May 2nd, 2010 / 5:07 pm
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?

162 Comments

  1. sharold

      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.

  2. Carlos Rowles

      I would add 2666. Please tell us what you make of Dahlgren.

  3. Lincoln

      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…

  4. Eric Anderson

      – 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

  5. Brandon

      I’m going to read Dhalgren this summer, too.

  6. demi-puppet

      In Search of Lost Time. . . I’m gonna do it

  7. Lincoln

      In search of time to read In Search of Lost Time….

  8. demi-puppet

      Wake up early! : ) It’s what I’ll be doing. . . Proust better be good to me.

  9. Peter

      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

  10. Rebecca Loudon

      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.

  11. Ken Baumann

      JUNG is mountain in moments, others: ehh.

  12. l@rstonovich

      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.

  13. Lincoln

      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.

  14. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      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.

  15. shaun

      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.

  16. ce.

      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

  17. alan

      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.

  18. chet

      the carlo reinhart novels – thomas berger

  19. sharold

      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.

  20. Carlos Rowles

      I would add 2666. Please tell us what you make of Dahlgren.

  21. bryan

      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/)

  22. Lincoln

      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…

  23. Eric Anderson

      – 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

  24. Brandon

      I’m going to read Dhalgren this summer, too.

  25. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      I like that stack.

  26. demi-puppet

      In Search of Lost Time. . . I’m gonna do it

  27. Lincoln

      In search of time to read In Search of Lost Time….

  28. demi-puppet

      Wake up early! : ) It’s what I’ll be doing. . . Proust better be good to me.

  29. Peter Jurmu

      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

  30. Rebecca Loudon

      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.

  31. Ken Baumann

      JUNG is mountain in moments, others: ehh.

  32. l@rstonovich

      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.

  33. Lincoln

      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.

  34. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      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.

  35. sasha fletcher

      i don’t even want to think about it right now.

  36. Ken Baumann

      Oops, alan, I meant that other moments IN Jung are ehh. :)

  37. efferny jomes

      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.

  38. ce.

      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

  39. alan

      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.

  40. EC

      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)

  41. chet

      the carlo reinhart novels – thomas berger

  42. bryan

      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/)

  43. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      I like that stack.

  44. darby

      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.

  45. darby

      damn. mercier and camier also.

      ♫(gorecki symphony 3)♫

  46. isaac estep

      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.

  47. isaac estep

      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.

  48. isaac estep

      My parents have a ton of sartre books around the house so i’ve been putting off that author.

  49. sasha fletcher

      i don’t even want to think about it right now.

  50. Ken Baumann

      Oops, alan, I meant that other moments IN Jung are ehh. :)

  51. EC

      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)

  52. What are some catalogs for camping gear that I can go online to order?

      […] HTMLGIANT / Summer Reading […]

  53. Donald

      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.)

  54. marco

      The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie, Agota Kristoff

      That was very good.

  55. darby

      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.

  56. darby

      damn. mercier and camier also.

      ♫(gorecki symphony 3)♫

  57. isaac estep

      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.

  58. stephen

      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.

  59. isaac estep

      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.

  60. isaac estep

      My parents have a ton of sartre books around the house so i’ve been putting off that author.

  61. stephen

      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)

  62. Christopher Higgs
  63. Christopher Higgs

      I need to check out Lovecraft. Never read him, but have heard good things from many trusted voices. Cioran is always good, good, good.

  64. Christopher Higgs

      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.

  65. Christopher Higgs

      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!

  66. Christopher Higgs

      Bless your heart, Tim. May you enjoy Mooney and may Mooney enjoy you.

  67. stephen

      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.

  68. Christopher Higgs

      You have amazing taste and discernment, Bryan. Good showing. :)

  69. Donald

      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.)

  70. Christopher Higgs

      Nice.

  71. KevinSpaide

      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.

  72. Christopher Higgs

      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.

  73. marco

      The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie, Agota Kristoff

      That was very good.

  74. davidpeak

      i’m probably just going to read witz and maybe watch star trek

  75. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      I want to read Hogg.

  76. mimi

      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.

  77. ce.

      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.

  78. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      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.

  79. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      “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.”

  80. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      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.

  81. stephen

      big fan of wittgenstein’s mistress. mercier and camier is one of the becketts i haven’t gotten to yet.

  82. stephen

      thx 4 the tip. already got one from the used store tho

  83. KevinSpaide

      Now there’s an experience you won’t soon forget.

  84. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      …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.

  85. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      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.

  86. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      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.

  87. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      Mooney enjoying me sounds hot.

  88. alan

      Oh, I see, sorry!

  89. stephen

      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.

  90. bryan

      ha! danke.

  91. stephen

      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)

  92. Casey

      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…

  93. Christopher Higgs
  94. Christopher Higgs

      I need to check out Lovecraft. Never read him, but have heard good things from many trusted voices. Cioran is always good, good, good.

  95. Christopher Higgs

      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.

  96. Christopher Higgs

      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!

  97. Christopher Higgs

      Bless your heart, Tim. May you enjoy Mooney and may Mooney enjoy you.

  98. stephen

      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.

  99. Christopher Higgs

      You have amazing taste and discernment, Bryan. Good showing. :)

  100. Christian Powers

      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.

  101. Schylur Prinz

      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.

  102. Eric Anderson

      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)!

  103. reynard

      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

  104. David

      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)

  105. stephen

      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.

  106. Christopher Higgs

      Nice.

  107. KevinSpaide

      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.

  108. stephen

      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.

  109. magick mike

      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)

  110. stephen
  111. Christopher Higgs

      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.

  112. reynard

      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

  113. reynard

      i always misspell eugene’s name, terrible

  114. davidpeak

      i’m probably just going to read witz and maybe watch star trek

  115. Neil

      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

  116. joshua van

      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?

  117. reynard

      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.

  118. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      I want to read Hogg.

  119. mimi

      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.

  120. ce.

      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.

  121. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      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.

  122. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      “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.”

  123. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      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.

  124. stephen

      big fan of wittgenstein’s mistress. mercier and camier is one of the becketts i haven’t gotten to yet.

  125. stephen

      thx 4 the tip. already got one from the used store tho

  126. KevinSpaide

      Now there’s an experience you won’t soon forget.

  127. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      …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.

  128. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      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.

  129. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      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.

  130. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      Mooney enjoying me sounds hot.

  131. I. Fontana

      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

  132. alan

      Oh, I see, sorry!

  133. bryan

      ha! danke.

  134. Casey

      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…

  135. Christian Powers

      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.

  136. Schylur Prinz

      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.

  137. Eric Anderson

      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)!

  138. reynard

      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

  139. David

      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)

  140. stephen

      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.

  141. stephen

      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.

  142. magick mike

      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)

  143. stephen
  144. reynard

      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

  145. reynard

      i always misspell eugene’s name, terrible

  146. Neil

      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

  147. joshua van

      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?

  148. reynard

      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.

  149. I. Fontana

      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

  150. magick mike

      i will sell you my copy for $60 ‘cos i’m buh-roke

  151. ZZZZZIPP

      ZZZIPP TOOK HIS OUT OF A BOSTON UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BECAUSE NO ONE IN CANADA HAS IT

  152. magick mike

      i will sell you my copy for $60 ‘cos i’m buh-roke

  153. ZZZZZIPP

      ZZZIPP TOOK HIS OUT OF A BOSTON UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BECAUSE NO ONE IN CANADA HAS IT

  154. reynard

      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.

  155. reynard

      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.

  156. gene

      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.

  157. reynard

      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.

  158. reynard

      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.

  159. gene

      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.

  160. isaac estep

      Eros the Bittersweet is great.

  161. isaac estep

      Eros the Bittersweet is great.

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