May 2nd, 2010 / 5:07 pm
Random
Christopher Higgs
Random
Summer Reading
I’ve got an insurmountable stack of summer reading. Here are a few titles I see when I glance over at it:
Say, Poem – Adam Robinson
Dhalgren – Samuel Delany
The Invention of Morel – Adolfo Bioy Casares
The Worm Ouroboros – Eric Rücker Eddison
Language in Literature – Roman Jakobson
Gurlesque: the new grrly, grotesque, burlesque poetics – Lara Glenum, Arielle Greenberg, eds.
In the Metro – Marc Augé
Firework – Eugene Marten
Cyclonopedia – Reza Negarestani
Stupidity – Avital Ronell
Post-Continental Philosophy – John Mullarkey
What do you have in your stack?
This is my second summer having Dhalgren in my pile of summer reading. I’m sure this is the summer i’ll read it; these last few months i’ve been blown away by scifi’s ability to be narratively and emotionally transcendent.
I would add 2666. Please tell us what you make of Dahlgren.
Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre: The Best of HP Lovecraft
Nightwork – Christine Schutt
Geronimo Rex – Barry Hannah
The Temptation to Exist – E.M. Cioran
are a few at the top of the stack. I’ve been meaning to read Dahlgren for forever…
– Eden Eden Eden by Pierre Guyotat
– Defaced: The Visual Culture of Violence in the Late Middle Ages by Valentin Groebner
– Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 by Richard Slotkin
– Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida by Matthew Calarco
– Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics by Graham Harman
– The Ontogeny of Information: Developmental Systems and Evolution (Science and Cultural Theory) by Susan Oyama
– The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America by Leo Marx
– Deleuze: The Clamor of Being by Alain Badiou
– Chaos and Intoxication: Complexity and Adaptation in the Structure of Human Nature
– Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art Caroline A. Jones
I’m going to read Dhalgren this summer, too.
In Search of Lost Time. . . I’m gonna do it
In search of time to read In Search of Lost Time….
Wake up early! : ) It’s what I’ll be doing. . . Proust better be good to me.
The Luxuries:
– Péter Nádas – A Book of Memories
– Samuel Beckett – The Complete Dramatic Works
– This six hundred-page book called JUNG that I bought for a dollar
– At least one story in each of the ~40 lit journals that have accumulated in and on the floor in front of my bookcase over the past six months
– Borges – Selected Nonfictions
– Kenneth Koch, The Collected Fiction of
– Sartre – Nausea
– Jeanette Winterson – Sexing the Cherry
I have read Dhalgren 6 times and will probably read it again this summer. It gets weirder and more beautiful each time. There’s a scene in the book where this family lives in a high rise apartment and the father still gets dressed in his suit and tie every day and goes to work even though his job his office is long gone. The family holds the memory of normal and this is all they can respond to. That and canned butterscotch pudding. The sister pushes her little brother down an elevator shaft when they are moving a carpet (when things get stinky they just move to another apartment in the building) the thing is she kills him on purpose he’s getting on her nerves. Not your usual skiffy book. If this doesn’t shake you up then I don’t know what will. I have 3 signed copies of the original print run the run when they didn’t send the proofs to Delaney first so all the mistakes were left in. There are cleaner copies out there now but I don’t want to read them. Hearing Delaney read was like watching a giant subversive Santa Claus.
JUNG is mountain in moments, others: ehh.
I’m reading Dhalgren slowly. I’m loving it but it’s pacing has allowed me to read like 5 other books since I started it and I’m still not even halfway through it.
The Davis translation of swann’s way is great. Proust is way funnier than I would have guessed. That’s all I’ve read though.
Dhalgren took me a few months, but I think I put it down and picked it up again a few times.
Love.
My to-read stack is now disastrously large and I keep buying.
Gotta finish Prisoner of Love by Genet and 100 Days of Sodom, both of which I started a while ago and let myself get distracted from reading. Then will probably try to read some of the following–
Venus Drive, Sam Lipsyte
Wittgenstein’s Mistress, Markson
Liberty’s Excess, Lidia Yuknavitch
Girl, Imagined by Chance, Lance Olsen
La Medusa, Vanessa Place (that might not happen)
The Terrible Girls, Rebecca Brown
Desperate Characters, Paula Fox
Age of Wire & String, Ben Marcus
Trailer Girls and Other Stories, Terese Svoboda
Girl Trouble, Holly Goddard Jones
The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie, Agota Kristoff
Oh, right, and Complete Works of Marvin K Mooney. ;-)
…that’s kinda only the beginning of the list.
Just finished Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee by James Tate. Next three are:
Woods and Chalices, Salamun
PP/FF: an anthology, ed. Peter Conners
I Dream of Madonna, ed. Kay Turner
. Not sure what comes after that, I have a huge stack. Most excited about that last one, picked it up at a Goodwill.
Have a stack from AWP and some I’ve picked up since then:
The Rocket’s Red Glare by David Peak
Say, Poem by Adam R
Annalemma 4 & 6
Prose: Poems, a novel by Jamie Iredell
Less Shiny by Mary Miller
PANK 4
Fences by Ben Brooks
The Best God Forgot to Invent by Jim Harrison
Words by Andy Devine
&c
&c
No, Kenneth Koch’s prose is really good. Barthelme was a huge fan of “Red Robbins.”
Borges’s non-fiction: go for the collected, some of the best pieces are the least well known.
the carlo reinhart novels – thomas berger
This is my second summer having Dhalgren in my pile of summer reading. I’m sure this is the summer i’ll read it; these last few months i’ve been blown away by scifi’s ability to be narratively and emotionally transcendent.
I would add 2666. Please tell us what you make of Dahlgren.
So far:
3 chapbooks by Brandon Brown: The Orgy, Tooth Fair, and Your Mom’s a Falconress & Other Poems
The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney
U.S.! by Chris Bachelder
The Collected Fiction of Kenneth Koch
Fugue State
Beckett’s Complete Short Prose
Lana Turner #2 (http://lanaturnerjournal.com/)
Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre: The Best of HP Lovecraft
Nightwork – Christine Schutt
Geronimo Rex – Barry Hannah
The Temptation to Exist – E.M. Cioran
are a few at the top of the stack. I’ve been meaning to read Dahlgren for forever…
– Eden Eden Eden by Pierre Guyotat
– Defaced: The Visual Culture of Violence in the Late Middle Ages by Valentin Groebner
– Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 by Richard Slotkin
– Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida by Matthew Calarco
– Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics by Graham Harman
– The Ontogeny of Information: Developmental Systems and Evolution (Science and Cultural Theory) by Susan Oyama
– The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America by Leo Marx
– Deleuze: The Clamor of Being by Alain Badiou
– Chaos and Intoxication: Complexity and Adaptation in the Structure of Human Nature
– Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art Caroline A. Jones
I’m going to read Dhalgren this summer, too.
I like that stack.
In Search of Lost Time. . . I’m gonna do it
In search of time to read In Search of Lost Time….
Wake up early! : ) It’s what I’ll be doing. . . Proust better be good to me.
The Luxuries:
– Péter Nádas – A Book of Memories
– Samuel Beckett – The Complete Dramatic Works
– This six hundred-page book called JUNG that I bought for a dollar
– At least one story in each of the ~40 lit journals that have accumulated in and on the floor in front of my bookcase over the past six months
– Borges – Selected Nonfictions
– Kenneth Koch, The Collected Fiction of
– Sartre – Nausea
– Jeanette Winterson – Sexing the Cherry
I have read Dhalgren 6 times and will probably read it again this summer. It gets weirder and more beautiful each time. There’s a scene in the book where this family lives in a high rise apartment and the father still gets dressed in his suit and tie every day and goes to work even though his job his office is long gone. The family holds the memory of normal and this is all they can respond to. That and canned butterscotch pudding. The sister pushes her little brother down an elevator shaft when they are moving a carpet (when things get stinky they just move to another apartment in the building) the thing is she kills him on purpose he’s getting on her nerves. Not your usual skiffy book. If this doesn’t shake you up then I don’t know what will. I have 3 signed copies of the original print run the run when they didn’t send the proofs to Delaney first so all the mistakes were left in. There are cleaner copies out there now but I don’t want to read them. Hearing Delaney read was like watching a giant subversive Santa Claus.
JUNG is mountain in moments, others: ehh.
I’m reading Dhalgren slowly. I’m loving it but it’s pacing has allowed me to read like 5 other books since I started it and I’m still not even halfway through it.
The Davis translation of swann’s way is great. Proust is way funnier than I would have guessed. That’s all I’ve read though.
Dhalgren took me a few months, but I think I put it down and picked it up again a few times.
Love.
My to-read stack is now disastrously large and I keep buying.
Gotta finish Prisoner of Love by Genet and 100 Days of Sodom, both of which I started a while ago and let myself get distracted from reading. Then will probably try to read some of the following–
Venus Drive, Sam Lipsyte
Wittgenstein’s Mistress, Markson
Liberty’s Excess, Lidia Yuknavitch
Girl, Imagined by Chance, Lance Olsen
La Medusa, Vanessa Place (that might not happen)
The Terrible Girls, Rebecca Brown
Desperate Characters, Paula Fox
Age of Wire & String, Ben Marcus
Trailer Girls and Other Stories, Terese Svoboda
Girl Trouble, Holly Goddard Jones
The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie, Agota Kristoff
Oh, right, and Complete Works of Marvin K Mooney. ;-)
…that’s kinda only the beginning of the list.
i don’t even want to think about it right now.
Oops, alan, I meant that other moments IN Jung are ehh. :)
Just finished Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee by James Tate. Next three are:
Woods and Chalices, Salamun
PP/FF: an anthology, ed. Peter Conners
I Dream of Madonna, ed. Kay Turner
. Not sure what comes after that, I have a huge stack. Most excited about that last one, picked it up at a Goodwill.
Have a stack from AWP and some I’ve picked up since then:
The Rocket’s Red Glare by David Peak
Say, Poem by Adam R
Annalemma 4 & 6
Prose: Poems, a novel by Jamie Iredell
Less Shiny by Mary Miller
PANK 4
Fences by Ben Brooks
The Best God Forgot to Invent by Jim Harrison
Words by Andy Devine
&c
&c
No, Kenneth Koch’s prose is really good. Barthelme was a huge fan of “Red Robbins.”
Borges’s non-fiction: go for the collected, some of the best pieces are the least well known.
Here’s mine:
Say, Poem – Adam Robinson
Dhalgren – Samuel Delany
The Invention of Morel – Adolfo Bioy Casares
The Worm Ouroboros – Eric Rücker Eddison
Language in Literature – Roman Jakobson
Gurlesque: the new grrly, grotesque, burlesque poetics – Lara Glenum, Arielle Greenberg, eds.
In the Metro – Marc Augé
Firework – Eugene Marten
Cyclonopedia – Reza Negarestani
Stupidity – Avital Ronell
Post-Continental Philosophy – John Mullarkey
(sorry, I’ve been in kind of a Kenny Goldsmith mood lately)
the carlo reinhart novels – thomas berger
So far:
3 chapbooks by Brandon Brown: The Orgy, Tooth Fair, and Your Mom’s a Falconress & Other Poems
The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney
U.S.! by Chris Bachelder
The Collected Fiction of Kenneth Koch
Fugue State
Beckett’s Complete Short Prose
Lana Turner #2 (http://lanaturnerjournal.com/)
I like that stack.
i read dhalgren five years ago and thought it was the greatest thing ever. i wonder if i would read it differently today. curious what your thoughts will be on it.
i am pushing throuh against the day this summer. also wittegensteins mistress, correction by bernhard, and the recognitions finally if i can find a copy i dont have to pay lots for.
damn. mercier and camier also.
♫(gorecki symphony 3)♫
reading la medusa right now. i love it but it’s going slower for me right now. i feel like even when i finish it i’ll still have to read it again to ‘get’ what i want from it. at the same time reading it is exciting.
Halls of Fame. D’Agata
Take Your Time Olafur Eliasson
Ways of Seeing John Berger
Ice Age Robert Anderson
Sentence Structure Virginia Tuffe
books i might read;
The Poetics of Space Gaston Bachelard
Girl with Curious hair Wallace
On Literature Eco
short list for rereading:
anything by william blake
Kind of want to get a hold of Richard Yates’s screenplay/adaption. Don’t remember the name though. Always looking for book suggestions. Actually bookmarking this thread so I can nerd out tomorrow and see what other books I want to check out.
My parents have a ton of sartre books around the house so i’ve been putting off that author.
i don’t even want to think about it right now.
Oops, alan, I meant that other moments IN Jung are ehh. :)
Here’s mine:
Say, Poem – Adam Robinson
Dhalgren – Samuel Delany
The Invention of Morel – Adolfo Bioy Casares
The Worm Ouroboros – Eric Rücker Eddison
Language in Literature – Roman Jakobson
Gurlesque: the new grrly, grotesque, burlesque poetics – Lara Glenum, Arielle Greenberg, eds.
In the Metro – Marc Augé
Firework – Eugene Marten
Cyclonopedia – Reza Negarestani
Stupidity – Avital Ronell
Post-Continental Philosophy – John Mullarkey
(sorry, I’ve been in kind of a Kenny Goldsmith mood lately)
[…] HTMLGIANT / Summer Reading […]
I kind of stopped reading for the majority of my teenage years, so I’m largely still trying to catch up with the preceding few centuries before I move on to whatever’s been published since the ’80s. Actually, a lot of that is covered by my university course, now, so this summer seems to be more me trying to get into some philosophy / other “Thinky Nonfiction”. Via Penguin’s Great Ideas series, mostly, haha.
• Plays — Chekhov
• The Crucible — Arthur Miller
• Arcadia — Tom Stoppard
• The Fall of America — Allen Ginsberg
• The Complete Poems — Ben Jonson
• How To Take Yourself Apart … — Aaron Burch
• Jude: Level 1 — Julian Gough
• The Dharma Bums — Jack Kerouac
• No one belongs here more than you. — Miranda July
• Les Mots — Jean-Paul Sartre (w/ difficulty, as my French is v. rusty)
• Conversazione con Woody Allen — Jean-Michel Frodon
• Selected Essays — Hume
• An Apology for Idlers — Robert Louis Stevenson
• Why I Write — George Orwell
• The Sickness unto Death — Kierkegaard
And maybe, just out of interest, Timothy Leary’s “The Psychedelic Experience”.
(I have a relatively long summer.)
The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie, Agota Kristoff
That was very good.
i read dhalgren five years ago and thought it was the greatest thing ever. i wonder if i would read it differently today. curious what your thoughts will be on it.
i am pushing throuh against the day this summer. also wittegensteins mistress, correction by bernhard, and the recognitions finally if i can find a copy i dont have to pay lots for.
damn. mercier and camier also.
♫(gorecki symphony 3)♫
reading la medusa right now. i love it but it’s going slower for me right now. i feel like even when i finish it i’ll still have to read it again to ‘get’ what i want from it. at the same time reading it is exciting.
i’m debating whether or not to sell my gray moncrieff proust books (that are very handsome but have been gathering dust on my shelf so far + the older translation, obviously) and then to “someday” buy the lydia davis et al. translations. for one thing, moncrieff effed up the title.
Halls of Fame. D’Agata
Take Your Time Olafur Eliasson
Ways of Seeing John Berger
Ice Age Robert Anderson
Sentence Structure Virginia Tuffe
books i might read;
The Poetics of Space Gaston Bachelard
Girl with Curious hair Wallace
On Literature Eco
short list for rereading:
anything by william blake
Kind of want to get a hold of Richard Yates’s screenplay/adaption. Don’t remember the name though. Always looking for book suggestions. Actually bookmarking this thread so I can nerd out tomorrow and see what other books I want to check out.
My parents have a ton of sartre books around the house so i’ve been putting off that author.
next up for me to read, in some order:
* Ann Beattie, Chilly Scenes of Winter
* Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (i started but got distracted; want to finish it (was never assigned it in school))
* James Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett
* Samuel Beckett, Nohow On: Company, Ill Seen Ill Said, Worstward Ho
* Jean Rhys, After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie
* Matty Byloos, Don’t Smell the Floss (waiting for it to arrive in the mail)
* Bhagavad-Gita (the Christopher Isherwood translation)
* Anton Chekhov, Forty Stories (transl. Robert Payne)
Hi Carlos, I tried to read 2666 back in December but stopped after Part Two. I wrote a review about Part One (http://asitoughttobe.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/notes-on-roberto-bolano%E2%80%99s-2666-part-1/), and had agreed to write reviews for the other three parts but the book was so boring that I couldn’t force myself to do it. Bolano is one cup of kool aid I can’t swallow.
I need to check out Lovecraft. Never read him, but have heard good things from many trusted voices. Cioran is always good, good, good.
hey Eric, thanks for this list. Many titles that are new to me: Slotkin, Oyama, Dean…in fact, I should probably curse you for adding so many new interesting titles to my “must check out list.”
I read the Calarco a few months ago, enjoyed it, very good foundational text for understanding the burgeoning field of Animal Studies.
Guyotat kicks everybody’s ass.
That Badiou is eh — worth reading, I suppose, as would be Zizek’s attempt to critique Deleuze, Organs Without a Body — personally, I found the Badiou book snarky/mean spirited and either Badiou doesn’t understand what Deleuze means by multiplicity or else he purposefully misreads Deleuze so he can push his whole dorky One/Multiple thing.
G. Harman and all those object oriented philosophers are at the top of my “I need to learn all I can about this field because from all accounts it is awesome” list.
My brother, who is off the charts smart and has impeccable taste, has for years championed Dhalgren, and for years I have said “I’m gonna get around to it…I’m gonna get around to it.” Your post here, along with all the reactions from other commenters, has solidified it: I gotta read Dhalgren asap!
Bless your heart, Tim. May you enjoy Mooney and may Mooney enjoy you.
i loved 2666. wow, you found the opening part about the critics boring? i guess everyone’s different. i was very engaged (it’s a love quadrangle story) and satisfied by how it ended (in general, bolano has an amazing way of ending sections of his books). i thought the amalfitano section was amazing too. the only part that was tough to get through for me was the part about the crimes, but i think interest in the book overall and sort of fascination with the ambition of the section kept me going.
You have amazing taste and discernment, Bryan. Good showing. :)
I kind of stopped reading for the majority of my teenage years, so I’m largely still trying to catch up with the preceding few centuries before I move on to whatever’s been published since the ’80s. Actually, a lot of that is covered by my university course, now, so this summer seems to be more me trying to get into some philosophy / other “Thinky Nonfiction”. Via Penguin’s Great Ideas series, mostly, haha.
• Plays — Chekhov
• The Crucible — Arthur Miller
• Arcadia — Tom Stoppard
• The Fall of America — Allen Ginsberg
• The Complete Poems — Ben Jonson
• How To Take Yourself Apart … — Aaron Burch
• Jude: Level 1 — Julian Gough
• The Dharma Bums — Jack Kerouac
• No one belongs here more than you. — Miranda July
• Les Mots — Jean-Paul Sartre (w/ difficulty, as my French is v. rusty)
• Conversazione con Woody Allen — Jean-Michel Frodon
• Selected Essays — Hume
• An Apology for Idlers — Robert Louis Stevenson
• Why I Write — George Orwell
• The Sickness unto Death — Kierkegaard
And maybe, just out of interest, Timothy Leary’s “The Psychedelic Experience”.
(I have a relatively long summer.)
Nice.
Careful with Delany. I read Dhalgren a few years back, then I ransacked all the bookstores in Seattle looking for anything else by him and read it all, even the stuff I didn’t like all that much. I guess it’s either that or you read fifty pages and throw it at the wall.
I have it on good authority that a new edition of Beckett’s Nohow On is forthcoming this summer, so if you haven’t purchased it yet, I’d hold out.
The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie, Agota Kristoff
That was very good.
i’m probably just going to read witz and maybe watch star trek
I want to read Hogg.
I’m still working on last summer.
I feel like a midget among GIANTS.
But seriously, it is always an inspiration to read others’ lists and taste their enthusiasms.
I will keep on keepin’ on.
It was a good stack, to say the least. That’s only about half of it. Peter hooked me up with a stack of Keyhole releases as a thank you for helping me at the Keyhole table in Molly’s absence.
I’ve a lot of words to love on soon.
I will be interested in your reaction to Dhalgren as a self-declared aesthete — I feel like there are parts of the book that totally foreground language-play, but other parts where language mostly becomes “transparent” and like solely descriptive of action, like where the characters are mostly just walking around and talking and fucking and fighting. It’s an odd animal. One thing I think is really cool/fascinating is how the physical and psychological spaces of that book shape how I experience cities, like beneath every surface is lurking a Bellonia, or something.
“Sexing the Cherry” is on my shelf too, but I didn’t put in my list of 1st priorities b/c I’ve already read “Written on the Body.”
I’ve only read the Lydia Davis, but definitely prefer its precision to what little I’ve seen of the Montcrieff.I bought the rest of the Penguin translations that are available in the U.S. (everything through “Sodom & Gomorrah”), and started to read “In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower,” but then sort-of tabled that project for the time-being. Really love Swann’s Way, though.
big fan of wittgenstein’s mistress. mercier and camier is one of the becketts i haven’t gotten to yet.
thx 4 the tip. already got one from the used store tho
Now there’s an experience you won’t soon forget.
…It took me like three or four months to finish the first third of “Swann’s Way.” But then I finished the rest of it in like a day. Had to catch a rhythm or something. I think it was the second Combray section I found a harder slog. It didn’t have the narrative tension of “will my mother come upstairs to kiss me goodnight” to (so brilliantly) organize its digressions — I started to get a little twitchy for want of signposts.
I almost bought it like five times last year, and then kept being like, No, I’ve got this gigantic stack of shit to read, I need to finish more of these shorter books before I start trying to read giant novels. But then I was like, I keep buying shorter books, there will always be a giant stack, so when will I ever have the opportunity to read the giant ones unless I decide now is the time? (Also unread — the Tunnel, Infinite Jest, Underworld, the rest of In Search of Lost Time after Swann’s Way, and anything by Vollman). And then I saw her on a panel at AWP and thought her presentation was totally haut, and FC2 had all their shit marked down to awesome prices at the book fair, so I went for it.
So I’ve heard. Pasha Malla recommended it in an office on Zoetrope and then I saw it was on Dennis Cooper’s list of favorites and decided to order.
Mooney enjoying me sounds hot.
Oh, I see, sorry!
i’m debating whether or not to sell my gray moncrieff proust books (that are very handsome but have been gathering dust on my shelf so far + the older translation, obviously) and then to “someday” buy the lydia davis et al. translations. for one thing, moncrieff effed up the title.
ha! danke.
next up for me to read, in some order:
* Ann Beattie, Chilly Scenes of Winter
* Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (i started but got distracted; want to finish it (was never assigned it in school))
* James Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett
* Samuel Beckett, Nohow On: Company, Ill Seen Ill Said, Worstward Ho
* Jean Rhys, After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie
* Matty Byloos, Don’t Smell the Floss (waiting for it to arrive in the mail)
* Bhagavad-Gita (the Christopher Isherwood translation)
* Anton Chekhov, Forty Stories (transl. Robert Payne)
All of that too? Oh lord… Well first of all the biggy is to finish Witz by Joshua Cohen and before that Ronald Reagan My Father by Brian Joseph Davis… and more, but I am half asleep…
Hi Carlos, I tried to read 2666 back in December but stopped after Part Two. I wrote a review about Part One (http://asitoughttobe.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/notes-on-roberto-bolano%E2%80%99s-2666-part-1/), and had agreed to write reviews for the other three parts but the book was so boring that I couldn’t force myself to do it. Bolano is one cup of kool aid I can’t swallow.
I need to check out Lovecraft. Never read him, but have heard good things from many trusted voices. Cioran is always good, good, good.
hey Eric, thanks for this list. Many titles that are new to me: Slotkin, Oyama, Dean…in fact, I should probably curse you for adding so many new interesting titles to my “must check out list.”
I read the Calarco a few months ago, enjoyed it, very good foundational text for understanding the burgeoning field of Animal Studies.
Guyotat kicks everybody’s ass.
That Badiou is eh — worth reading, I suppose, as would be Zizek’s attempt to critique Deleuze, Organs Without a Body — personally, I found the Badiou book snarky/mean spirited and either Badiou doesn’t understand what Deleuze means by multiplicity or else he purposefully misreads Deleuze so he can push his whole dorky One/Multiple thing.
G. Harman and all those object oriented philosophers are at the top of my “I need to learn all I can about this field because from all accounts it is awesome” list.
My brother, who is off the charts smart and has impeccable taste, has for years championed Dhalgren, and for years I have said “I’m gonna get around to it…I’m gonna get around to it.” Your post here, along with all the reactions from other commenters, has solidified it: I gotta read Dhalgren asap!
Bless your heart, Tim. May you enjoy Mooney and may Mooney enjoy you.
i loved 2666. wow, you found the opening part about the critics boring? i guess everyone’s different. i was very engaged (it’s a love quadrangle story) and satisfied by how it ended (in general, bolano has an amazing way of ending sections of his books). i thought the amalfitano section was amazing too. the only part that was tough to get through for me was the part about the crimes, but i think interest in the book overall and sort of fascination with the ambition of the section kept me going.
You have amazing taste and discernment, Bryan. Good showing. :)
I think it’s worth reading just to see what he does with rhythm and tension. I tore through it relatively quickly. I know Bolano is hyped up, but to me, his writing is thoroughly enjoyable.
I read 2666 in eight days and was never less than completely enthralled. I can’t imagine giving up on that book and knowing that it’s lurking on your shelf, full of evil. Hopefully you got it out of your house so it won’t suffocate you while you sleep.
Christopher, I know what you mean. As soon as I saw your list I said to myself, if I click on those links I’m going to end up buying half of them (and get my ass beat by my wife)!
bolano reminds me more of tang, but nice review chris – i feel less and less like wasting more time on him all the time. if i want to read 900 pages, i’ll finally get around to europe central, which i may do this summer, but probably won’t
A few:
Laura Sims Stranger (poems)
Dante Pugatorio (anyone wanna recommend a trans.?)
Adam Golaski Worse Than Myself (stories)
Fire on the Mountain Anita Desai (novel)
why does it “matter” if bolano is hyped? i honestly don’t understand why ppl care whether something is popular or hyped. can’t one “see through the hype” and make one’s own judgment/have one’s own reaction? my reactions to popular things are completely inconsistent, bc they’re based on the work itself and my own personality/tastes, not based on received wisdom, fear of trendiness, contrarianism, etc.
Nice.
Careful with Delany. I read Dhalgren a few years back, then I ransacked all the bookstores in Seattle looking for anything else by him and read it all, even the stuff I didn’t like all that much. I guess it’s either that or you read fifty pages and throw it at the wall.
i like the idea of being “connected” to lots of other people bc we like something that is popular. i also like being “connected” to a smaller number of people bc we like something “kinda weird” that isn’t so popular. life offers diversity, i don’t see any reason to reject it.
I am going to attempt to plow through the books I have from the library:
Cinema and sensation : French film and the art of transgression / Martine Beugnet (2/3s through this already)
Sophie Tottie : fiction is no joke
Avant garde theatre, 1892-1992 / Christopher Innes
Reversible destiny : Arakawa/Gins
House of cards / Peter Eisenman
Time of theory : a history of Tel quel (1960-1983) / Patrick Ffrench (2/3s through this already)
Eros the bittersweet / Anne Carson
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E book / edited by Bruce Andrews and Charles Bernstein
Art that kills : a panoramic portrait of aesthetic terrorism, 1984-2001 / George Petros
(Un)built / Raimund Abraham
Parables of theory : Jean Ricardou’s metafiction / by Lynn A. Higgins
Arab apocalypse / Etel Adnan
Lucky Wander Boy / D.B. Weiss
And then work on shit I’ve bought recently:
The Man of Jasmine & Other Texts / Zurn, Unica
Night of Lead / Hans Henny Jahnn
Notion of Obstacle / Claude Royet-Journoud
It Then & Notebooks 1956-1978 / Danielle Collobert
Christine Brooke-Rose Omnibus
a million other books, fiction, theory & art, plus the constant stream of comix that i get from inter-library-loan (Powr Mastrs 3 comes out in July I believe)
This Recording recently posted an excerpt from interviews with Francis Bacon. I think it’s somewhat relevant to this in terms of an artist’s approach to their medium, in our case words: http://thisrecording.com/today/2010/5/3/in-which-francis-bacon-really-needs-your-help.html
I have it on good authority that a new edition of Beckett’s Nohow On is forthcoming this summer, so if you haven’t purchased it yet, I’d hold out.
gonna try to read these and a few more:
the tennis handsome, barry hannah
cool for you, eileen myles
omensetter’s luck, william gass
98.6, ronald sukenick
cane, jean thomer
the magic christian, terry southern
gascoyne, stanley crawford
firework, eugene martin
hot water music, bukowski
our lady of flowers, jean genet
tropic of cancer, henry miller
i looked alive, gary lutz
blood and guts in high school, kathy acker
i always misspell eugene’s name, terrible
i’m probably just going to read witz and maybe watch star trek
Parts 2 and 3 of Your Face Tomorrow by Javier Marias
The Tunnel by William Gass
Paris Review interviews books 1-4
Swann’s Way. The Davis translation
334 by Disch
Mason and Dixon by Pynchon
Players and The Names by DeLillo
Borges collected fiction
Dear Everybody by Kimball
Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams
Aberration of Starlight by Gilberto Sorrentino
Notable American Women by Ben Marcus
Death With Interruptions by Sarmago
I tried to read Dhalgren and quit some time ago. I plan to try again, as when I was recently in NYC I saw a play loosely based on it by Jay Scheib at the Kitchen called Bellona, Destroyer of Cities. http://www.jayscheib.com/bellona/index.html It was fantastic. Did anyone else see this?
think i will have to scratch i looked alive, looks like it’s going for $120 now. if anyone would be into letting me read their copy i’ll send it back untarnished by gloved hands along with a little something special. i’ll do the same for anyone who has an english translation of the magnetic fields.
I want to read Hogg.
I’m still working on last summer.
I feel like a midget among GIANTS.
But seriously, it is always an inspiration to read others’ lists and taste their enthusiasms.
I will keep on keepin’ on.
It was a good stack, to say the least. That’s only about half of it. Peter hooked me up with a stack of Keyhole releases as a thank you for helping me at the Keyhole table in Molly’s absence.
I’ve a lot of words to love on soon.
I will be interested in your reaction to Dhalgren as a self-declared aesthete — I feel like there are parts of the book that totally foreground language-play, but other parts where language mostly becomes “transparent” and like solely descriptive of action, like where the characters are mostly just walking around and talking and fucking and fighting. It’s an odd animal. One thing I think is really cool/fascinating is how the physical and psychological spaces of that book shape how I experience cities, like beneath every surface is lurking a Bellonia, or something.
“Sexing the Cherry” is on my shelf too, but I didn’t put in my list of 1st priorities b/c I’ve already read “Written on the Body.”
I’ve only read the Lydia Davis, but definitely prefer its precision to what little I’ve seen of the Montcrieff.I bought the rest of the Penguin translations that are available in the U.S. (everything through “Sodom & Gomorrah”), and started to read “In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower,” but then sort-of tabled that project for the time-being. Really love Swann’s Way, though.
big fan of wittgenstein’s mistress. mercier and camier is one of the becketts i haven’t gotten to yet.
thx 4 the tip. already got one from the used store tho
Now there’s an experience you won’t soon forget.
…It took me like three or four months to finish the first third of “Swann’s Way.” But then I finished the rest of it in like a day. Had to catch a rhythm or something. I think it was the second Combray section I found a harder slog. It didn’t have the narrative tension of “will my mother come upstairs to kiss me goodnight” to (so brilliantly) organize its digressions — I started to get a little twitchy for want of signposts.
I almost bought it like five times last year, and then kept being like, No, I’ve got this gigantic stack of shit to read, I need to finish more of these shorter books before I start trying to read giant novels. But then I was like, I keep buying shorter books, there will always be a giant stack, so when will I ever have the opportunity to read the giant ones unless I decide now is the time? (Also unread — the Tunnel, Infinite Jest, Underworld, the rest of In Search of Lost Time after Swann’s Way, and anything by Vollman). And then I saw her on a panel at AWP and thought her presentation was totally haut, and FC2 had all their shit marked down to awesome prices at the book fair, so I went for it.
So I’ve heard. Pasha Malla recommended it in an office on Zoetrope and then I saw it was on Dennis Cooper’s list of favorites and decided to order.
Mooney enjoying me sounds hot.
The Loss Adjustor–Aifric Campbell
Ocean Sea–Alessandro Baricco
Lands of Memory–Felisberto Hernandez
Tales of Old Odessa–Roshanna P. Sylvester
Adios, Muchachos–Daniel Chavarria
Blind Date: Sex and Philosophy–Anne Dufourmantelle
The Balkan Trilogy–Olivia Manning
Oh, I see, sorry!
ha! danke.
All of that too? Oh lord… Well first of all the biggy is to finish Witz by Joshua Cohen and before that Ronald Reagan My Father by Brian Joseph Davis… and more, but I am half asleep…
I think it’s worth reading just to see what he does with rhythm and tension. I tore through it relatively quickly. I know Bolano is hyped up, but to me, his writing is thoroughly enjoyable.
I read 2666 in eight days and was never less than completely enthralled. I can’t imagine giving up on that book and knowing that it’s lurking on your shelf, full of evil. Hopefully you got it out of your house so it won’t suffocate you while you sleep.
Christopher, I know what you mean. As soon as I saw your list I said to myself, if I click on those links I’m going to end up buying half of them (and get my ass beat by my wife)!
bolano reminds me more of tang, but nice review chris – i feel less and less like wasting more time on him all the time. if i want to read 900 pages, i’ll finally get around to europe central, which i may do this summer, but probably won’t
A few:
Laura Sims Stranger (poems)
Dante Pugatorio (anyone wanna recommend a trans.?)
Adam Golaski Worse Than Myself (stories)
Fire on the Mountain Anita Desai (novel)
why does it “matter” if bolano is hyped? i honestly don’t understand why ppl care whether something is popular or hyped. can’t one “see through the hype” and make one’s own judgment/have one’s own reaction? my reactions to popular things are completely inconsistent, bc they’re based on the work itself and my own personality/tastes, not based on received wisdom, fear of trendiness, contrarianism, etc.
i like the idea of being “connected” to lots of other people bc we like something that is popular. i also like being “connected” to a smaller number of people bc we like something “kinda weird” that isn’t so popular. life offers diversity, i don’t see any reason to reject it.
I am going to attempt to plow through the books I have from the library:
Cinema and sensation : French film and the art of transgression / Martine Beugnet (2/3s through this already)
Sophie Tottie : fiction is no joke
Avant garde theatre, 1892-1992 / Christopher Innes
Reversible destiny : Arakawa/Gins
House of cards / Peter Eisenman
Time of theory : a history of Tel quel (1960-1983) / Patrick Ffrench (2/3s through this already)
Eros the bittersweet / Anne Carson
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E book / edited by Bruce Andrews and Charles Bernstein
Art that kills : a panoramic portrait of aesthetic terrorism, 1984-2001 / George Petros
(Un)built / Raimund Abraham
Parables of theory : Jean Ricardou’s metafiction / by Lynn A. Higgins
Arab apocalypse / Etel Adnan
Lucky Wander Boy / D.B. Weiss
And then work on shit I’ve bought recently:
The Man of Jasmine & Other Texts / Zurn, Unica
Night of Lead / Hans Henny Jahnn
Notion of Obstacle / Claude Royet-Journoud
It Then & Notebooks 1956-1978 / Danielle Collobert
Christine Brooke-Rose Omnibus
a million other books, fiction, theory & art, plus the constant stream of comix that i get from inter-library-loan (Powr Mastrs 3 comes out in July I believe)
This Recording recently posted an excerpt from interviews with Francis Bacon. I think it’s somewhat relevant to this in terms of an artist’s approach to their medium, in our case words: http://thisrecording.com/today/2010/5/3/in-which-francis-bacon-really-needs-your-help.html
gonna try to read these and a few more:
the tennis handsome, barry hannah
cool for you, eileen myles
omensetter’s luck, william gass
98.6, ronald sukenick
cane, jean thomer
the magic christian, terry southern
gascoyne, stanley crawford
firework, eugene martin
hot water music, bukowski
our lady of flowers, jean genet
tropic of cancer, henry miller
i looked alive, gary lutz
blood and guts in high school, kathy acker
i always misspell eugene’s name, terrible
Parts 2 and 3 of Your Face Tomorrow by Javier Marias
The Tunnel by William Gass
Paris Review interviews books 1-4
Swann’s Way. The Davis translation
334 by Disch
Mason and Dixon by Pynchon
Players and The Names by DeLillo
Borges collected fiction
Dear Everybody by Kimball
Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams
Aberration of Starlight by Gilberto Sorrentino
Notable American Women by Ben Marcus
Death With Interruptions by Sarmago
I tried to read Dhalgren and quit some time ago. I plan to try again, as when I was recently in NYC I saw a play loosely based on it by Jay Scheib at the Kitchen called Bellona, Destroyer of Cities. http://www.jayscheib.com/bellona/index.html It was fantastic. Did anyone else see this?
think i will have to scratch i looked alive, looks like it’s going for $120 now. if anyone would be into letting me read their copy i’ll send it back untarnished by gloved hands along with a little something special. i’ll do the same for anyone who has an english translation of the magnetic fields.
The Loss Adjustor–Aifric Campbell
Ocean Sea–Alessandro Baricco
Lands of Memory–Felisberto Hernandez
Tales of Old Odessa–Roshanna P. Sylvester
Adios, Muchachos–Daniel Chavarria
Blind Date: Sex and Philosophy–Anne Dufourmantelle
The Balkan Trilogy–Olivia Manning
i will sell you my copy for $60 ‘cos i’m buh-roke
ZZZIPP TOOK HIS OUT OF A BOSTON UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BECAUSE NO ONE IN CANADA HAS IT
i will sell you my copy for $60 ‘cos i’m buh-roke
ZZZIPP TOOK HIS OUT OF A BOSTON UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BECAUSE NO ONE IN CANADA HAS IT
a copy of i looked alive? can’t do it, mike, i’m brokeypants too. just got on food stamps though! but yeah, i can’t do that.
zzzipp, that’s a good idea, i think i will just go read both of those at berkeley’s library. i would steal them but i was raised catholic so it’s physically impossible for me to steal.
that book is always going for over $100 on the internet and one day, like magic, shit popped up for $10. in perfect condition. bought. read.
a copy of i looked alive? can’t do it, mike, i’m brokeypants too. just got on food stamps though! but yeah, i can’t do that.
zzzipp, that’s a good idea, i think i will just go read both of those at berkeley’s library. i would steal them but i was raised catholic so it’s physically impossible for me to steal.
that book is always going for over $100 on the internet and one day, like magic, shit popped up for $10. in perfect condition. bought. read.
Eros the Bittersweet is great.
Eros the Bittersweet is great.
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