A hybrid speculative-theoretical text wherein 23rd century artificial intelligences convene to reflect upon the technological missteps of the 21st: prA hybrid speculative-theoretical text wherein 23rd century artificial intelligences convene to reflect upon the technological missteps of the 21st: predictive policing, surveillance capitalism, and inequity self-perpetuating through "neutral" data sets. Incisive criticism for the present moment (2022 but of lasting relevance even as reality catches up to its concerns). Maybe not the most groundbreaking if you're already following the conversation, but artists recontextualizing the discourse with an eye towards better future imaginaries are always essential....more
Moments from the lives of a 20-something single mother and her toddler daughter in 70s Japan. The father abandons them to better pursue his own creatiMoments from the lives of a 20-something single mother and her toddler daughter in 70s Japan. The father abandons them to better pursue his own creative projects, without a lot consideration to what will happen to them but much of indignation that his ex chooses to cut him out their daughter's life to try to build something more stable herself. They find themselves living on the entire sun-soaked fourth floor of an office building somewhere in Toyko, and a year unfolds in one-month/chapter bursts. This doesn't necessarily sound like a subject I'd be drawn to, but somehow the title and architectural locus for personal struggles snagged my attention at the library, and I'm glad it did. Tsushima disregards traditional dramatic progression to render a series of vivid moments from her characters' lives, delivering them with an acute awareness of how feeling and experience bleed together, and may be further recolored by the lingering shreds of dream. In her words mundane moments are pulled clean from the everyday and held up for scrutiny, she writes with an exceptional emotional clarity, even with dealing with complex or unclear emotions, her most concrete descriptions yet verge on the hyperreal. I also appreciate the sense she gives of the unglamorous difficulties faced by a single woman in Japan. She's not at pains to paint her heroine in overly positive terms, particularly as a parent -- strain and cracks show everywhere, despair and frustration lurk -- but there's also a sense of dogged perseverance in the face of whatever might be thrown at her. Time passes, circumstances shift slowly, possibilities close or open, hopefully we gain something lasting by the experience....more
A novel less as story as it is a container for riffing on a few themes. A visitor arrives, of unclear origin and species, somewhere between Palafox anA novel less as story as it is a container for riffing on a few themes. A visitor arrives, of unclear origin and species, somewhere between Palafox and The Doubtful Guest. The narrator is intrigued, then ambivalent, sometimes endeared or wearied. The relationship doesn't evolve so much as become reconfigured to reflect various aspects as it goes on. Other forms of acquaintance and connection get short sections -- family, childhood friends -- and the action is given over to absurdities. It's the sort of thing I certainly could enjoy at the right moment, or if it hooked my attention in the right way, but somehow this one never did. There's promise, but I have a tough time grasping a sense of intent that would bind this all together....more
I'm reading these out of order when they appear at the library, which does not make them more coherent, but that's somewhat besides the point. I'm notI'm reading these out of order when they appear at the library, which does not make them more coherent, but that's somewhat besides the point. I'm not even sure all will be revealed at the end. No. 5 is Matsumoto's Heavy Metal-inspired psychedelic western about a rogue member of a future peacekeeping organization, motives yet undisclosed. This is much more action oriented than something like Sunny or Go Go Monster, but even at most visceral it has a tendency to spin off into abstraction, towards landscapes and animal life, actual or those of the mind's eye or generated by psychic force of elderly children. Just go with it....more
Published in samizdat for the crime of having been written in a non-cyrillic language (Lithuanian, under Tzarist rule) but of note more as a possibly-Published in samizdat for the crime of having been written in a non-cyrillic language (Lithuanian, under Tzarist rule) but of note more as a possibly-early-feminist skewering of the nightmare of 19th-century patriarchal mores. Zose's mother is so terrified of the risk of her becoming a "ruined" woman that she's equally willing to instantly disown her daughter or railroad her into marriage at the merest rumor. Oddly structured, largely set-up in conversations about the characters before the marriage itself gets its brief, inevitable, and abysmally dispiriting due....more
I was halfway through the central novella, Mustang, before I realized this was a collection of stories, rather than essays. I grabbed this fairly blinI was halfway through the central novella, Mustang, before I realized this was a collection of stories, rather than essays. I grabbed this fairly blindly from the library, just on the weight of its being a new publication-in-translation from Archipelago, so I didn't have a lot of context. And Kerangal's writing tends to favor observation over plot, through a series of largely interchangeable first person narrators. When she excels, it's mostly through words deftly strung together in a particularly twisty run on sentence. Not that her observations are useless, I just often agree with them to the extent that they don't completely grab me. Her foreigner-lost-in-America stance in Mustang is meant to capture a viewpoint at odds with her surroundings, but I grew up here and certainly can't disagree with her bemusement at the constructed image of the suburban American West (yes, I've been to the Coloradan town in the story) and the arbitrariness of car-centric landscape design. Fortunately the story does contain two striking moments of actual action (thematically relevant even) and it's easily the best piece in the collection (it never hurts to give scattered ideas more space to gather, in this sort of thing, either). Once that story was over, though, my interest waned. I'm not a great reader of essays, but I liked these best in that imagined context. Essays are constrained by reality, and her writing seemed to be embellishing mundane moments effectively; knowing these were all invented just makes them feel a little more arbitrary. There is a running theme of the conceptual meanings of the human voice to bind them together, but this felt more effective when I thought a single narrator was following the thread. Isolated as stories, there's sometimes not a lot there. Not, unfortunately, a variety of realism I'm very drawn to, however well written....more
How did the supposed progress of western civilization bring us, inexorably, to the rise of fascism and all the nightmares of the 20th century? TragicaHow did the supposed progress of western civilization bring us, inexorably, to the rise of fascism and all the nightmares of the 20th century? Tragically timely....more
An exhaustively-researched history of Brooklyn, less through its social and demographic shifts than through the top-down lens of city planning -- incoAn exhaustively-researched history of Brooklyn, less through its social and demographic shifts than through the top-down lens of city planning -- incorporation, vying visions for street layouts and parks, real estate and development. It's a useful reference that gradually wanes in direct interest as we move from the earliest and least remembered settlements in places like Gravesend, through colorful accounts of the wasteland of Barren Island's rendering plants and corruption and graft surrounding the leisure grounds of early Coney Island, to, eventually, the drier threads of the 20th century boom and redevelopment. Maybe these are just too familiar, but I do feel like it gets lost in the bureaucratic details a little....more
I'd somewhat checked out of keeping up with new Lethem after Chronic City (which was fine, but I'd been feeling somewhat diminishing returns ever sincI'd somewhat checked out of keeping up with new Lethem after Chronic City (which was fine, but I'd been feeling somewhat diminishing returns ever since the most inventive early sci-fi work and Motherless Brooklyn), and had fairly low expectations for what he'd be up to another decade later. Was he attempting to replay his Brooklyn noir hit? But it's about Dean Street, Boerum Hill, so would this be more of the nostalgia of Fortress of Solitude? But no, this takes the material off in a fresh direction, as a kind of docufiction essay on culture clash and integration in Brooklyn in the 70s, through a pointilist selection of vignettes and commentaries. There are various low-grade "crimes" mentioned, but the real topic, and real crime here, is gentrification. I'm not sure that Lethem has a whole specifically new to say about that subject, but he's careful not to let anyone off the hook and polyphonic tangle of observations and case studies is fascinatingly messy. And weirdly gripping reading. Despite the self-reflexivity and claims to forgo specifics for universals, it's still very much paced as a novel, and its cloud of references begin to interconnect and ignite as it builds to a few unexpected conclusions.
Incidentally, the book is composed of 124 numbered sections. On a hunch I checked a map and yes, 124 Dean Street is between Smith and Hoyt, the very specific locus of study here. So what's the "locked out memory" lingering at ?...more
Sometimes you keep coming back to an author because even when their works don't quite click, you can sense the potential, that their ideal work is yetSometimes you keep coming back to an author because even when their works don't quite click, you can sense the potential, that their ideal work is yet out there somewhere. Perhaps, to me, from Volodine, this oneiric post-apocalyptic noir is mine. As usual for the pseudonymous Volodine, this exists in the hinterlands of his invented "post-exotic" literature, a book perhaps written by a character from within its landscapes of collapse, possibly fictionalizing or embellishing or conjecturing events the underlying reality of which we can't quite access. Even so, its story -- of a jaded investigator chasing a doppelganger and possibly undermining the political organs he ostensibly serves -- has plenty of narrative pull of its own, moreso due to the overwhelming sense of loss, personal and global and narrative, suffusing it. Like this more recent, prize-winning Radiant Terminus, this is a literature of futility and exhaustion (of possibilities, personal and global and narrative) but carries more emotional weight to bind it together, and, antithetically, a sense of enduring tenacity in the face of devastation. The conflicting layers of story through which it unfolds adds to the effect rather than becoming the medium into which all meaning dissolves (ultimately, in recollection, my complaint with Terminus, which I liked but wanted to like so much more). If this is any indication of older Volodine I hope more gets translated, more pseudonyms, more stories, more pieces of the strange post-modern mosaic literature he's been constructing alone for decades now. Perhaps as more pieces emerge, the whole body of work will take on more depth and nuance, beyond my piecemeal explorations thus far....more
Concise, understated (the descriptor I've seen thrown around for the protagonist and book is "unassuming"), creeping up with the weight of history, anConcise, understated (the descriptor I've seen thrown around for the protagonist and book is "unassuming"), creeping up with the weight of history, an indelible story about the tragically evergreen subject of personal accountability in the face of political crisis and injustice. First book of the new year and I hope that it sets the tone for the year in quality, but not in specific relevance (1938 Europe, specifically Salazarist Portugal, but as I said all too ever-timely). Also my first Tabucchi in a while, and one of his very best, if trading in his sense of elusive metaphysics for something more direct....more
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