READIN

Friday, November 24th, 2006

🦋 Against The Day

I've been looking forward for a couple of months to Pynchon's new novel. And here it is! I just started it this morning and am sort of curious as to whether I'm reading the story of the novel or the story of another work that is contained within the novel -- and whether the narrating voice is Pynchon's or a character's. I'm leaning towards the latter (presumably I'll find out soon enough) -- the first chapter is reading a bit like a parody of what somebody critical of post-modern fiction might expect a new book by Pynchon to sound like.

posted afternoon of November 24th, 2006: Respond
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Wednesday, November 15th, 2006

🦋 Moomins!

A new Moomin book arrived today -- it is the newly published Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip, Book One. Sylvia and I looked at the first story, "Moomin and the Brigands", this evening -- I was impressed by how well Sylvia is reading -- this was her first experience with hyphens but she seemed to get it pretty well after I explained. Here is a preview of the book. Just beautiful artwork -- the dialog (in the first few pages at any rate) is not as interesting as it is in the books though.

posted evening of November 15th, 2006: Respond
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Saturday, October 21st, 2006

🦋 Coming out of the Cave

I have been doing some posting at Coming out of the Cave, the blog I've established to try and unravel Blumenberg's Höhlenausgänge. So go read there if you're interested in it. (I would be putting up another post but Blogger is not cooperating right now.)

posted evening of October 21st, 2006: Respond
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Thursday, October 12th, 2006

Blumenberg's Höhlenausgänge was just now brought to mind by something Teofilo said. Now I'm really interested and want to go back and look at it some more.

Update: I got in touch with a philosopher at Texas Women's University who has done some work on Blumenberg. He recommends I look at the first section of The Genesis of the Copernican World and the material on gnosticism in Part II of The Legitimacy of the Modern Age as an already-translated source for Blumenberg's ideas about the city as a recapitulation of the cave.

Update: I have started a new blog: Coming out of the Cave, dedicated to understanding Höhlenausgänge.

posted morning of October 12th, 2006: Respond

Steadman uses as an epigram for The Joke's Over, a bit of advice Thompson gave him: "Ralph, never write. You'll bring shame on your family." And to tell the truth, his writing is a bit uneven. There are bits that seem hackneyed and trite. Other parts however are keenly insightful, and his artistic vision (and the interesting events being described) make up for the uneven prose quality.

posted morning of October 12th, 2006: Respond

Wednesday, October 11th, 2006

🦋 A new book

I stopped in at Coliseum Books last night, to savor the short remaining time before it closes. One of the "staff picks" is Ralph Steadman's new book, The Joke's Over: Bruised Memories: Gonzo, Hunter S. Thompson and Me. I picked it up and was immediately blown away by Kurt Vonnegut's brief preface -- I had never realized he was friends with Steadman and Thompson though it makes good sense. I've been reading about Steadman's meeting with Thompson at the Kentucky Derby of 1970. Lots of laughs so far but objectionably little illustration -- I want to see the drawings he is describing. (He says the editor of Scanlan's lost them.)

posted morning of October 11th, 2006: Respond
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Tuesday, September 26th, 2006

I finished The Autograph Man today and found the ending very powerful. And let me just say that based on the two books I've read so far, Ms. Smith is the queen of the loose thread. There are so many bits of unresolved sub-plot as you get to the end, you cannot help but think there's no way these are all going to be wrapped up in any way approaching verisimilitude -- and feel a wave of relief at the end, when many are just left hanging. It does not feel willy-nilly either -- the threads that are left open are the ones best suited to keep the story in your consciousness a while longer, thinking about how it could move forward past the closing scenes.

posted evening of September 26th, 2006: Respond
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Friday, September 22nd, 2006

I really like the pacing of The Autograph Man -- the movement can be furiously fast but at the same time you feel a kind of deliberation on the author's part, a conscious movement through the story -- the connections undergirding the text feel like the beams of a building's skeleton.

posted afternoon of September 22nd, 2006: Respond
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Thursday, September 21st, 2006

I am warming up to The Autograph Man. Thinking about what I meant by saying it was not serious, probably it was that I suspected there were not going to be any layers of meaning under the playful narration -- that's probably why I compared it to The Fan Man, which I remember enjoying a lot but not seeing any meaning in its play.

But now I am seeing those layers of meaning that I thought would not be there. So. Don't judge a book by its first few chapters -- I have read through Part I now and am just starting Part II -- and it seems to me the core of Part I was a non-verbal debate among Alex-Li, Adam, Mark, and Joseph over what the experience of being Jewish is. What hipped me to this was reading a post of Teofilo's that I happened on today, which describes a take on the Jewish experience that I think is very close to Mark's. Compare Teo's post to this passage:

...no matter what Mountjoy thought, he had not become a rabbi to please his father. In his own small way he had wanted to carry things forward. Like the continuity man on a film set. At the time, this was an analogy that had not satisfied Adam, who thought the call to the rabbinate should be entirely pure, a discussion a man has with God. But God had never spoken to Rubinfine, really. Rubinfine was simply, and honestly, a fan of the people he had come from.... This was the only way he had ever found to show it, that affection.

I am seeing now what this book has in common with White Teeth, which is that both books are about communities, the characters are seen primarily as members of their community. I liked that about White Teeth and it is coming in well here too.

posted evening of September 21st, 2006: Respond

Wednesday, September 20th, 2006

Yesterday I finished reading White Teeth and started reading The Autograph Man. White Teeth starts out great and just keeps getting better and better as it progresses. The ending blew me away. The vast quantity of threads left loose and hanging did not bother me at all, indeed it added something. My initial reaction to The Autograph Man was, it seems really fun and well-written, sort of like a more coherent equivalent of The Fan Man, but not a Serious Novel in the same way White Teeth was. Of course this reaction prompts me to do some thinking about what would make it serious or not -- I haven't come up with much yet in that regard. For now I am treating it as an analogue of The Crying of Lot 49 and hoping it grows on me the same way that novel has.

posted morning of September 20th, 2006: Respond
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