this bizarre book, which I am currently reading amongst my other reading. Not sure whether it's a "neglected classic" or a "justly neglected book" yet, but I encourage you to check out the strangeness that is Robert Hunter's Erebus.

Robert Hunter is best known to the world as the founder of Greenpeace. Before founding Greenpeace he was a reporter in Winnipeg and wrote a strange novel representing Winnipeg as "a place of darkness halfway between Hell and Heaven." Needless to say, it is intense and uncommonly comic. Here is the first paragraph of the novel for you:

The remains of the sun are shuddering. Fumes rise as it rots. It has a green skin, punctured, with stains running from the sores. It is nothing more than a decaying grape. Its light is putrification. At the moment, it is retreating into the anus of night. In the morning, it will be dumped like a turd on the horizon.

If you want to read this book, you will have to seek it out. To the best of my knowledge, it is out of print, and so you'll have to look it up in the library or on a site like www.abebooks.com. Enjoy!

Kelly Link for Beginners

2006-10-29T09:56:00.000-08:00

{brief: paperback; collection of short stories; roughly 300 pages; worst & most inappropriate cover quote of recommendation i've ever read}

rating: pick this bitch up, pronto

I was mid-ravage at my favourite bookstore {pages, kensington} when the woman behind the counter gave me pause. I stilled my frenzied grappling long enough to join her at the bookshelf.

"You like some of the more experimental fiction, don't you?"

"Oh, I do."

After re-establishing my adoration of Garbiel Garcia Marquez and other fantastical whatnots, she informed me that there was some underground following for Kelly Link's fiction and that I would likely be the next banana on the boat. Well, paint me yellow and have a woman with a fruit basket for a hat, sing about not letting me ripen in the fridge: because I am all over that boat.

Alright, so I have a hard time reading & recommending books that don't have really mind-blowing covers- at least very clever ones. Inventive typography, etc. I'm vain and like the attention that clever books draw to me while i'm reading. And, it is safe to say that Magic (for beginners)'s cover is not my favourite and won't be winning me over with any curious, erudite barista boys. To make it worse, the cover quote involves traces of Harry Potter:

"[Link] spins her stories in such charming, matter of fact tones that you almost don't realize you're entering a hybrid world that's part Muggle and part magic" -Time

Muggles? I mean come on- Muggles? Okay. J.K-fucking-Rowling can lead you from A to Z in a plot, but she exercises very little by way of literary device, vocabulary, phrasing and pleasing me in any way. Link, on the other hand, has very practiced, equal-parts charming/eloquant use of english.

Rowling takes reality and splits it down the middle, fencing off her new and invented magical realm from the familiar with very little overlap, let alone intertwining. For the most part, Link doesn't construct a new fantasy world or erect any fences: she takes familiar breeds (zombies, witches, gypsies & ghosts); backs them with an invented foundation (rules & understandings); and nets them into present-tense stories (often with jarringly contemporary references like Bring it On) or ambiguously timed fairy-tales. Also unlike Rowling, Link doesn't get off on real-world derivatives and, though it's seamless writing, there is no question when it's fantastical. It is beautiful storytelling, long before it is "clever inventing" (which should be left to the self-congratulating Mary Shellys of our time).

As a side-note, she lives in Massachussets and that is relieving for me. Authors are so obvious when they are writing as a Canadian Writer.

If all you want to know is, "how does it relate to McSweeny's?":
What can I say? The titles are short and I think Dave Eggers's gang is starting to make that a little embarrassing. But, apparently, they like her quite a bit and she's included in the Mammoth Treasurey of Thrilling Tales. I happen to like it much more than I've liked anything pumped out of the Eggers Factory for awhile now...

If you like any of the following, pick this bitch up pronto:

* Catskin:
Now, since witches cannot have children in the usual way– their wombs are full of straw or bricks or stones, and when they give birth, they give birth to rabbits, kittens, tadpoles, houses, silk dresses.... One girl she had grown like a cyst, upon her thigh. Other children she had made out of things in her garden, or bits of trash that the cats brought her: aluminum foil with strings of chicken fat still crusted to it, broken television sets, cardboard boxes that the neighbors had thrown out.

* Lull: Pete isn't really into this. Imaginary houses are sexy. Real ones are work.

* Magic for beginners:
Jeremy runs all the way,slapping his old track shoes against the sidewalk for the pleasure of the jar, for the sweetness of the sting. He likes the rough, cottony ache in his lungs

Talis opens the door.. She grins at him, although he can tell that she's been crying, too. She's wearing a T-shirt that says I'M SO GOTH I SHIT TINY VAMPIRES. "Hey," Jeremy says. Talis nods. Talis isn't so goth, at least not as far as Jeremy or anyone else knows. Talis just has a lot of T-shirts. She's an enigma wrapped in a mysterious T-shirt. A woman once said to Calvin Coolidge, "Mr. President, I bet my husband that I could get you to say more than two words." Coolidge said, "You lose." Jeremy can imagine Talis as Calvin Coolidge in a former life. Or maybe she was one of those dogs that don't bark.

The Great Divorce:
Sarah wondered why the living, who were so very much more solid, after all, than te dead, so often looked shifty and deceitful to her. She tried not to be prejudiced. But the dead were so beautiful, so fixed and so fluid, like sheets of calligraphy. They belonged to her, although she told herself that she was wrong to feel this way.

Favourite Stories:
Catskin
The Cannon
The Faery Handbag
The Hortlak

[ currently reading:Misfortune by Wesley Stace & Literature and the Right to Death by Maurice Blanchot ]

good old fashioned murder

2006-10-25T20:27:00.000-07:00

So yesterday after reading a movie review for like, the second recent movie to come out about Truman Capote, I decided to finally read that copy of In Cold Blood that has been kicking around.

Survey says? A tempered sort of enjoyment. It's far more artfully written than I would have immediately suspected. I found myself wanting to read ahead in the chapters to gain answers to questions that Mr. Capote deftly dangled just out of reach. Which is strange because given the lurid subject matter, what really strikes me about this how calmly and tepidly the story presents itself.

Which leads me towards what I feel is really the most interesting thing about this book, which is how much you can tell that it was published back before action movies and crime thrillers as we know them. It's interesting to reflect on how the jerky, overblown, slick way we make movies has influenced how many people write.

Also, the description of Mr. Clutter, "...his square-jawed, confident face retained a healthy-hued youthfulness, and his teeth, unstained and strong enough to shatter walnuts..." is really superb because usually when reading character descriptions I always tend to wonder what their teeth could shatter.

Biggest drawback? Besides the lack of sensationalism I've grown culturally addicted to? Is that, Mr. Capote, we get that you based this book on a lot of firsthand research and interviews and put a great deal of your life into personally talking to many of the people involved. But we would understand that without you putting every other word in quotation. For example:

"...and "more than anything in the world" he desired a reunion with this man, his "real and only friend", the "brilliant" Willie-Jay...if things "didn't work out with Willy-Jay" he might decide to "consider Dick's proposition."

This might be the "correct" way of referencing "documents" and "interviews" but I find it a little "distracting" as a "reader".

Seriously Mr. Capote. How do you go from mass murder to Breakfast at Tiffany's anyway.

heavy boots book-buying compulsions...

2006-10-24T13:57:00.000-07:00

in the worst of moods, i ravaged shelves of pages, kensington:

The Believer current: {october} + backissues: { august & september - all '06. what a splurge}
Found II Davy Rothbart
The Ten Commandments of Typography Paul Felton

& the prettiest editions that i've ever seen of:

Beowulf
The Descent Into Hell
Sagas & Myths of the Northmen
Cupid & Psyche

ordered:

over the rainbow? hardly. chandler brossard
the dead fish museum charles d'ambrosio
tiknor: a novel sheila heti
G john berger {despite the fact i already had this book. it got stolen.}